Cuostralee growout results

[Lee]

This year, I made a request for folks to send me their seeds
of the variety Cuostralee. It's been my favorite since I first
grew it in 2002. My source was Chuck Wyatt.
I wanted to see if different sources grew out to be as good
as what I've tasted from mine.
So, with quite a few generous donations, I was able to grow
out Cuostralee from 6 different seed sources.
And here's the results of my growout!

The seed sources are as follows:
Heirloom Seeds
Marianne Jones
(KYGreg's saved version)
Mine saved in 2003
Suze's saved from TGS
Tatiana

These are shown in order in the first photo.
A couple things you will notice. They are all approximately
the same shape and size. The variability is consistent with
expected variations.
However, you'll notice the first one (from Heirloom Seeds) is
Pink instead of red.

The next 6 pictures show the interiors of each of the tomatoes.
The order is HS, MJ, KYG, Suze, Tatiana, Mine.

Other than MJ's they all look very similar in being meaty and
juicy.

Now, as for taste... this was the most remarkable part of all.
They all tasted DIFFERENT! Even the three that were grown
side by side in the same soil, with the same sun, and same
amount of water.
My favorite was mine of course, but not all season long.
The one from Tatiana's was better tasting some days, and
was the preferred in head to head comparisons with mine and Suze's. Suze's had a pithy texture/dry taste to it, which
was quite surprising. However, Suze's was the productivity
winner, with mine coming in second to Tatiana's.
They were all some of the most productive in the garden.


So, what's my conclusion?
I have none... other than I'm pretty happy with my version of
Cuostralee. The other's were close. And while they sometimes
tasted better than mine, they were never better than when
mine tastes its best. Perhaps next year I will get some seed from the original French source.... hint, hint!

Lee

[Bama mater]

Very Interesting, Cool experiment.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Lee

This year, I made a request for folks to send me their seeds
of the variety Cuostralee. It's been my favorite since I first
grew it in 2002. My source was Chuck Wyatt.
I wanted to see if different sources grew out to be as good
as what I've tasted from mine.
So, with quite a few generous donations, I was able to grow
out Cuostralee from 6 different seed sources.
And here's the results of my growout!

The seed sources are as follows:
Heirloom Seeds
Marianne Jones
(KYGreg's saved version)
Mine saved in 2003
Suze's saved from TGS
Tatiana

These are shown in order in the first photo.
A couple things you will notice. They are all approximately
the same shape and size. The variability is consistent with
expected variations.
However, you'll notice the first one (from Heirloom Seeds) is
Pink instead of red.

The next 6 pictures show the interiors of each of the tomatoes.
The order is HS, MJ, KYG, Suze, Tatiana, Mine.

Other than MJ's they all look very similar in being meaty and
juicy.

Now, as for taste... this was the most remarkable part of all.
They all tasted DIFFERENT! Even the three that were grown
side by side in the same soil, with the same sun, and same
amount of water.
My favorite was mine of course, but not all season long.
The one from Tatiana's was better tasting some days, and
was the preferred in head to head comparisons with mine and Suze's. Suze's had a pithy texture/dry taste to it, which
was quite surprising. However, Suze's was the productivity
winner, with mine coming in second to Tatiana's.
They were all some of the most productive in the garden.


So, what's my conclusion?
I have none... other than I'm pretty happy with my version of
Cuostralee. The other's were close. And while they sometimes
tasted better than mine, they were never better than when
mine tastes its best. Perhaps next year I will get some seed from the original French source.... hint, hint!

Lee

The original French source I got my seeds from was Norbert Parreira with whom I did a huge seed trade in 1992. Repeated attempts to contact him after that went unanswered.

So, I suppose the best I can do is to try to find the first seeds I saved from the originals, there are no more original seeds left, actually he sent very few seeds for all the varieties I got from him. And if you're up to trying to wake up some old seed that's fine with me/

There were two folks who wanted all the varieties I had in my book that they weren't already listing and those two were Chuck Wyatt and Glenn Drowns at Sandhill. So I was the source to those two places and I can't remember where else and if all is well what Donna offers should be the same, except as you know, Chuck passed away in June of 2002 and for several years before that was not a well man/ And as a result there were many varieties that were crossed and/or mixed up. You may remember the Wrong variety threads I used to do at GW and all the problems with Chuck's stuff at that time. I have no idea what Donna is doing for new stock b'c we haven't communicated in many years.

About the pink version. I noted in my book that due to an epidermis mutation that I had a pink version but I never send out seeds that don't represent what a variety should be, at least intentionally. Actually I used to maintain several varieties in both the red and pink versions, or vice versa, b'c epidermis muations aren't all that rare.

And if you look at the Sandhill website or catalog you'll see that Glenn also got a pink version and lists it separately, noting that I had mentioned that I'd found a pink one as well.