Heart Shaped Omar's Lebanese!

[imp]

Originally Posted by Dutch

"I THINK I see 8 tiny weeds. I feel much better now"
Thank you, Imp.
Dutch

Your tomatoes are lovely and wonderful, but my weeds beat your weeds easily!!!

Read the article on radishes you posted, very interesting thoughts and results.

[Spartanburg123]

Originally Posted by Dutch

The concentric cracking on the top of these heart shaped fruit, appear to be the same as pictured on page 179 of the book titled “100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden” written by Carolyn Male. Also as the plants have grown, the foliage on the top portion of the plants has thinned and is as described on page 178. Thank you again Carolyn!
Attachment 64781
Dutch

Dutch- good observations! I didn't observe cracking with mine, but then again, I only had two ripe fruit, which are the origin of your seeds. I agree that it mirrors the concentric cracking of Omar's Lebanese in Carolyn's book! Thanks for growing these!!!

Darin

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by Spartanburg123

Dutch- looks great! What do you estimate the sizes are? Looks around 8-10 oz?

Darin the answer to your long awaited question is 7.5 ounces. You were close.
Omar'sLebaneseHeart_i.jpg
They both split. The bigger is shown in both pictures.
Below is another picture of the bigger one cut in half.
Omar'sLebaneseHeart_j.jpg

I will be processing the seeds from both today.
Dutch

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Dutch

Darin the answer to your long awaited question is 7.5 ounces. You were close.
Attachment 64984
They both split. The bigger is shown in both pictures.
Below is another picture of the bigger one cut in half.
Attachment 64985

I will be processing the seeds from both today.
Dutch

That seems small to me.Were there any that were larger and I ask since the OL I grew was I think at least a pound and often much bigger.

Carolyn

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

That seems small to me.Were there any that were larger and I ask since the OL I grew was I think at least a pound and often much bigger.

Carolyn

Hi Carolyn,
Many of tomatoes on the plants that are still green and growing are bigger than those two. Those were just the first two that ripen. Right now there are four on the plant right next to it that are twice as big as those.
I can help the plants to produce larger fruit simply by removing some of the smaller fruit and/or excess (larger/older) foliage.
Dutch

[Dutch]

Carolyn, I am processing each tomato of this cultivar separately for seeds at this time. Seeds from each individual fruit will be labeled for which plant (1-12), which cluster (1st, 2nd etc), weight and date picked with additional notes as "only one locular cavity with mature seeds".
I am doing this because the smaller one (6.2 oz) had only one locular cavity with mature seeds. Meaning to me that there was a problem (genetically or environmentally) and it should not be used for its' seed.
Your thoughts, please.
Dutch

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Dutch

Carolyn, I am processing each tomato of this cultivar separately for seeds at this time. Seeds from each individual fruit will be labeled for which plant (1-12), which cluster (1st, 2nd etc), weight and date picked with additional notes as "only one locular cavity with mature seeds".
I am doing this because the smaller one (6.2 oz) had only one locular cavity with mature seeds. Meaning to me that there was a problem (genetically or environmentally) and it should not be used for its' seed.
Your thoughts, please.
Dutch

Theoretically every fruit on a plant should have the same genetic info and the original thought was that when saving seed,to never save seed from fruits from one plant,better from 2 plants,etc.,and to always save fruits of different sizes to preserve the genetic diversity within each variety.

That's the theoretical.

If it were me a small fruit with only 2 locules for OL doesn't make it ,so I would wait and save seed from ones in the one pound and up size,if possible.

Carolyn

[Dutch]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this Carolyn.
Way cool! I see it pretty much the same way.
Dutch

[Spartanburg123]

Excellent Dutch! Thanks for taking such good care of them

Can you post a few more closeups of the plants themselves?

The mother plant that I grew last year was easily 8-9 feet tall, I did not have tomatoes quite as low as yours. I think I did remove one or two suckers at the bottom very early in the growth stage, which could explain the height differences.

Thanks so much!

Darin

[Dutch]

Updated pictures of the beautiful Lebanese Hearts, Darin (Spartanburg123) discovered. I have saved seeds for Carolyn from the biggest three so far. They were over a pound and one that was close to it. There appears to be at least a half a dozen more that will be well over a pound when ripe.
Omar'sLebaneseHeart_k.jpg
Check out the one in the upper right corner in the picture below. Its' gonna be a big one. I definitely will saving the seeds from that one for Carolyn.Omar'sLebaneseHeart_L.jpg
Dutch

[Spartanburg123]

Beautiful Dutch, thanks for posting! Great tomato!!

[My Foot Smells]

interesting. so you bought a pack of seeds, one plant comes out katy-wampus, heart shaped fruit, and then boom - a new variety is established.

by growing this out one season, and the fruit maintains heart form; it is now considered a new heirloom variety?

pretty cool, and congrats spartanburg123, will be interested to hear what you name the thing. Maybe Labenese Heart (Spartanburg's Folly). Got to put your name on it somewhere for the legacy.

[Fritz77]

Kudos on your good looking tomatoes and mostly on your astonishing weedless gardens
I grew OL for the first time in an attempt to get a giant tomato. I didn't accomplish my goal (the biggest one weighed less than 1 pound), but I liked the variety very much. As a matter of factm, I listed it as one of my top 3 under rated varieties one should try (see thread http://www.tomatoville.com/showthrea...ighlight=RATED), the other ones being Tigerella and Canestrino di Lucca).
I didn't get any heart shaped OL tomato, but I do have one if not amazing at least very cool (to me ) tomato that I want to share with you. Well, at least a picture of it. It's still on the truss and it hasn't ripened yet.

Others looked normal as you can see below. Only this one wanted to resemble a zebra

[Spartanburg123]

Originally Posted by My Foot Smells

interesting. so you bought a pack of seeds, one plant comes out katy-wampus, heart shaped fruit, and then boom - a new variety is established.

by growing this out one season, and the fruit maintains heart form; it is now considered a new heirloom variety?

pretty cool, and congrats spartanburg123, will be interested to hear what you name the thing. Maybe Labenese Heart (Spartanburg's Folly). Got to put your name on it somewhere for the legacy.

Thanks Foot Smells!! I'm partial to "Dotson's Lebanese Heart". It is not far away from the Omar's Lebanese parent name and my Mom (bless her soul) would be thrilled to have a family name on a tomato.

Darin

[Spartanburg123]

Originally Posted by Fritz77

Kudos on your good looking tomatoes and mostly on your astonishing weedless gardens
I grew OL for the first time in an attempt to get a giant tomato. I didn't accomplish my goal (the biggest one weighed less than 1 pound), but I liked the variety very much. As a matter of factm, I listed it as one of my top 3 under rated varieties one should try (see thread http://www.tomatoville.com/showthrea...ighlight=RATED), the other ones being Tigerella and Canestrino di Lucca).
I didn't get any heart shaped OL tomato, but I do have one if not amazing at least very cool (to me ) tomato that I want to share with you. Well, at least a picture of it. It's still on the truss and it hasn't ripened yet.

Others looked normal as you can see below. Only this one wanted to resemble a zebra

Some of my Omar's Lebanese tomatoes exhibited this striping too- but not all of them. It was certainly distinctive- but after ripening, the lines were no longer discernable. I did not observe this on the heart modification, but they did have dark green shoulders before ripening.