Tomato Feeds Family for a Month

 

If only the State Fair was this week, I'd have to enter this baby and claim my prize. It's HUGE. Six 1/2" wide and almost 4" tall - it was one of the few blessings of the drought though we'd settle for having rain and rotted tomatoes. Still, the once-thought poisonous fruits are abundant this year because lack of rain has made the many blights that plague them, struggle for existence - if a blight can do such a thing. I caught Franklin just before he sliced this one. He's had several BLTs from it (and I had one) and there's enough left to make a meal out of. I believe it's a German Johnson tomato - an heirloom variety from NC and Virginia that was one of the four parent lines of the Mortgage Lifter tomato. During the 1940's in West Virginia, it seems there was a guy named Radiator Charlie who, without much of any knowledge of plant breeding, decided he wanted to create a large tomato. He chose the German Johnson (pictured here), the Red Beefsteak and two unknowns. He planted nine of the plants in a circle and put the German Johnson in the center and cross-pollinated it with the others. He did this for six years, saving the best tomato each year to go in the center. When the breed was stable, he sold the seeds for $1.00 each - exorbitant even at today's prices. Thus he paid off his $6,000 mortgage and this new variety (which came from the one pictured here) was called Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter. He never had another variety on his place after that and the seeds are sold even today, though at much more reasonable prices. For the Mortgage Lifter tomato it's not uncommon to grow four-pound fruits!!! Guess you could call the German Johnson it's cousin once or twice removed.