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sandshifter

Brandywine red or otv?

sandshifter
11 years ago

This is my first year growing heirlooms. Lots of fun so far. It is neat to see what they turn into and how they taste.The whole neighborhood is liking them I purchased a flat of 6 brandywine. They were not labled as to what strain of brandywine they were. 5 of them turned out to be what I believe is brandwine black. One has a small red fruit between the size of a tennis ball and a ping pong ball. I am thinking it is either OTV or brandwine red. I am unable to find anydescription to help me figure which one. Is there any way to determine which? For what it is worth the stem does not penetrate very far into the tomato.

Comments (13)

  • ncrealestateguy
    11 years ago

    I have grown OTV for two years now... they are orange, not red. And usually larger than a tennis ball. At least mine. Not much help I know.

  • carolyn137
    11 years ago

    If I bought a flat of what was labeled Brandywine, I'd expect PL plants with large pink beefsteak shaped fruits.

    And I'm surprised that you got what you're calling Black Brandywine and something else you think is either OTV Brandywine or Red Brandywine.

    At this point, if it were me, I wouldn't trust anything you got from that flat as to a definitive identification/description. Sigh.

    I've linked below to Tania's tomato data base for OTV Brandywine and you can see that it's a large beefsteak fruited PL variety and I'm the Carolyn referred to in her description. The fruits are red with orange shoulders most of the time.

    Red Brandywine, there are no strains of it and I'll also link to it so you can cut and paste and see what it should be, which is an RL plant with medium sized oblate ( flattened) red fruits.

    http://t.tatianastomatobase.com:88/wiki/Brandywine,_Red

    When you're through at a page go to the upper left and click on Home Page and when there look at all the ways you can search for variety information. When I know the name of a variety I used the alphabetical method and you can click on that link.

    Tania has pages for over 3,000 varieties, and on each page there are usually comments from others, pictures, histories where known and if you scroll down seed sources for each variety if any are known.

    Tania herself sells seeds for many varieties and that link is at the left on the main page. HEr website is an invaluable resource and I think should be in the faves list of any tomato grower, IMO.

    Hope that helps.

    Carolyn

    Here is a link that might be useful: OTV Brandywine

  • sandshifter
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    I thank you both.I think Carolyn has said it pretty well. Can't put much faith in what that flat contains. Those 5 sure do look like all I can find about brandywine black. Who know about the red one, but it sure is a tasty little tomato. Next year I plan on starting from seed and I will try brandywine red. Thanks again.

  • cindy-6b/7a VA
    11 years ago

    People (customers and/or kids) have been know to switch plants and labels in nurseries. Sometimes accidentally, sometimes not.

    This year I purchased two plants from a nursery and both of them were not what the label stated.

    Cindy

  • jtmacc99
    11 years ago

    For next year when you start seeds, I would certainly give Brandywine OTV and Brandywine Red a try. I am not a big fan of Brandywine, which I guess is what you thought you were purchasing. The tomatoes are fantastic, but I can grow any number of other varieties that give me large, delicious pink tomatoes which also happen to be three times more prolific. (Pruden's Purple is my usual choice, but I mix it up a lot with Tidwell German, Aunt Ginny's Purple, and this year I'm trying Marianna's Peace)

    Here is a link that might be useful: My source for Brandywine Red

  • carolyn137
    11 years ago

    jtmac, Yes, now Mike at Victory Seeds has the correct one but he too was offering a PL one and ASAP removed it when he knew it was a wrong variety.

    I gave the link to Tania's page for Red Brandywine above, and as I recall she goes into the wrong RB's there and also lists places where the correct one can be found.

    I've tried so hard to convince Linda at TGS to retitle, or do something about the two wrong RB's she lists, but she said many folks do like them so she hasn't changed anything. But then went to the Landis Museum to get a correct one, but then said it was a strain, but it isn't, there are no strains of RB.

    Tom Hauch of Heirloom Seeds in PA was the first to get RB out of the SSE Yearbook and he sent seeds to Steve Miller at Landis and Tom still considers his RB to be his signature variety.

    Several years ago he sent me his seeds for RB and I used them plus the RB seeds I had gotten from an SSE freend many years ago and the plants and fruits were identical.

    Carolyn

  • cole_robbie
    11 years ago

    I second what Cindy said about labels getting switched. Customers' kids just love to pull them out! And of course they rarely get put back in the same spot. The newest labeling products for greenhouse plants snap into the side of the container and lock against it. I think they had children in mind when they made that design.

  • digdirt2
    11 years ago

    Another vote for mis-labeled plants. There is no way to know for sure what you have or don't have so don't plan to save to trade seeds. It would only contribute to the already contaminated gene pool.

    Given that real Black Brandywine is rare and seldom, if ever, grown by plant suppliers, the odds are 50:1 that you have one of the many much more common blacks.

    Dave

  • carolyn137
    11 years ago

    But if one buys a flat, and to me that usually means a 6-pak, that is labelled Brandywine, that's what I'd expect to get for all 6 plants.

    No problems with labelling in that instance, b/c all you need for a 6-pak of like varieties is one label, but for sure tag labels are switched, and not just by children. LOL

    When I use to raise my plants at Charlie's Greenhouses he had three young kids at the time, and Charlie was a commercial grower and not that interested in OP, heirloom or not varieties at that time, and with a grin on his face was always telling me he was going to get kids to switch labels on me, but he was joking and the kids never did.

    When I'd use 4 pak plastic inserts in a standard nursery tray, 8 to the tray, I would often have 8 of the same variety in one row with just one label in the front one to ID all 8 in a row.

    Carolyn

  • ncrealestateguy
    11 years ago

    In the two years I have grown OTV, I have noticed that they are one of the best for tolerting heat stress and blight. Anyone else see this in their garden. Even though Carolyn calls them a red tomato, I consider them more orange. But, then again, she is the expert.

  • carolyn137
    11 years ago

    Even though Carolyn calls them a red tomato, I consider them more orange. But, then again, she is the expert.

    ****

    Honest, it has nothing to do with my being called an expert. ( smile)

    It has to do with color perception which is personal and perceptual and after my growing the initial hybrid out for five years to stabilize it and seeing it as red, as most others do as well.

    You might want to go to Google IMAGES and enter the name to take a look at the pictures there and Tania and others who list it at their seed sites call it red and it's listed in the red section of the annual SSE YEarbook as well.

    Carolyn, who could use a few fruits of it right now b'c here it is August and it looks like she won't be able to get any mature fruits before the first killing frost. Sigh.

  • jtmacc99
    11 years ago

    "Given that real Black Brandywine is rare and seldom, if ever, grown by plant suppliers, the odds are 50:1 that you have one of the many much more common blacks."

    I was thinking the same thing, but then I realized that I don't even know of any other black with potato leaves. Are there any?

  • carolyn137
    11 years ago

    Yes, there are quite a few black varieties that are PL, whether what I call pink/blacks which have a clear epidermis or red/blacks which have a yellow epidermis.

    Here's just a few that I've grown:

    Southern Night
    Black Sea Man
    Black Pear
    Blue Fruit ( Blaufruct)
    Cherokee Purple PL ( also Spudakee)
    Indian Stripe PL
    Japanese Trifele Black
    Black from Tula called Spudatula

    ..... and many more.

    With the Spud ones the word spud means potato.

    A larger question to ask, which to me is more imposrtant is if a PL variant of an original RL is the same except for leaf form, and I posted about this in a recent post here, but I don't remember where.

    Some on that above list are not variants of an original RL and some are. That is, they've always been PL from the get go.

    Carolyn

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