EDIT: I’ve been corrected – they won’t be mystery tomatoes until next year, so they’re strange this year but not because of cross pollination.
My neighbor pointed out that my tomatoes were ripe, which I had somehow missed. I assumed, seeing yellow, they weren’t ready, but turns out there were a whole bunch of yellow pear tomatoes in there.
When I grew tomatoes from seed this last winter, I was super excited and grew four different types – Brad’s Atomic, Blueberry, a grape tomato, and a yellow pear tomato.
Which is great, because the more tomatoes the merrier, right?
Well, it didn’t occur to me that, hey, these are heirloom tomatoes and they’ll cross pollinate.
*facepalm*
So I have a variety of mystery types.
I went out yesterday and picked most of the ripe ones:
The yellow pear came out all right, but all the grape tomatoes were cherry instead, (I don’t like cherry), and the blueberry tomatoes came out half purple, half red. Brad’s Atomic didn’t seem to have grown more than a handful of fruit, and none of them were ready.
I snagged a bag of them and gave them to our neighbors, some more to give to my in-laws, some for my mom, and I STILL have plenty.
They’re SO GOOD, even if things did get a little crazy in there!
How is your harvest going this year?
Your four varieties of tomatoes will be what they are supposed to be (unless they were mis-labeled or mis-packaged) this year. BUT if you save seed from any of them and plant next year, THEN you will have mystery tomatoes.
Oh, that’s good to know! I don’t know what happened then – the blueberry were supposed to be all purple, and I planted grape tomatoes, not cherry. Maybe a mix up! Thank you. 🙂