Dots Thots.com

« Scene in Hawaii: Hawaiian Snowflakes, Rainbow Shower Tree Haiku

Tea Plant Journal: Tea Plant Has Buds and a Flower Plus a Seed Pod »

Grow Tomatoes Review: Earl of Edgecombe Heirloom Tomato

August 7th, 2009 | Author: Dot

Salad Plate with Earl of Edgecombe Heirlom Tomato

DoT’s Thot: Home is where tomatoes grow in the garden. I do believe this is one reason I feel so happy when the tomatoes go into the ground in the backyard. This point in the year has come to be a tradition and a marker in our lives at home. Here is a tomato that found its way to us from New Zealand and frankly, I want to give this heirloom tomato a permanent spot in our backyard tomato garden.

Beautiful Golden Orange Earl of Edgecombe Tomato

Earl of Edgecombe Heirloom Tomato Description

Earl of Edgecombe heirloom tomato is an indeterminate tomato plant that hails from New Zealand. When the Sixth Earl of Edgecombe died in the 1960’s, the relative and heir to the title lived in New Zealand as a sheep farmer. He went to England to claim his title and brought this tomato to England and it became the Earl of Edgecombe tomato.

The plant is surprisingly disease free and is resistant to blossom end rot, cracking, and other diseases. It has a lot of foliage and provides good cover for the developing fruit. This is a very good trait for my Southern California garden, because some other tomato plants with fewer leaves sometimes develop “sunburned” fruit with faded white spots on them.

The fruit are slicer sized, about 3 inched in diameter and are a gorgeous orange-gold color, very uniform in appearance, without any green shoulders. The plant was listed as 73 days to maturity. The seedling planted in the ground in early March yielded the first fruit on July 5, 2009 in our garden.

I was impressed with how well the plant did and how very beautiful the fruit were. Next we need to review the taste of this smooth-skinned, lovely heirloom tomato.

DoT's Earl of Edgecombe Tomato -- Two Slices with Top

Grow Tomatoes Review of the Earl of Edgecombe Tomato

We sliced our tomatoes and first just tasted some plain. Yum. Not only was the external skin an unblemished rich orange-gold, but the internal flesh was again uniformly colored, somewhat lighter in color, but what a beautiful yellow-gold. Firm, but not crunchy, the tomato is very tasty, juicy, not watery, and leaves a nice tomatoey aftertaste.

Then we made a caprese salad out of this heirloom tomato, fresh mozarella cheese, fresh basil leaves. I picture the salad here before adding the salt and pepper, and balsamic vinegar and fine extra virgin olive oil. This was one of the finest heirloom tomato salads we have had this summer.

Earl of Edgecombe Heirloom Tomato Caprese Salad

Bottom Line: Earl of Edgecombe Heirloom Tomato One of the Best

My bottom line conclusion is that this is an excellent tomato, one of the best of the season. I will most definitely want to plant Earl of Edgecombe Heirloom Tomatoes again next year, because of the excellent balanced flavor, the meatiness, firm, yet creamy texture, beautiful deep orange medium sized fruit.

Both the skin and flesh are a gorgeouis even deep color. The tomatoes on my plant were also smooth textured and less showed very few cracks. Productivity was not as high as some, yet most satisfying. This is an exceptional tomato.

Aloha, DoT

Related Articles and References