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It
all started one summers day. I was looking for a new
tomato variety to grow for next spring. The nursery
I work for is always on the lookout for something that
home gardeners would enjoy growing. I gave a mate of
mine Jan a call. He has his own seed business and just
happened to have a trial growing of some 30 different
tomato varieties. "Its just a few short hours drive
from here" he said. So a couple of days later I
went round to Jan's house and off we went.
When
you leave the big smoke and head for the countryside,
you see miles of nothing. It gets you talking, and pretty
soon we were in deep conversation about the virtues
of a good tomato. "It's gotta be easy to grow,"
I said. "and most important of all its gotta have
good flavour."
Well,
we soon got to this big tomato farm, and I MEAN BIG
! They grow over half a million tomato plants. The trial
alone was nearly 2000 plants. They sure knew their tomatoes.
They were always looking for a better variety than the
one they were currently growing.
There
was one thumping big fruiting variety that Jan had put
in the trial. It had mottly looking deformed like pieces
of fruit. Hideous ! Jan said, "We nicknamed that
one Mr Ugly. Nobody wants to grow him cause he's not
good looking enough for the market". Then along
came a worker who was of Italian descent. He went up
and picked a Mr Ugly. I asked him what he picked that
one for. He said it was for his lunch, and that the
"Ugly one" had the best flavour.
Well,
as far as I was concerned, I'd just found our new variety.
He was a strong plant, a big ugly fruiter, but out of
thousands of plants in the field, an Italian bloke picked
this one because it tasted the best. - Mr Ugly was born
!
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