Prudens Purple Heirloom Tomato

It Takes Just One Tomato to Make a Meal

       
If you’re one of those people who lives by the credo "never eat anything bigger than your head," the Prudens Purple Tomato is wrong for you: the fruits of this heirloom variety weigh more than a pound! More important, they’re not just big, they're tasty too.

A single Prudens Purple tomato, my hand for scale

After a puny tomato crop one year, I decided to try different varieties; planting them in my Germination Station a month before last frost and moving them to peat pots after the true leaves had developed. I only sowed seven or eight seeds, though I did get 100% germination. The remaining seeds were sent to family members up north. I set my seedlings out in early March (in Houston), and occasionally fed them some mild organic fertilizer. Thanks to a couple of cool snaps in May (50 or 60° nights) they set fruit and were producing by June.

Details Plant Size: indeterminate, forms a large, heavy vining plant. Maturity: 75 to 90 days Description: forms a large, vining plant with wrinkled leaves similar to a potato plant. Fruits are single or double, depending from thick stems. Fruits: large to very large, flattened, somewhat bulbous fruits resembling a sultana squash. Pink to purple-red, fleshy, with very few seeds. Excellent slicer, great in salads. Growing tips: space widely and provide adequate support. The latter is for certain: ordinary tomato cages just don't cut it.

If your idea of tomatoes is the "hothouse tomato" things you buy at the grocery, you haven’t tasted nothing. Fresh tomatoes bring life to anything they touch, and a Prudens Purple is one helluva tomato.

Since it’s an heirloom, the Prudens Purple wasn't bred for insect resistance, "durability," or shelf life. Once they come in, you'll need to harvest them quickly and eat them soon. Like most tomatoes, this kind keeps ripening after it’s picked if it's in a warm room. Refrigerating the fruit will slow things down.

PLUS: Big and meaty with tasty fruit
MINUS: fruit has short shelf life; large, heavy-laden plants
WHAT THEY’RE SAYING: Prudens Purple tomatoes are what the heirloom movement is all about: they don't ship and store well, but the taste is incredible!