You Say ToMAHto

I say ToMAYto

 

I'm so amused by these little green balls.

Considering my gardener's thumb is far more blacker than green, I didn't expect the tomato plants I grew for a lark to survive, let alone flower and begin -some- attempt at going to fruit.

They're only about 1-2 cm across though, and rock hard. They're on a very sunny balcony, but our entire family's watering attempts are sporadic, if relatively over-eager, so I have a feeling they are experiencing drought and flood conditions every 1-2 days. They may never grow bigger than that. Who knows.

Also, the seeds were from a kumato.

The strange brown fruit was seen in our supermarkets early in the year, and my curiosity was sparked enough to buy three to try.

Honestly, I've tasted better tomatoes. They weren't as sweet as a certain brand of Genting Garden plum or roma tomatoes I am in love with, and slightly more acidic than I was used to, but they did taste tomato-ey despite the odd as hell color.

The story behind them was sorta intriguing though, with some corporation or other saying that they are F1 hybrids and so seed-savers will not be able to recreate the same fruit. People on various blogs and forums decided to test it out with Operation Kumato.

Results have been mixed. Some report they get back the same kumato-looking kumato for four generations and counting. Others have been finding differences.

What the heck, I thought, let's try preparing these kumato seeds and chuck them into the pot of soil rotting outside in the balcony (it used to house a bamboo from Chinese New Year until it steadily yellowed and died), and just dump in the bag of compost/soil mix I bought from a Lim Chu Kang farm over a year ago (with good intentions of growing wheatgrass from a kit) that was mouldering in the storeroom.

The trick was to wash off the mucus from the seeds. As I wasn't exactly keen on emulating the traditional way to prepare tomato seeds (ie. ferment them for a week until the mucus goes away) - I kept thinking of all the many fungus spores that thrive in the tropics, y'see - it turned out quite fortunate that soaking for 3-6 hours loosens quite a lot of the mucus, and I patiently scraped the rest away with a paper kitchen towel before drying 'em.

In they went into the pot. They were duly watered, then promptly forgotten about until the next time it seemed appropriate to dampen the soil.

Couple days later, I was pretty surprised to see that there were green shoots emerging from the soil. I had to look hard and see the remnant of the kumato seed coat to establish that these were, in fact, kumato plants and not just random weeds.

The rest is history. And lots and lots of watering. Evidently, tomatoes are not exactly environmentally friendly plants.

Or I've just got them in too sunny a location. Who knows.