Internettomatoes.net and Dr. Barad's varieties

[GreenThumbGal_07]

I found a Web site called "Internet Tomato Trials." It was apparently about a HUGE contest, circa 1999, to grow out (and report back on) as many different varieties as possible.

http://www.internettomatoes.net
Internet Tomato Trials
P. O. Box 76823 Atlanta, Georgia USA 30358
Copyright � 1998-2000 by Bodacious Basil�

The site is still up, frozen in time like a bug in amber.

I found a few intriguing varieties listed (603 varieties trialed):
Barad's - Pomodoro Ricci
Barad's "Small Chinese Grocery Store"
Barad's "Yellow Large Tomato"

On the "Passion Tomate" Web site, Dr. Barad's name also came up: he was supposed to have been the distributor for the Visitation Valley tomato variety.
http://ventmarin.free.fr/passion_tom.../tomates_v.htm

Does anyone have further information on The Internet Tomato Trials and Dr. Barad?

Thanks in advance.

GTG

[travis]

"The SCGS's I did go to were usually not very pretty in the back." [Keith]

HA!

Last year I had a new favorite SCGS here. They had lots of great dry goods, hot sauces, canned oddities, herbs, spices, and a small offering of fresh produce from which I got some interesting hot peppers and roots to plant in the garden.

THEN ...

Last fall they began to sell fresh meat and fish. YIKES!

One Saturday afternoon about 4:30, I opened their front door and like to passed out from the stench. Being curious and too stupid to pass up the opportunity, I poked around to find out exactly what it was that could provide such a sensory overload.

I found a cardboard box of dead blue crabs on the floor with a large zip lock baggie of water that apparently used to be ice several hours prior.

Over in the "meat case," which consisted of an old open top refrigerator display that no longer operated, were several items of unidentifiable (in spite of several years in the food business and quite a lot of exposure to "ethic" meat byproducts) offerings of flesh, innards, fish, fowl, and shellfish. None of it had been on ice for at least several hours. Some of it was dry to the touch and room temperature.

Well, needless to say, that was my last visit to that SCGS. My suspicion is that they froze all the unsold "fresh" stuff because their freezer displays were full of obviously hand wrapped odds and ends with oriental lettering on hand written labels that surely didn't come from a wholesale distributor.

PV

[carolyn137]

I believe it was Catherine Vinson who started those internet tomato trials and what I heard was that somehow, and I don't remember how, she lost her records and the whole thing was becoming a mess.

One problem I know of is that she contacted certain folks and asked them to donate seeds. So for one variety she may have had several sources, both from commercial places and from saved seed.

And that's not good when one wants various folks to all assess that same variety.

This I know from Chuck Wyatt who was one of the folks she contacted.

Whether it's true or not I don't know, but Chuck also told me that in an indirect way that I was the cause of her doing what she did. He said she had read my book and said she could do much better by gathering lots of data about many more tomato varieties as grown by many folks in different parts of the country.

Well no doubt that's absolutely true, the more data the better. But Chuck strongly implied there was a submotive that wasn't so snowy white.

So take that as you will. I did not know her and she never contacted me.

Carolyn