Market Farming

["Christine & Marlin" <glenecofarm AT planetcomm.net>]

For several years I have been fascinated with the heirloom tomato variety
Eva,s Purple Ball.  It is a beautiful smooth round pink tomato which has a
small core and seldom cracks.  It's only fault is its size, average size of
a tennis ball, smaller ones about golf ball size, and the largest about that
of a baseball.  My customers don't pick them up very well as they are
looking more for slicing tomatoes.  I have similar luck with Red Zebras
despite their beautiful appearance; again I think an issue of size.  They
are too big for cherry tomatoes and too small for regular eating tomatoes.

Last year I thought of crossing them with my popular Blosser, a pink slicer
that averages around 3/4 lb or larger.  It never worked; I was too busy with
everything to properly hand pollinate my plants for crossing.

Now I am thinking of using Brandywine instead of Blosser to cross with Eva,s
Purple Ball.  Brandywines and Blossers are pretty much in the same league
when it comes to superb flavor and are about the same size, the only
difference being that Brandywines tend to be a little flatter than Blossers.
I often cannot tell them apart once I have them on the table.  I would
interplant EPB with Brandywines at a ratio of about 1 to 5 in the row and
save seed from the EPB plants about mid to late season.  Upon starting the
seed next spring I would keep only the plants with potato leaves, a
convenient marker to tell me that I have a cross between EPB and Brandywine.
This seems to be about the most idiot proof method I can think of to get the
job halfway accomplished.  Will it work?

Marlin Burkholder
Virginia