My Early Girls look like Romas.

[asdjrocky]

I have three Early Girl plants in various stages of development. The biggest, a huge bush, well over three feet tall, has many green tomatoes on it now. The problem? They are all the oblong shape of Roma tomatoes. This is my first garden, so I apologize in advance if this is a silly question, but will they plump up? The Celebrity tomatoes right next to them are plump and round.

One other thing to note, this EG is from a plant I bought at the store, the others are from seed.

[hippywife]

1. Maybe...

it was mislabeled at the store? :shrug:

[asdjrocky]

2. Yeah, kind of what I was thinking.

It's full of tomatoes, but they all look like Romas. Weird. Not too worried, I've got 6 different kinds now, and maybe 7 with the addition of the Romas.

[LiberalEsto]

3. Maybe the seeds were pollinated by Romas nt

[asdjrocky]

4. I had no idea that could happen.

Here's the best picture I have of them.

[bhikkhu]

5. Probably it can't, except under very controlled conditions

tomatoes are "self-pollenizing", which is the same as self-pollinating, but needing a bit of help. In most gardens wind causes sufficient motion to transfer pollen from stamen to pistil. It would be conceivable for an insect carrying the pollen of another variety to preempt the self-pollenizing process, but I have never seen it happen. I've grown Roma's and all sorts of varieties together for years and never had any oddball tomatoes show up.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato has some good information on the process.


The most reasonable explanation would be the plant was mislabeled.

[asdjrocky]

6. Must be the ol' plant switch-a-roo.

One of the Early Girls I started from seed just sprouted a perfectly round little greenie.

[Gormy Cuss]

7. Mislabeled would be my guess.

Those look like Roma types (actually like a blocky heirloom sauce tomato.) They're not going to change shape but depending on the variety they may be good for slicing too. Most sauce tomato varieties have a flush of tomatoes as their main production and then only a few at a time for the rest of the season. They also tend to be determinate or semi-determinate (grow upright and bushy) as opposed to most tomato types which have trailing vine structures.

I gave up on buying tomato plants at the local Target after getting mystery plants two years in a row.
Now we start tomatoes from seed (it's easy enough -- you should try it next year.)