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surya55_gw

UglyRipe Tomato- heirloom

surya55_gw
10 years ago

Hello,

This tomato must have been in Shoprite for a while but I just recently saw it and bought 2 of them. I had one and I thought it was delicious so I washed and dried the seeds. I just went online to find out more about it however I ran into some article telling the story of how the state of Florida didn't want this tomato shipped "out of state" since it wasn't pretty enough in appearance? What nerve! My question is, has anyone ever tried growing them? I'm just curious about it. Thanks so much!

Comments (13)

  • carolyn137
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Lots of folks have grown it, and here's a bit of the background on it, a short one, actually

    Ugly Ripe was the name given to it by a woman in FLwho sold fruits at several places and it was supposedly of Italian origin.

    All was well until the Procacci Bros of Philly bought her out since they had a competing variety, which I won't go into here.

    THe Procacci Bros were then growing Ugly Ripe and their own one in Fl and ran afoul of the FL TOmato Comission who said they could n't ship Ugly out of the state since it didn't conform to the guidelines they had developed.

    It went to court, at several levels, and the final verdict was that the Procacci Bros won and it's been shipped out of state for many years now, to many parts of the country.

    Yes, I've tasted it and could name several others that I like better, actually many others I like much better, but I'm not going to do it. (smile)

    Carolyn

  • surya55_gw
    Original Author
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Thanks so much Caroline! I've noticed that you have meticulous notes on stuff you've grown before (on other posts). I don't see others here mentioning it much so I'll probably just stick to my "better boy" which I know will produce reliably for me.

  • carolyn137
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Nope, I have no notes, it's all up here, said Carolyn tapping her head and since I'll be 75 in June I'm not sure how long those brain notes will last.. LOL

    But I have been obsessed with tomatoes for a very long time, ever since growing up on the family farm, and starting reading/posting at message sites in 1982, have been the lead Moderator at a couple of sites, and am now as well, and have grown almost 4,000 varieties to date.

    Except since 2004 when I fell and got put into this walker, so for the few I still grow here at home someone else does all that as well as caring for my perennals gardens, etc. And have made large seed offers for many years but now I have four wonderful folks who do the seed production for me.

    Myj ob is to find the seeds for varieties that will be new to all or most, which has meant developing friendships with many folks in Europe, and actually everwhere.

    New ones for this year from the Republic of Georgia, Iraq, Romania, Italy, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and more, and I often get sent seeds for new ones in the SASE's that folks send me for my seed offer elsewhere.

    Time to go pack seeds now.LOL

    And yes, Better Boy F1 and Big Boy F1 are two of the earliest hybrids offered and each one shares one parent in common, and that's an heirloom from the midwest called Teddy Jones. Reliable ones that you might consider are the Harris bred Supersonic F1, Jet Star F1 and Moreton hybrid , as it's called, also some of the earliest ones bred and also great tasting with high production. I like Supersonic best although I seldom grow any hybrids these days.

    That's my story and I'm sticking to it. LOL

    Carolyn

  • anoriginal
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Have Produce Junction store in my area. Very NO-frills places, GREAT fruit/veggies, and GREAT prices. Bought something called KUMATOS?? Smallish, "brown" tomatoes in old-fashioned cardboard "boats"... $2/lb. I hardly ever buy supermarket tomatoes. COnsider "season" to be late-July till end of September for anything that actually has some flavor... from road-side stands. Company in Canada, grown in Mexico and ALSOLUTEY taste like REAL tomatoes! If ya ever see them, buy them! I'll be looking for UGLY tomatoes!

  • surya55_gw
    Original Author
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Caroline- Absolutely amazing! I thank you again for sharing your knowledge with us here and elsewhere. And finding new varieties! How awesome! Thanks for the hybrid information and hope your health improves.

    KL- the uglies are at Shoprite!

