Okay so my Celebrity tomatoes have gone mad. Or something like that. I'm in North Central Texas and we went from upper 70's-low 80's to upper 90's to 100 in a week. This was a month or so ago. My Celebs were happy and had set the first little fruits.

I've grown Celebrity for a few years and it has usually had the first ripe ones by now. But this year we had some wacky winter weather and I got them into their huge pots and cages rather late. My past ripe ones were usually tennis ball sized (2.5" diameter) and weighed in at about 10-12 ounces. No complaints, a nice size for slicing up or for pico de gallo. This year, those first fruits are still green, but they're huge-- over 3", and easily a pound or more each just by eyeball and guesstimating. They're easily the biggest Celebs I've ever grown. I have 2 that size, but it could have been 4 if the bluejays hadn't taken a taste of the hard green things about 2 weeks ago (argh). Meanwhile, it got hot and I thought that I would have a bunch of "old maid" flowers due to heat affecting the pollen. Indeed, for a long time I saw nothing but empty-looking calyxes with dead flower parts hanging inside.

It was like that for a few weeks. I was also getting new blooms, and manually assisting pollination even though I thought I was wasting time with sterile pollen. Meh, what could it hurt? Plus, it got me out and up close to my plants where I could check for "issues" (so long, whiteflies!).

Over the past few days, I've noticed a whole SLEW of newly-emerging Celebs! Many are just new bead sized specks, but there are a great number of "bigger" ones, quickly growing. Some are almost half-dollar sized, after being green pearls just a few days ago. The calyxes weren't empty after all, I guess.

Now the questions remain: 1. The big Celebs have been big for weeks, though admittedly they are still growing slowly. 2. Are they likely to get bigger still? Are these truly "big" for Celebrity, at a pound or more? 3. Are these really even Celebrity? They were marked as such-- but the vines are over 6-1/2', not the bushier form that I remember and the fruit is much larger-- more like a Beefsteak without the megablooms. The shape is perfect and totally blemish free (fingers crossed) like Celebs, but the plant is more semi-determinate in the way it's setting fruit.

Last-- Did the new fruit actually occur as the result of fertilization or is it likely to be parthenocarpic? I have actually had parthenocarpic tomatoes before-- zero seeds and the "innards" were much meatier and less gooey. The taste was okay, but not as good as normally-pollinated tomatoes. I'm sure that the big tomatoes are normal, but I wonder about the ones coming up since they clearly formed the blossom well out of the normal temperature range. Thoughts?