Huge Tomatoes
By Vanessa Richins
As I was paging through Google News today, I learned that a 4 pound 9 ounce tomato grown by Harold Politano had recently won the Great Long Island Tomato Challenge.
My mind boggled for a minute as I tried to imagine holding such a beauty.
Jessica Damiano from Newsday.com interviewed Politano and found out how he produced his hefty prize-winning tomato. “His secret? “You have to concentrate on getting all the juice into that one big flower that comes out,” he divulged. “Everything else is sacrificed: You cut off all the other flowers and keep only one stem, cutting away all the smaller stems.”
I have heard of other vegetables grown this way for size. I know that’s how the huge 1000+ pound pumpkins are formed. I even have heard of people that carefully feed their plants with milk (through a string placed carefully into a slit in the stem)
I then wondered about the world’s largest tomato ever grown. How did Mr. Politano’s behemoth compare?
In 1986 Gordon Graham of Oklahoma grew a tomato that ended up weighing 7 pounds 12 ounces. Evidently he wasn’t even trying to grow a large tomato, as he found it among some weeds.
As a comparison, the average newborn is 7.5 pounds. The variety was called Delicious. What a massive tomato!
Have you ever tried to grow a huge tomato? What’s the biggest one you’ve ever grown?
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:23 am
I grew a Mortgage Lifter last year that was right at 5 pounds. It was amazing! I didn’t have any mammoths this year but I attribute it to getting a late start, being in a new city and not being able to start from seed.
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:42 pm
“I even have heard of people that carefully feed their plants with milk (through a string placed carefully into a slit in the stem)”
This is a MYTH and was started as a hoax and as a bit of MISINFORMATION in the competition pumpkin growing crowd.
Think about it, what good could a dairy product with fat possibly do for a plant. Please stop passing incorrect info such as this. IT is just a rumor and a joke.
Thanks
October 24th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Oh, interesting. I remember reading it in one of the Little House on the Prairie books (Farmer Boy). Guess it’s been an old wives tale for a long time!