  • seysonn
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I don't know anything about this particular tomato, other than what I read here, BUT if you liked how it tastes, I would say go ahead and plant it. The reason being, that if a tomato was not productive/prolific enough it would not have been grown commercially. Commercial growers aim at the high producers.
    So if you liked how it tastes, it is productive AND you are so interested about it, have the seeds, why not grow it ? What you've got to loose ? There are a lot of perfectly round shiny tomatoes around but there aren't very many UGLY ones: lol. JMO.

  • surya55_gw
    Original Author
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Seysonn- thank you for making that point; it didn't occur to me. Maybe I'll just grow one of each: UglyRipe and Better Boy. I haven't decided what to do yet.

  • Ginny Landers
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    My husband bought some today aon the recommendations of a neighbor and we loved the taste. Havent had a store bought tomato that tasty ever.

    Definitely going to save some seeds and grow one and see what happens.

    Ginny

  • PupillaCharites
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I just had my first "UglyRipe™ tomato and can say that it is definitely not a delicious selection. So I looked high and low for information on it this morning including this surprisingly recent thread right here! I felt cheated so I'm going to give my story and stick to it until experts like Carolyn or Dave who are so helpful correct any misconceptions.

    UglyRipe™ is a trade mark. It is not a cultivar in the sense most cultivars get named. So I suspect the actual cultivars/genetics sold under the trade name can vary.

    A New York Times article at the time of the suit discussed above mentions that the UglyRipe™ subject of the suit:

    "They were developed from a French heirloom called Maramondo that was cross-bred with non-heirlooms to make it more disease resistant and to strengthen the stem."

    Other sources simply call it a European heirloom and the original marketer said it was crossed “only twice”. Earlier in the thread it was suggested as Italian. I can't Google up anywhere the heirloom "Maramondo". Maybe it exists and is hiding from the Internet and commerce, but I doubt it.

    Putting it all together, it is not clear to me is whether the UglyRipe™ tomatoes being sold are open pollinated, hybrids, or for that matter if any heirloom's accidentally fall into the box, especially in affluent markets. There is no cultivar specification for the UglyRipe™ brand I can find. I looked up its original dead trademark and its new live one. The change was simply to make UglyRipe™ registered as UglyRipe Tomato™ by the “new owners” who were in bed doing business with the “old owners” for 50 years. Probably they are all old buddies from the Bronx and New York Produce Markets.

    The Italian component I see is that a bunch of produce strong arm tomato used the Florida Tomato Commission to their benefit, got angry the Commission was becoming more fair to all growers (after all one was a founding member of the FTC) and didn't want to throw away their seconds and came up with the UglyRipe™ gimmick, and framed the problem as David vs. Goliath, even though they were the original Goliath they could no longer, let’s say, ‘control’.

    The gem they had was to get a good tasting tomato so their company could sell their seconds. So they did a marketing switch from "seconds" to a branding of UglyRipe™, and secured an exemption so their company could ship the 30% of tomatoes that were irregularly shaped and consider to be at higher risk for damage in shipping, plus the aesthetic presentation issue "Ugly is Just Skin Deep" taste it! So now their competitors were forced to conform to not ship seconds but all they had to do was put the UglyRipe™ label and they could ship theirs.

    The twist was,. that the marketing campaign worked out better than their initial dreams and business shenanigans to put their competitors out of business. To the public they sold an heirloom-type tomato which had improved shipping and disease resistance as part of the marketing strategy.

    If the heirloom parent story is not misleading purposely and some OP cultivar, “Maramondo”, or otherwise, exists as an heirloom and was originally "crossed", whether saving seeds from store bought UglyRipe™ to replant will have the same traits or a distribution of traits including the selective breeding that was done to develop this irregularly shaped beefsteak non-heirloom tomato will hold, only those who grow it out can tell ��" including flavor, since shape is no guarantee of taste when making “two crosses”. UglyRipe™ well could be a hybrid for all we know as “heirloom-like”, in an industry that will seize consumer perceptions of “heirloom” tells you right there that even these tough Produce men didn’t feel right calling it an heirloom, but that distinction is lost on consumers who for the most part are clueless on selective breeding practices.

