To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Fruit & Nut inventory
Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2008 13:53:10 -0600
"annual Seed Saver's Exchange
yearbook.... You can't imagine how
long it takes to look through the tomato section!"
But I LOVE looking through it! I ordered some tomato seeds from GACAC a few
years ago and told him I'd done a statistical analysis of his tomato
offerings. He was thrilled, he's a history prof and says statistics make
things come alive for him. It was easy to do and verified what I expected,
that he had mostly small to medium fruits. These are more likely to crop in
high heat. What surprised me was that he had almost entirely red varieties.
It dawned on me that a lot of the other colors are kept simply for novelty,
whereas a plain ol' red tomato needs to have some good attributes to
survive. Flavor, productivity, disease resistance all come to mind.
Donna