Tomatoes Shaped Like Bums and Other Garden Oddities

Tomato peach

Running along the theme of diversity in the garden, I’ve taken note of and photographed a few oddities this year and thought I’d share them. This first is one of the peach varieties of tomato — I don’t know which one it is specifically as the plant was a gift from a friend and was labelled as something entirely different. Only the first fruit came in shaped like a bum. The rest have been round. Here I suspect it has something to do with the radical temperature shifts we’ve experienced this season and what the weather was like when the flower was developing.

Squash Flower - Twin

Many of the first male flowers (squash plants bloom with distinctly male and female flowers) to appear on the ‘Pilar’ squash were attached twins. I’ve never had this phenomenon appear with such frequency, and again I think it may have been weather-related. It stopped about midway into the season after temperatures had picked up.

Squash Flower

This flower is over-sized, absolutely huge, I’d say. Many of the flowers from this particular variety were as big as my hand, some even larger. This was my first time growing ‘Giallo de Italia’ (an open-pollinated golden zucchini that I highly recommend by-the-way) so I can’t speak to whether this is typical or an irregularity. I have been very impressed, although I do find that the size makes them a little awkward for stuffing with cheese and frying. Instead, I’ve been stuffing these with rice pilaf and baking them in the oven.

zucchini giallo de italia

Here’s a photo of the ‘Giallo de Italia’ plant for context (I purchased seeds from Urban Harvest if you’re interested). I’ve been searching for years for a variety with gorgeous leaves such as this and will surely be growing it again and again.

Basil Mammoth

This is ‘Mammoth,’ a large lettuce-leaf basil that I’ve been growing for years because the leaves grow to be so large. There is nothing atypical about this particular leaf — all of the leaves are like this. I thought I’d throw it in because it seems so novel compared with typical basil varieties. I grow this one specifically to serve on top of a fried egg sandwich. The leaves are just the right size to provide ample coverage across a slice of bread.

Gayla Trail
Gayla is a writer, photographer, and former graphic designer with a background in the Fine Arts, cultural criticism, and ecology. She is the author, photographer, and designer of best-selling books on gardening, cooking, and preserving.

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11 thoughts on “Tomatoes Shaped Like Bums and Other Garden Oddities

    • I’m familiar with fasciation (I specifically collect plants that are fasciated) but I had not thought of the twin zucchini flowers in that way. I think that’s because in all cases they were two distinct flowers attached and fasciated flowers tend to be like a starburst of flowers within flowers multiplied upon themselves. Thanks for mentioning this — it made me think and reconsider.

  1. the only peach tomato I grew from seed this year was Wapsipinicon Peach but none of mine looked like bums … bummer HA

    I grow the Mammoth Basil now because you mentioned it a few years ago – such a great big wonderful one – love it.

  2. WHOA! i need to grow that basil! i am a big fan of egg sandwiches with pesto, but that basil would be awesome when i run out of pesto… and also in salads!

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