    Agree with the above poster 100% if it gives you like it great. Not interested in debating what an 'heirloom' is, but heirloom-type is a marketing term developed to strong-arm a market and the effects of this are I must go Whole Foods to find what seem to be heirlooms and just repeat to myself - it is an heirloom because they say so. If I go to Publix, I only find UglyRipe™, when previously Publix used to stock "real" heirlooms occasionally, the UglyRipe™ has had the effect to exclude them, and the cardboard tasting tomatoes are a popular as ever.

    Though Taste is King, another little gem to keep in mind in the David vs. Goliath story ... the guy who registered the UglyRipe™ was also the guy who pioneered the use of picking tomatoes green in Florida to ship and gassing them and was a founder of the FTC itself to exclude competitors.

    America! This is my assessment which is based on the interpretation of information on the Internet and I believe it is generally on target though there may be some errors since I wasn’t a fly on the wall of the boardrooms where the marketing plan was hatched. $5 a pound for such a crappy tomato. I should have returned it LOL, since it was probably Publix’s (the #1 produce supermarket in FL) fault, I bet they stuck them in a cooler.

  • hilnaric
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    >I just had my first "UglyRipe™ tomato and can say that it is definitely not a delicious selection

    I only tried one once, but I would have to agree 100% with this. Gah.

  • farmerdill
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    The "French heirloom" is Marmande. Been lots of efforts to advantage of the term "heirloom" in marketing and that was a major one. The company bought (contracted) a large amount of seeds for a version called Super Marmande. When the commission put the skids to the project. Super Marmande ended up in the 10 cent pkts from American seeds and other cheap seed vendors for a few years. The cheap seed vendors racks have disappeared the last few years. There have been several other efforts to breed commercial tomatoes that could be used to take advantage of "heirloom". Trialed one this year a hybrid Grandma's Pick. It is ugli any way you look at it.

  • carolyn137
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Thanks Dill and yes the variety was Marmande, the one that the Proccaci Bros used to TMark the one they developed.

    Through all of this mess and litigation I decided I couldn/t trust anything that the Procacci's notedat their website.

    The way they took over the UGly Ripe from the woman in FL was awful and same for them when there was a huge mess and litigation when they thought they had put Andrew Chu in FL, who had introduced the first grape tomato that most folks knew, that being Santa F1, out of business.

    But Andrew had other sources for that hybrid and continued to market fruits. What I don't understand is why, in the final settlement it said that Santa F1 seeds couldn't be sold in the US for X number of years, that time passed and still no seeds of it. The last place to offer those seeds was TGS and when I asked Linda about it she said she had heard nothing.

    I'm not all choked up about that b'c I think most folks know they can buy Santa Sweets TM, brought to you by the Procacci's, they are hybrid fruits, save seeds and 99% of the plants will give the same as the original, the offtype being not the right shape and having a lower Brix concentration.

    B/c I love the Procacci's so much I spread that info around at every site I stop by,after Andrew told me that and there are now folks as far out as the F9 or so, and all is well

    Carolyn

  • PupillaCharites
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Farmer Dill, thanks for that cat's meow of Grandma's Pick hybrid in the post and for clarifying the marketing scam that promulgated deceptive information about the cultivar, as I cannot believe it is a coincidence that so much misinformation is floating around for this specific UglyRipe™ base model tomato.

    As for the other grape tomato, Thompson & Morgan have new for this year an improved cultivar based on Santa F1 if anyone wants to pay three pounds plus UK shipping for 6 seeds. They call it Santonio F1Their US website apparently could process the purchase (unconfirmed).

    Carolyn or anyone have similar growing feedback for any version of the UglyRipe™ branded tomatoes?

    This post was edited by PupillaCharites on Mon, Aug 4, 14 at 23:09

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