EVERGALADES CHERRY TOMATO! FACT OD FICTION?

I never believed in the rumor of cherries being available in our 90-93 degree heat and when my grandson and DIL purchased a little pot with so-called Evergade Cherry tomato seed in mid July I just ignored it but then it started to grow and a month or so later had flowers that I thought would never pollinate afterall we were going through one of our hottest times of the year and no one grows tomatos now? Soon I started to see little green cherries in 90 degree heat but thought it will never happen.
Man, I couldn't be more wrong in a couple more weeks they started to go pink and I tasted one and didn't think much of it. They then started to get alittle more pinkish and I tasted one again and they were sweet as sugar but very tiny. I couldn't believe it? CHERRIES ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO POLLINSTE IN HIGH FLORIDA HEAT? I live ten miles south of the everglades and go there quite often including the interior and have never seen any tomato plants but have heard stories of such from the Seminole Indians of which I just went along with it.

This message was edited Oct 5, 2011 10:20 AM

your comment about the arrow is offensive

Sorry! I was just joking. I removed it.

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=13061

The above link should tell you what you have and where it grows and all currant varieties grow well in high heat, etc., they were brought to the southern US by the Spanish missionaries and grow all over the place. This guy selling the seeds is just ripping off folks.

In the SSE Yearbook there are so called "wild" currants listed from all over the Gulf Coast into FL.

If you have true Everglades it should be red as you'll note from the link above as well as at the link to the guy selling the seeds which is within the above link at the top of my post.

Carolyn

Thanks Carolyn. I will take a picture of the plant and post it. My grandson purchased it at Lowes or Home Depot. He and his mother planted it hap-hazardly alongside the shed and forgot about it but I watched it grow like a weed and was surprised to see fruit starting to bear in August or early September which are our hottest months. Because of my health I am only allowed out of air conditioning for short times during the summer where our temps are in the 90's so the plant was definetly neglected. I've never tasted a currant so I wouldn't know the difference of taste.

I've grown those and other currant types. They have all done well here, there is a knack to picking them tho because they smash really easy.

And the knack is??? For me it's beating them from falling to the ground first. lol
These lil buddies drop when they get good and ripe which is probably how they spread prolifically.

Tplant ~ you will probably always have volunteers in that spot which I don't consider a 'bad thing'.

And a side note, they will also grow, bloom and deliver fruits in a greenhouse in cooler temps.

I pick them by letting them get good and red on one cluster and then just pick the whole cluster. They've never fallen off the vine here, but perhaps that's just the way I grow them or weather, or whatever.

Saving seeds is also easy and here's how I do that.

With my one pint deli container in front of me I just pop them one by one and let them drop into the container and let them soak a while and the seeds just float out and I let the fermentation go from there.

There are currant varieties in several different colors, some named, some not, but the Wild Everglades one is red, not pink.

Above I linked to a thread and there I mentioned Sara's Galapagos as being my favorite for taste. It has the wee fruits and the typical currant foliage but as I think I mentrioned it's probably a cross between a currant and something else found on that island. I had asked someone to bring me back S. Cheesmanii, the salt tolerant one, but I'm glad I got what I did. And I spoke with Dr. Chatelet at the Rick Center at UC Davis and he was most helpful about the Sara one b'c the Rick Center is THE center for wild species acquisitions.

Carolyn

So most likely we have currants and not cherry tomatos? Sorry for no picture but it is pouring rain here and is forecast for tomorrow also preventing me from putting down my weedcloth and planting my overgrown seedlings.

T-plant, currant fruits are about 1/4 to 1/2 inch in diameter and most regular cherry tomatoes are much larger.

Currant foliage is quite sparse and somewhat hairy as are the stems.

The so called Wild Everglades one is red, not pink, so if you think yours really is pink you could check the fruit epidermis to tell whether it is pink or red.

I can't tell from your picture the size of the fruits because I don't know how big the bowl is that containes them.

Somehow I wonder if any currant variety would be sold by any of the big box stroes, but who knows for sure. ( smile)

Carolyn, akso noting that labels are not always correct. Do you still have the label that came with the plant?

No! the seed came in one of thode peat pots and I was not aware of it until I questioned my DIL a good time after the planting when I took notice of the plant as it was planted in an out of the way place. The fruits are the size of pearls and they are pink thru & thru so they must be currants afterall. My Dil said they were labeled EVERGLADES CHERRY and they are extremely delicate to pick without splitting. The stormy weather for three days will not allow me to take a picture of the plant.
Ted

Ted, if the fruits were the size of pearls, that speaks to a currant type.

Now the pink is even more interesting to me b'c the only pink currant I know of was developed by Tim Peters when he owned Peter/s Research, now defunct.

What's the chance that I could in some way bribe you to sens me some seeds that I could share with those who raise my plants for me and do most of my seed production as well, or send me some actual fruits so I could check the epidermis to confirm the exterior color is pink and then save the seeds here at home. The whole point being that I asked a couple of folks who are tomato savvy if they knew of any pink currants and they said no, they couldnbt think of any either/ Other colors yes, but not pink.

Of course I'd pay any postage involved and we can discuss this further and please e-mail me at cmale@aol.com b'c I never look at my DG mail, just one of my many faults. ( smile)

Carolyn

The seeds would be so tiny and difficult to work with so I'll ask my DIL to buy another dried peat container from where ever she bought it.

Ted, I don't want to put you out and I don't think there's a need to have your DIL buy another plant if that's what you mean above.

I know how tiny the seeds are b'c I've grown currant types before.

Would this work?

Put 5-6 of those wee fruits in a zip lok baggie and then smash them down flat and send them that way in a regular envelope and I can set up a fermentation when they get here.

What do you think about doing that?

Carolyn

Terrific! Please send address to : tdarnows@bellsouth.net and If they are nameless would you do me the honor of naming them after her and call them Jen's Sweets? I would love the honor myself but I did not find them.She did so she deserves the credit.
Ted

Ted, I will e-mail you with my address but as for naming a variety it would be necessary to go back to that nursery first and ask them very specifically where they got the plants from and if they were already named Everglades and whether they should be red or pink, and just Everglades rather than the known red Wild Everglades.

I just did another search via Google and didn't come up with any pink Everglades one although there's someone I know who posted several years ago that he got a pink currant but can't remember his source and I doubt if he has seeds now.

If I'm wrong and there is a known source for a pink currant, so be it. LOL

But it would be necessary to ask at the Nursery First and explain that the plant was bought as Everglades, but maybe it should be Wild Everglades, since the two are interchaged at a lot of Google links, and if they say what they sold is red, then sure, you can rename it as I see it now.

It's not good to rename a variety and in this case if what they sold was really Wild Everglades tomato and it was red and what you have is pink, that's a different story as I see it b'c it could be just a mutation that changed the epidermis from yellow ( red fruit) to clear ( pink fruited), which isn't all that rare. I maintain several varieties in both the red and pink froms but only distribute seeds for the original form, but that's not talking about currant varieties, which is another species from our regular garden tomato.

Am I making sense here? If not please just ask and I'll find a maybe different way to share with anyone reading here what I'm trying to say. ( smile)

Carolyn

Carolyn --- My grandson picked the currants for me and I packed them as you suggested and put them in todays mail for you to identify. So we shall soon know!
Ted