Most of you will not have a clue what or who Teddy Jones is, but Teddy Jones interests me and is what I would rather be writing about 12 days out of the week, as I dislike cliques and I dislike tomatoe snobs.
See most of you who are old enough to remember a living Reagan, actually ate something called a tomatoe which was of a set standard in what tomatoes should taste like.
The reality is just like Hershey chocolate was botched batch of sour milk that gave a unique flavor to the masses, so the masses all thought that is what chocolate tasted like, that a tomatoe which appealed to Americans in BIGGER IS BETTER showed up for the masses in a variety called BIG BOY.
Big Boy was nothing special really in tomatoe flavors, but what this F1 Hybrid did was make tomatoes easy to grow for the majority of Americans, where previously few could grow the things outside of sultry areas.
The progenitor of Big Boy was a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant from Israel, by the name of Oved Shiffriss. He went to work for Burpee and came up with this first genetic hybrid by natural means.
It is hillarious to watch the intrigue on Big Boy, as Burpee acquired Teddy Jones and that meant it killed it as a variety to the Americans being able to grow it. George Ball of Burpee is one of the clique that owns Big Boy in the hybrid form. Ball liked sowing bullshit about this tomatoe in saying that "numbers of great tomatoes" came out of Odessa in the Ukraine, trying to state that Big Boy with it's founder was Russian.
That was a nice try, but Soviet tomatoes were black for the most part and taste absolutely nothing like Big Boy, which actually tastes unripe, slightly acidic and fresh. It is the tomatoe most people complained about in it bothering them when they ate it.
Black Krim for example from the island is a meld of musty, sweet, and mellow flavors like a Brandywine with a Rose tomatoe.
On and for those who think tomatoe does not have an E, I know better and just because Dan Quayle haters can be manipulated in the spelling, this blog does not follow Tavistock manipulations like the rest of the rats.
So logic in this points to that Siffriss would as a breeder pioneer, be working with already like gene plasm. For that, we would look for the Teddy Jones matrimonial partner and we do indeed find one.
There were two tomatoes in Marvel and Globe in 1917 which became open pollinated Marglobe by Frank Prichard of USDA.
Marglobe would become the parent stock of a host of famous tomatoes of that era including Campbell's 1934 variety called Rutgers which was a cross with JTD.
The following list of progenitors of American tomatoes are what set the trends and are the genesis of Big Boy.
| Cultivar name | List Dates |
| Ferry's Improved
Tilden's General Grant Red Pear Trophy Canada Victor Acme Essex Early Hybrid Turk's Turban Favorite Golden Queen Early Michigan Mikado Buckeye State Matchless Earliana Globe Bonny Best Avon Early Cooper's Special |
1868-1888
1868-1878 1871-1883 1872-1936 1872-1926 1874-1892 1879-1930 1881-1912 1880-1882 1883-1907 1886-1936 1889-1930 1889-1902 1895-1915 1901-1922 1904-1936 1906-1936 1916-1936 1921-1936 1926-1936 |
Varieties like Break O Day would come from the Marglobe genetics as well as Bonny Best. If one knows the variety genetic chain, one can easily see Matchless and Earliana are the original Burpee trademark lines which evolved into Table Talk of the 1943 era, to soon be replaced by the legendary Big Boy.
This intrigue on Big Boy is ridiculous as it is some talisman of the few having forbidden knowledge and lording it over the masses. That is what I dislike as that disgusts me in this feudality of those thinking they are better than others.
I know there are those who know the parents of Big Boy. Mr. Shiffriss shortly before his death invested time with Glenn Drowns of Iowa's Sand Hill Preservation Center. Mr. Drowns of course knows the secret and he offers an open pollinated version of Big Boy, which is just lovely in being quite American as all genetics should be.
Then there is that prima dona Carolyn Male who haunted websites as some sort of royalty as she gave the illusion she got her tomatoe information from the mount.
I forgot to say that Teddy Jones is not a Ukrainaian variety for my whole search to track it down started with an older SSE member who contacted me who lived on the farm next to where the folks who had Teddy jones lived, and knew them and knew the variety.
And the other parent is absolutly NOT a Ukrainian variety, you'll just have to trust me on that.
Odd people the tomatoe snobs as normal people find validation in other ways, than in putting their names on tomatoes unknown gardeners have been growing since the Spaniards raided Latin America.
For that reason, in the normal human traits of doing things, it is just logical that Oved Shiffriss got hired by Burpees who were raiding the Marglobe genetics for all their varieties, and he just happened to get a fortunate God blessed cross in Teddy Jones with this Marglobe genetics that produced a tomatoe which honestly is not that fruity, tomatoey or acidic tasting....or if one likes musty tomatoes, Big Boy does not have a hint of that in it's structure. It simply was a large tomatoe, which could grow in most conditions, except certain low mountain settings, endure abuse in gardeners not tending it, and produce not cracking tomatoes that were a red enough pretty to please so many on their first date in growing the fruit of the vine.
Big Boy was the Ford of the tomatoe world and by that arrival the masses simply got their tomatoes to make it all Republican form of rights in all could grow them.
In assessment, Big Boy is a cross of Teddy Jones x Marglobe, as that is what everyone was using in those years as their Rosetta Stone of tomatoe culture. If not, then someone can just correct the issue, but as others have hinted that in their study of this subject and a grande silence has ensused after the mention of Marglobe, perhaps the answer has been made public.
It might be Burpee is like Bill Gates in his Microsoft, in Gates is no genius, but he simply put together various parts others has worked on and never got billions for. Big Boy was the genetic work of poverty breeders really, whose work benefittd others to fortunes. It is the way things work out, and when secrets are known, the reality does not sound so much like intrigue, but just one more person stealing someone else's work and making it all sound like they were geniuses.
So much work from so many geniuses though in America and Russia, formed to combine so many wonderful varieties, and no one ever thanks those moved by God who came up with one little seed, that for a season grew and created so many varieties today.
Is the problem in though the asses always choose to act like they are royalty, when the work they claim is the work of others who were gardening to grow things to survive and that was the reward.
A little more Lame Cherry Republican form of Government in returning the power to the rugged individual in responsible rights.
nuff said
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