While trying to stake up my fallen Lemon Boy tomato plant, I dropped one of the wood sticks and broke the stem on a very large, nearly ripe tomato. (As you can imagine, I was pretty mad because I have been waiting a LONG TIME to get anything ripe out there.) I cursed at myself and took the tomato inside to see if anything was salvageable about it. As it turns out, it was perfectly ripe and delicious, and not a Stupice Tomato at all (as the tag near the base had said). I had been waiting for it to turn red, but it was actually a Cherokee Purple Tomato! My son kept trying to mix up the tags on the plants when they were in containers, and I guess he succeeded in switching the tags for the Cherokee Purple Tomato I had bought at the farmer’s market from Lost Creek Farm and the Stupice Tomato that I had bought at the store. I thought the tomatoes were a little large and oddly shaped for Stupice, but it has been an odd year for tomato growing. (My Lemon Boy Tomatoes, for example, are more heart-shaped than round this year.) So today I got to enjoy my first large, ripe tomato off the vine for the 2010 season — that is, I enjoyed it until my son walked in the kitchen and busted me, thereby forcing me to share the second half of it.
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