We are so happy to have finally found Laketa!
Laketa — a beautiful large pink paste tomato — is another stellar Gleckler’s Seed Company introduction from the 1950s.
The elongated fruits mainly range in size from 80g to 140g. Plants grows to about 3 feet tall; the leaves have a beautiful wispy look to them (described as ‘saw-toothed’ in the paragraph below). But don’t mistake the wispiness for fragility, Laketa is a hardy, disease resistant plant.
Laketa has great production mid-season through to the first frost.
It took two years of searching to find seeds for Laketa. No seed exchange sites or commercial seed vendors listed Laketa. We contacted seed savers who had offered Laketa in the past, but no luck.
Finally, we were able to acquire seedstock from the USDA genebank. And now we are happy to re-introduce this unique and valuable variety.
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Check out Laketa’s picture and description from the 1957 Gleckler’s seed catalogue (see image). We have put the text below as well:
“The most unusual paste tomato discovered to date. Fruit averages somewhat larger than San Marzano, but has a distinct pointed fruit characteristic … LAKETA has the highest degree of fruit solids of any other tomato even when dead ripe has the solid feel like a lemon. Skin is a purplish pink and the almost completely solid flesh is a blood red color. Flavor is mild and extremely delicious. Vines are indeterminate, flat sprawling nature. Elongated leaves when young have long queer sawtoothed edges. Fruits of LAKETA were sent to two experimental stations for identification, neither of them and including ourselves, were able to classify this strain. However, it is apparently of the San Marzano type. LAKETA’s extremely solid fruit characteristic lends value for breeding purposes in other tomato strains, say nothing of its present use with high quality fruit.”
After reading this description, we knew we had to grow Laketa!
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How to Plant: Start seeds indoors 6 weeks before the last frost. Plant seed 5mm (¼ inch) deep. Transplant after the danger of frost has passed/later spring.
