Tomato Festival and Trials 2016

Thursday September 15, 2016

This was our fifth year celebrating everyone’s favorite vegetable (that is actually a fruit) at our Littleton store’s annual Tomato Festival. And this year was one of our best festivals ever! We had a farmer’s market, bouncy castle, contests, bluegrass music , a dunk tank and so much more. We’d like to give a great big “Thank You” to everyone who came out and helped make this such a fun event.

The Tomato Festival is also when we release the findings of our Tomato and Pepper Trials. Each year, in our community gardens at the Littleton store, we grow every variety of pepper and tomato that we sell and tell you how they did. Here’s what we found:

Tomatoes
Earliest Producer: 4th of July and Early Girl
Most Productive: Mortgage Lifter and Hillbilly
Sweetest Yellow: Sun Sugar and Sun Gold
Sweetest Black: Black Krim and Brandywine Black
Sweetest Red: President and Brandywine
Best Producing Cherry: Sweet Millions
Largest Yellow: Golden Boy
Largest Black: Black Krim
Largest Red: Beefmaster
Earliest Heirloom: Mortgage Lifter
Largest Heirloom: Belgian Giant
Best Tasting: Sweet Millions Small Red Cherry
Most Unusual: Black Krim and Golden Cherry

Peppers
Sweetest: Belgian Sweet
Hottest: Ghost Pepper
Earliest Producer: Holy Mole
Largest Bell: White Bell
Most Productive: Jalapeno, Yellow Bell and Basket of Fire
Most Unusual: Red Cap Mushroom

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Chris Ibsen

Store Manager – Littleton

Over 30 years with O’Toole’s! A true gardening  expert! Email Chris Favorite plant: Evergreen

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