My New Favorite Tomato: Brandywine

One of my new favorite heirloom tomatoes that I grew this year has got to be the Brandywine.  Wow, is it ever a gorgeous tomato!  I am soooo going to grow this again for years to come.  I received these Brandywine seeds from EG over at Our Engineered Garden.

Isn't this just gorgeous?  I mean, wow, what a beauty!  This clocked in at half a pound!!  I gave this tomato to mom and dad.  They were amazed at how large it was.

This one was even bigger!  It's as large as my hand.  This tomato was 3/4 a pound!  Wow!!  This one, I gave to my neighbor.  She was shocked of the size!  The Brandywines were definitely not the most prolific tomato plant, there were only like maximum of 3 fruit per plant.  But what they lacked in quantity, they definitely make up in size and taste.  Therefore, these will definitely be a keeper!  I am saving some seeds to use for next year.  Hit me up if you want some seeds.  Since I got these seeds originally from EG, I figure it's my duty to pay it forward to other gardeners who want to try this gorgeous tomato.

Not all of my tomatoes faired well in the garden.  This Cherokee Purple was half eaten by a squirrel.  I didn't see that it was really ripe on the vine, it was hiding under all these tomato leaves.  Darn it!  For some reason, only one Cherokee Purple tomato plant survived, and there are only 2 tomatoes growing on the plant.  I had a few seedlings that didn't quite make the hot summer, so with only one plant, I was really bummed to lose a precious tomato.  With this one eaten, now there is only one remaining tomato.  I really hope it doesn't get eaten by a squirrel or bird.

This Roma tomato suffered the same fate.  I rather the squirrel eat the Romas since I didn't plant any Romas this year.  All of my Roma plants were volunteers.  I didn't plant any Romas because last year they were plagued with Blossom End Rot.  This year, I incorporated crushed egg shells into the soil, and only a few of the tomatoes suffered from BER. 

Here is my harvest yesterday.  This basket easily weighed 4 pounds! This is my best harvest yet this year.  Other garden bloggers will chuckle because this is small in comparison to their harvests.

In that basket was 5  Brandywines!  Since we have such a squirrel problem, I pick the tomatoes as soon as I see a blush of color.   These I'll turn into salsa!