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| Verna Orange needs serious mulch protection against disease. |
Verna Orange is one of my very favorite tomatoes. It's also one of the first heirlooms I ever grew, back in 1989, when I ordered a bunch of stuff from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. I was horrified to find that its popularity seems to be waning because it's been dropped from the not-so-many seed catalogs that carried it. It's another super-fast and sturdy growing seedling, but in the garden it gets taken down by early blight before any other plant, it seems. She has the typical oxheart's "wispy" foliage, but it's somehow more vibrant and robust than other plants with the wispy gene...again, until blight comes on in a damp year.
Verna more than makes up for her delicate nature by producing 14- to 20- ounce oxheart fruit in a glowing mango-orange. Nearly seedless and absolutely delicious. This year I plan to keep that foliage completely dry with a thick baffle of mulch to avoid the whole blight issue.
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