Cuostralee

[dokutaaguriin]

I found my Cuostralee to be on the rather small side(like many other varieties this year), nothing near the monster size that Carolyn reports. I was wondering if anyone else can chime in with the size of their fruit.
Two trusses of fruit:

not quite 8oz.

[feldon30]

Who or where was your seed source?

[giardiniere]

Mine were probably in the 1 lb to 1.25 lb range. Unfortunately, I lost them to some sort of wilt. The taste was fantastic though.

[Tania]

Jeff,

I'd love to chime in, but my Cuostralee is still very green, not sure if the fruits reached the max size yet, but mine definitely larger than yours... However, the plant is not very large, and I am not sure about my seed source...

Looks like you are having quite a few ripe tomatoes up there, almost ahead of us PNWers...

[cottonpicker]

Coustralee' --- one of my favorites this year! Very productive, disease - free and great tasting fruits ranging from 6--12 oz. Nice addition to my future gardens.

LarryD

[Grub]

I'm with Craig on this one in that I haven't had much luck with it. Grown for two seasons but tend to get gnarled small things. Tried two different seed sources and, this year, will be a third source. Fingers crossed. I mean, uncrossed

[PaulF]

Just checked my Cuostralee and I have 12-15 ripening fruits in the 16oz to 24 oz range..my guess since I am leaving them on the vine. Mine show less ribbing than yours and tend to be singles or doubles rather than the clusters you show, The plant is huge; 8-10 feet tall and very robust. In the past Cuostralee has always been similiar to this and the flavor of the fruit has been one I look forward to. My original seed source was Chuck Wyatt and I refreshed my seeds through Mariseeds. Both my saved seed and the new seed grow the same plant and fruit as far as I can tell.

[carolyn137]

I've been growing it since I received the seeds from France in 1992 and the plants have always been vigorous and the fruits have always been large oblate beefsteaks in the one pound plus range.

The picture in my book is quite typical of what I get with this variety. Nothing gnarly at all.

Is this going to be another situation where "stuff" has happened to a variety when others save seed and then trade it or it's offered commercially and it isn't right?

Or is this a situation where local conditions in a given year have not allowed for full expression of this wonderful variety.

And now you know why I've tried so hard to keep current stock of the varieties listed in my book, but with my recent surgeries, etc., it's going to be hard to continue doing that if not impossible.

I mean if I can only grow about a dozen plants per year and someone else has to send me the plants and someone local has to take care of them, when I'm faced with growing new varieties vs keeping up with stock you know darn well what I'll do.

As it is, this year I have five new ones being grown by others for me, I don't mean local folks, I mean Shoe in NC, BC Day in NY and Tree in Maine, all folks most of you know. And God Bless them for offering to do so.

[dokutaaguriin]

Thanks so much for your replies.

I went and checked my seed packet and unfortunately I did not write down from whom I traded with. I think I will try a different seed source for next(or the year after)lol.

I think an imposter Cuostralee might be floating around in seed trading circles based on information people have been posting here.

Jeff

[carolyn137]

(My original seed source was Chuck Wyatt and I refreshed my seeds through Mariseeds. Both my saved seed and the new seed grow the same plant and fruit as far as I can tell. ( from Paul)

And although I was pretty sure about this, I just checked the SSE Yearbooks and both Chuck and Marianne got their seeds from me.

I'm also the source of seeds to Glenn at Sandhill, so at this point if anyone is considering getting them I'd get them from Sandhill ( more seeds, lower price, LOL) or Marianne, b/c I'm not that confident about Chuck's seeds at this point altho I don't know specifically about Cusotralee.

And yes, I do think there's an imposter out there via seed trading from the reports I now see here.

And this is one of the things I do worry about and as most of you know I absolutely refuse to trade seeds.

If I make a seed offer, fine, but no trading and no guarantee that my saved seeds are pure either, altho my track record has been very good indeed.

When someone sends me a new unknown heirloom I always offer them 4-6 varieties in exchange and also tell them that if any of them look real good then I'd be glad to send seeds for trial to the current places where I do that, which is TGS and Sandhill and Johnny's. Until two years ago I did so with Marianne as well, and no good reason not to as I was her source for AGG and she was the first to offer it commercially ( Glenn is still yelling at it to grow well in his sand, LOL) so maybe I should reestabish contat with Marinanne, whom I've known for many many years via SSE.

[tylenol]

I also experienced a problem with the Cuostralee grown this year. 4 plants grown in 3 different gardens all produced 6-8 ounce heavilly ribbed oblate fruit. The seeds were purchased from Chuck's place, Heirloom Tomatoes.net. I suspect they are closer to Costoluto Fiorentino or Genovese.
http://[img]http://i50.photobucket.c....jpg[/img]

About 6 or 7 fruits are located at the bottom right side of this picture. I expected them to look like the larger red at the bottom, just left of the "suspects"

Rob

[PaulF]

Just picked a Cuostralee and it weighed in at 17oz. It was about the shape as the right side tomato in the original picture, but apparently about four times the size. It tasted pretty darned good, too.

[korney19]

Here was my Cuostralee:



Mark

[dokutaaguriin]

Hi Mark,
good to see your are posting again...
thanks for the pic as those fruits were what I was expecting.
Jeff

[Lee]

I've grown Cuostralee for 5 seasons now. Original seed
source was Chuck Wyatt in 2002.
The fruit have been large oblate as Carolyn describes, but
large is a relative term. My range for this variety is 6-24oz.
It just all depends on the weather, location, soil, etc.....

My dad and I are growing it this year from the same seed
source, (my bagged saved seed from last year).
His fruits are large oblate (10~20oz.), and mine are medium oblate (6~12oz.)

Crossed seed. NO. Not by taste, or shape. (Of course taste
is most important with this variety for me!)

So, what's different. Sun, soil, temps.....

I guess my point is, environmental conditions probably
have a significant impact on the variations we are seeing
within varieties, possibly more so than potential crossed seed (depending on seed source.)

As another example, I've grown Earl's Faux this year from seed saved from a tomato grown by Earl himself.
Now if I were to say I have a pink 8oz. low productive
plant, would you say I have a cross or wrong seed.
Now if I said my dad's plant is spitting out pink 14~20oz monsters by the bushel, you'd probably say "that's more like EF."
What's the difference? Sun, soil, temps... and a stupid cat that half dug up the plant in the spring..... but that's a different rant......


Lee