The proudest moment for an heirloom tomato parent arrived in recent days with much pomp and circumstance: my plants had graduated to the point where it was time for the ceremonial “presentation of the hoops.”

Hoops being those wire support systems that, when inverted, look like the framework beneath all those crinoline skirts of a century ago.

I’ve learned the hard way that if you wait too long to slip them over the tender stems of your tomatoes you can damage the plants trying to squeeze them in later.

If you haven’t been following the evolution of my heirloom tomatoes, here’s a synopsis:

• I started six varieties of small-fruited heirlooms from seed: sun-sugar hybrid, black plum, Dr. Carolyn, wild cherry, Rosalita, isis candy
• All sprouted quickly and were eventually transferred to their permanent clay pots and moved outside
• Work on my building necessitated bringing them back indoors for approximately two weeks, delaying their growth a bit
• When I moved them back outside the temps had soared into the 90s, a drastic change from the cool interior temps and the mild 60s temps that reigned when they were last outdoors
• My two favorites — the sun-sugar hybrid and black plum — got fried in the heat
• So now I’m down to just four types of heirloom tomatoes — and all look healthy

Another rite of passage: the first fruit have appeared on the largest of the tomato plants. Unfortunately, I never got around to writing the names on the little copper stakes for the tomatoes, so I’ve lost track of which is which. (Actually, I couldn’t find my grease pencil.)

Ironically, since the sun-sugar and the black plum were returning favorites, I kept track of them by placing them in the same corner spots as in previous years. So, I can absolutely tell you what those two huge pots with the dead stuff in them are.

The others, however… I did put a stake leftover from last year marked “black cherry” in one of the pots, and I’m pretty sure that is the wild cherry. My intent was to edit out the one word later. (But, I never did find that grease pencil.)

If the system I was attempting to employ works out, then the unidentified plant with fruit should be either rosalita or wild cherry, because, according to the suppliers they mature the fastest.

Since (as explained above) I think I know which plant is the wild cherry, that means the fruit you see here should be rosalita. Isis candy purportedly matures  just a week behind them, while Dr. Carolyn should follow two weeks later.

So, it’ll be fun to see if this schedule holds and more fun to be surprised when the fruit go from green to their true colors: rosalita is a red grape, Dr. Carolyn is an ivory cherry, wild cherry is a deep red, and isis candy is a yellow-orange cherry with red veins.

[Do your tomatoes follow the supplier’s prediction for number of days? Share it in your comment!]