I really should check closer when I buy things. Although it does produce some nice surprises for me.
In late May and early June, just after the big warm spell that became the cold and damp spell in early June where there was a frost warning almost every night, I finally got a few tomatoes planted. It was a bit of a rush. The stores had plants in, but the weather didn’t seem to want to cooperate. I knew time was getting late, so when it finally looked like frost might be past, I ran to a store, grabbed some tomato plants and went home.
I did not buy them totally at random. I bought a couple larger varieties and a couple of types of cherry tomatoes. I looked for some yellow or gold ones, because I really like those. They are a bit sweeter and have less acid than your standard red ones. But I think others had beaten me to them, since there didn’t seem to be any left. So I took my purchases home and stuck them in the dirt.
With all the rain we had through the first part of July, I was just hoping the plants wouldn’t just get waterlogged and fall over. They didn’t. And a couple have even started to produce fruit. Yes, I have visions of bees wearing little rain ponchos, flying from flower to flower, trying to get everyone pollinated. Really, it’s not far off my vision of providing bees with little scuba suits so they can pollinate cranberry flowers, since they were under water this year. but that’s another story. And possibly a future Go Fund Me page.
But I was checking out my new, soon-to-be tomatoes and I noticed one variety seemed a very dark green, almost black. I was wondering if there might be something wrong with them. I’ve seen bottom rot many times in the past, but this was starting at the top.
Then I checked the little card that had come with the plant. Yes, it said cherry tomato, but when I read further, it said the variety was Midnight Snack. As I dug a little further into the type of tomato I had accidently come home with, it said they do turn red, but have a sort of black sheen to them in the sunlight. They contain the same sort of chemical that makes blueberries blue, and are high in anti-oxidants. That’s a bonus!
I started looking a bit further and discovered you can actually get blue and purple varieties of tomato. I had no idea.
I have grown red, yellow and orange tomatoes, but had no idea there were other colours I had yet to discover.
Maybe it is by accident, but next year I have to find blue tomatoes. I want to make blue spaghetti sauce. Now that would be cool!