No one since then has been able to grow anything really big from Delicious.
I live in Boynton Beach, Fl. Where We have a long growing season here if your careful. I have been trying to go for a super large tomato for yrs. The reason im saying this is I have been growing out delicious, and big zacs with no luck on anything super large so far.
Plant em if you got em.
Sam

The tomato (Delicious) that was grown out by Gordon Graham was a fluke, and will probably never be repeated again,seeds actually saved from that particular giant tomato also never produced anything other than average sized tomatoes despite lots of people trying.

It always annoys me that people and companies selling (Delicious) tomato seeds commercially play on and use that fact to promote the sale of the variety as a world beating giant tomato-which it clearly is not.

The only way that they could have repeated the Gordon Graham fluke was to have taken cuttings from the actual plant at the time and propagate it as a clone. where all the plants resulting would have been clones of the original plant-and they might have eventually have fixed the fluke gene in time, but they did not do that and it was lost forever.

Lubadub- where did you get the info from that Phil Hunt used seeds that were out of packet of (Delicious seeds) originally from Tim Brandt, because all the details that I have read about Phil Hunt's tomato from the time he won with it to present day, reads that he grew it from seeds of (Big Zac) taken from a special re=selected strain of it that he aquired from a friend of his ?????

Lubadub- where did you get the info from that Phil Hunt used seeds that were out of packet of (Delicious seeds) originally from Tim Brandt, because all the details that I have read about Phil Hunt's tomato from the time he won with it to present day, reads that he grew it from seeds of (Big Zac) taken from a special re=selected strain of it that he aquired from a friend of his ?????

Sorry I accidentally double posted the same post.

I have grown several varieties larger than Delicious. I could name plenty. Perhaps there is a "Magic Delicious" seed strain out there that Graham and this Hunt grew? Maybe theirs are actually delicious tasting too because the Delicious I grew years ago were ho-hum in every regard.

look like this is an old controversy
but like it or not Delicious has always held the world record

Here is a link that might be useful: the world record tomato controversy aug 1987

I got the information from Brandt Timm and Phil Hunt.

Marv

the Delicious I grew years ago were ho-hum in every regard

I couldn't have said it any better. Meh.

Lubadub-

Hi-Marv, I didn't realize that it was you,(Got your book-read it several times over :) )

Well-that's a surprise -if you say you got the info from them- then I suppose it must be true-but what about all the other info that came from them earlier about it being a special; strain of Big Zac etc,-one of them must be fibbing.

What book?

the book is called "Giant Tomatoes"
by Marvin H. Meisner;

And very good book it is too, I read it for reference purposes most weeks :)

It appears to me that the only real way one can tell if the growers were telling big fibs about the tomato source variety, after giving statements of two different variety names as being the one,
Is to take a close look at the tomato itself as Big Zac has got distinctive qualities and shape even if the tomato was derived from a multi flowered head, whereas on the other hand the Delicious tomato is a bit different in shape with much less multi flowered blooms.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y10/lubadub/Pembroke__7325_tomato_072.jpg

Here is a picture, I hope, of the 7.33 pound tomato that was grown from Delicious seed as requested.
Marv