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DUBIOUS HERITAGE FOR TINY TOM SEED

By Richard Wright - Friday, May 16, 2008
GARDENING
I WAS so pleased when poor little Tiny Tom popped up his fragile head.
I thought he would have been crippled by age and was delighted that one wizened seed from a packet that should have been sown by the year 2000 had germinated.
But dreams of being the new Henry Doubleday by playing my part in preserving valuable, rare plant genes were quickly shattered.
I had bought the out-of-date seed from a source that knocks them out cheap.
I’ve purchased all manner of things that I wouldn’t normally do because of the price. Largely, I have been disappointed.
On this occasion I was promised that the Green Sausage tomato was “heritage” seed.
I thought of Victorian plant hunters digging out Green Sausage from a Peruvian slope.
But, it turns out, there is less heritage to Green Sausage than Paddington Bear. He did hail from Peru and at least he is 51 years old.
Green Sausage has about as much heritage as an eighties mullet, because that’s where it comes from, not the 1880s, the 1980s.
Despite that, because one brave seed germinated I will still include it in my tomato taste off, even though the heritage variety dates from 1983 and, worse still, comes from America and not the southern bit either.
It was expertly pricked out by my 13-year-old, Roseanna, holding the leaves and not the stem, following the rule laid down by my cousin, Linda, who is trained in these things. As Linda sagely pointed out a good few years ago, seedlings have a couple of leaves that can take a bit of damage but only one stem which is life’s only umbilical.
From green fingers back to Green Sausage.
They certainly look unusual, truly unique in fact.
They have beautiful, elongated 4ins fruits that are green with yellow stripes that will look great in a salad, so the packet tells me.
The flavour is promised to be rich and sweet and the fruit produced on short, bushy plants that need only a small stake, and produce toms in great abundance three months from transplant.
Four years ago, Green Sausage was THE big thing in the American tomato world, my research tells me, and was, indeed thought to be a European heirloom variety by many.
It was, however, developed by Tom Wagner in the States, named by him Green Sleeves and during a demonstration of his breeding work in Holland, deemed by delegates to be the top tom.
It later found its way onto the market as Green Sausage and from there to me, via a bargain bin.

TAKE A GARDEN STROLL INSTEAD
IF you don’t fancy actually Walking the Wight on Sunday, Badminton, at Clatterford Shute, in Carisbrooke, opens its garden gate under the National Gardens Scheme.
The one acre south and west facing garden has great views and is planted with many different shrubs, trees and perennials.
There is a natural stream and pond being developed alongside the kitchen garden.
The garden is open from 2pm tp 5pm and admission is £3 with children free.