Heirloom Tomatoes

This is a copy of an article I had published in Countryside magazine.

Heirloom Tomatoes – They Grow Great in Green Bay

Personally, I’ve seen a lot more variation on performance of heirloom varieties than Rebecca.  I’ve been growing heirlooms for the last six years, and they generally produce as well or better than the hybrid varieties I’ve tried.  I admit, though, that I grow them as much for the entertainment value as the production qualities.  It’s always a pleasure to wander around the tomato patch, savoring the rich array of shapes, colors, aromas, textures and tastes.

We too, had heavy clay soil.  (We just sold our home and are in the process of building our new homestead in the country.  Our new soil is a lovely sandy loam, and I can hardly wait until next gardening season.)  Although things did grow in it, they were definitely more prone to disease and did not produce as well.  Production improved significantly when we put in raised beds and also when we rotated the tomatoes into less heavy soil.  (Our lot had one area with a large amount of imported topsoil that had lower clay content.)  In addition, we added organic matter every season, which was slowly improving the overall soil quality.  I did some companion planting, and avoided planting tomato family plants in the same area two years in a row.  Most of the garden was run with soaker hoses under straw mulch after the soil had warmed but before the plants got too large to work around.  This was very important for us because we normally have a dry period in late July/early August that can really set plants back.  Once everything is in place the weeding is minimal and the harvest progresses nicely through the season.

Now - on to the tomatoes themselves.  I have tried the heirlooms Caspian Pink, Pineapple, Mr. Stripey, Matina, Garden Peach, Red and Yellow Pear, Opalka and Amish Paste, and Roma, as well as the hybrids Better Boy, Early Girl, Sungold Cherry and Sweet 100 cherry.  We are zone 5, so I usually start my seeds indoors sometime in March, harden them off in mid-May and plant in late May, depending on the year.  I didn’t have space for a greenhouse or hotbed, so over-wintering anything was out of the question.  The Caspian Pink, Pineapple and Mr. Stripey are slicers, and generally would produce a few large fruits that were prone to cracking and splitting, especially if water levels were irregular. The taste was very good, and both Pineapple and Mr. Stripey make a beautiful variegated red/yellow/orange slice.  Better Boy is also a slicer, and while it produced more uniform fruits that were less prone to splitting, they were generally not as large as the heirlooms.

Early Girl and Matina are my “first tomato” varieties.  Both produced large numbers of golf ball sized to slightly larger fruits early on and throughout the growing season.  Planted side by side, the Matina ripened a few days earlier than the Early Girl.  Both resist splitting and are a handy size to slice up for a sandwich or salad.

I’ve enjoyed Yellow Pear tomatoes since I was a little girl.  I still like biting off the tops and squeezing the juice into my mouth.  They are mellow in flavor and produce prolifically.  My only complaint is that they are very prone to splitting after a heavy rain.  Red Pears are a little more flavorful and don’t produce quite as heavily.  They also tend to split after a heavy rain, although not as much as the Yellows.  Sungold is a marvelously sweet little yellow that tastes almost like candy if the weather is warm.  It, too, is prone to splitting after a rain.  Sweet 100 produced well, but to my taste most red cherry tomatoes are interchangeable and I have yet to find a favorite.  I did raise a pink cherry tomato from a pack of mixed cherry tomato seeds that I purchased from Park Seeds some years that was wonderfully sweet and did not split after a rain.  I tried calling Parks to see if it could be ordered separately (they said no).  I asked for a name and they wouldn’t provide one and it was a hybrid so I couldn’t save the seeds.  I’d really like to track down that variety again.

As for paste tomatoes, Amish Paste is hard to beat.  It has regularly produced large clusters of meaty fruit that is excellent for juice and sauce.  Opalka didn’t produce well in the clay soil, but when I tried it in better soil the following year it out-produced the Amish Paste.  The tomatoes were huge, as long as my hand, and the plant was covered with them.  My Roma tomatoes didn’t produce very well.  They set a modest amount of fruit, most of which never ripened, so I stopped growing them after two seasons.  I’m not a big fan of determinate vines.  I always feel like I’ve been jipped when the plants stop growing and everything else in the garden still is.  Give me free-range indeterminate tomatoes any day!

My absolute favorite heirloom find is the Garden Peach.  These fuzzy (yes, fuzzy) little balls look awful and taste wonderful.  I’ve only grown the red variety, but my mother has grown both the red and the yellow.  They are rather strange looking (my stepfather actually threw one out because he thought it had gone bad before he realized it was a different variety), somewhat pale and thin skinned with a light fuzz covering much like a real peach.  The taste is deliciously sweet, not very acidic, and while the skin in thin it is not prone to splitting.  These will definitely stay on my “must plant” list. 

Early on I had some problems with blossom end rot, but a couple of tablets of calcium-based antacid or well-balanced tomato fertilizer in the hole at planting time takes care of that problem.  I stake and tie my tomatoes but don’t normally pinch them back much, so by the end of the season the tomato patch has a bit of a jungle look.  I don’t care for tomato cages much because I find it hard to reach the tomatoes, but maybe I’ll experiment with them and with pinching back and training more at the new place.  Some years I’ve had blight problems, where the lower foliage on the plants wilts and eventually dies and sometimes (if it’s severe) the fruit will get black spots.  It really depends on the weather, and all the varieties seem affected by it.  I don’t have too many pest problems other than an occasional family of mice moving in and dining on the ripe tomatoes.  There are few things more frustrating than keeping an eye on a beautiful tomato waiting for it to ripen, only to pick it and find that the underside has been chewed up, or finding a lovely cluster of tomatoes with a bite or two taken out of each one. A pack of Decon in a coffee can placed nearby usually takes care of that problem if they get too greedy.  The birds and companion plants seem to deal with the rest.

I truly enjoy working with heirloom tomatoes, and have always had more than enough tomatoes for our family’s use with around 16-18 plants.  I make sauce, dry and freeze them, as well as using them for fresh eating.  Most years I end up giving large amounts away to friends and neighbors.  I look forward to trying out more varieties and saving more seeds for many years to come.