This Shouldn't Be

Brandywine, an heirloom, should be plagued with diseases and pests, right? And my Celebrity and Beefsteaks should have a few resistances bred in, right? Bah.

Here's my star Brandywine. Link to how it looked as a baby. This is all one plant. It bears, at the moment, 25 tomatoes, and there are many more blooms ready to form fruit. In comparison, my Celebrity, at next best, currently bears 12 fruit, and two of those are damaged by insects, whereas every Brandywine fruit is large, perfectly formed and unblemished by either disease or insects. Go figure.

Brandywine is the first of my reds (I have a couple yellows) to begin ripening. It's not obvious in this picture, but one familiar with the hues of ripening tomatoes can already recognize this as a Brandywine and not an ordinary red.

Oops, at the cleome in the bed next to my Brandywine, a wasp adds excitement to my photography session with the tomatoes.Here's my pathetic Celebrity, which slumps during the brighter part of the day. Bah.