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Heirloom Tomatoes
Heirlooms
(Originally Published: May/June 2005)
HEIRLOOM TOMATOES are new again. Offering complex tastes that compare to the intricate blend of flavors of fine wines, heirlooms—varieties available before 1940—come in colors, shapes and plant forms unlike the stereotypical round, red tomato.
Plant diversity used to be the rule in gardens, but in the past 60 years, consistency has replaced variation. Commercial growers started planting hybrids during World War II because firm, uniform-size tomatoes shipped well. That's when many older varieties, with their unique shapes and colors, disappeared. But today's desire for different flavors has revived interest in the antique types.
Heirloom tomatoes are easy to grow. They reproduce themselves from their own seeds. Our grandparents saved seeds from only the best plants: disease-resistant strains bearing the most and tastiest fruits.
Heirlooms do best with a balanced 10-10-10 fertilizer you can buy at garden centers. Scratch it into the soil or mix in a shovel of compost where you plant. Don't apply more than that, or you'll get a leggy vine with more foliage than fruit-producing flowers.
Keep the soil consistently moist, so the roots can absorb nutrients and minerals such as calcium to prevent black end rot. To slow evaporation, mulch plants with 3 to 4 inches of chopped hay, leaves or shredded bark in an area about as wide as the full-grown plant. When it rains hard, mulch keeps water drops from splashing back up on tomato leaves. Bare soil can transfer blight and fungal spores.
It's important to know if your tomatoes are determinate or indeterminate. Determinate tomatoes set all their fruit within a short period, usually 10 days to two weeks. That means you'll harvest all your plant's fruit in just a couple of pickings. Indeterminate tomatoes ripen throughout the growing season. Your seed packet or plant tag should tell you which kind you have.
To order seeds: Seed Savers Exchange (563/382-5990, www.seedsavers.org) has 'Brandywine', 'Green Zebra' and 'Silvery Fir Tree'; Seeds of Change (888/762-7333; www.seedsofchange.com) has 'Brandywine' and 'Silvery Fir Tree'; Tomato Growers Supply Co. (888/478-7333; www.tomatogrowers.com) carries all six.
