Tomatoes.......Heirloom Tomatoes

Michele K. Koskinen

Jaune Flamme

A small 4x10 raised bed vegetable garden can handle a diverse grouping of vegetables if you want to plant them. I prefer tomatoes.... Heirloom Tomatoes. Why plant what I can buy at the store or at a vegetable market. I prefer Cherokee Purple, Green Zebra, Aunt Ruby German Green and to my dismay too many again in my small plot. Another Master Gardener has a small business and I have gotten two different varieties from her this year, Pink Brandywine and Jaune Flamme. Along with my regulars I also grew from seed Russian Purple and Black Cherry.

Yellow
 Photo by wise geek

Russian Purple

My obsession began several years ago at a farmers market when I saw Cherokee Purples. The taste was different. It was a dark, acidic, richer, fresher flavor than your normal store bought tomato.
Some of the varieties of heirlooms are less acidic and have a softer taste. Each has its own identity. Cobbling together a tomato salad of beautiful colors and a multitude of taste with basil and watermelon is a summer fantasy for those of us that love tomatoes......Heirloom Tomatoes. Watermelon tomato salad link

Black Cherry

They do not always have a high fruiting production and are more delicate and not able to ship long distances. When growing heirlooms, you should bury the plant deeply into the ground to allow the roots to develope along the stem. This makes for a stronger plant and provides for faster top growth.
Mulching is important to help keep the soil moist and at an even temperature throughout the growing season.

Some of the heirloom varieties grow to great heights, so they will need strong support systems. Keeping a record of the variety you plant and how it performs is useful in planning for next years crops. Year to year production is not always the same so planting a hybrid or two is a good idea.


More and more small family and urban farmers are growing these varieties for the public. You can often find them at local farmer's markets or roadside stands. Some supermarkets offer them but they are hard to find and often expensive. However, once you get the taste of a Cherokee Purple or a Black Cherry you will find a way to plant at least one Heirloom Tomato.

Aunt Ruby's German Green

Yellow Pear

Cherokee Purple

Why Heirloom Tomatoes are Worthy

By Eileen Kull

This year, I decided to sell my surplus of heirloom tomato plants with a little business I started called fruits d' heritage. Why only grow heirlooms you ask?

First of all, you are probably wondering what makes a plant an heirloom. Age is definetly a factor, growers and breeders describe a plant bred more than fifty years ago as an heirloom or heritage variety. Being open pollinated is another key trait, which means the variety will grow true to type from seed  and can be handed down through generations. This means you can start growing one year and save your seeds for the next and so on, making them less expensive for you (even though they are also already less expensive when you get them from seed saving organizations because they are not engineered in a laboratory which is an expensive process).

Heirlooms are also easier to grow because they use less chemical additives and less water. They behave that way because they are better adapted to local conditions (much like a native plant) and they are better able to tolerate stresses such as pest pressure, drought and other abiotic factors making them a better choice for the environment. Who knew that by planting heirlooms you were increasing the biodiversity of our ecosystem!

 Heirlooms are also awesome because they provide a continual harvest, unlike hybrids, that are genetically engineered to grow at the same pace- meaning seeds planted at the same time will be ready for harvest at the same time. This is a more ideal situation for the home gardener that would enjoy a continual harvest and an extended growing season. Heirloom vegetables are also more nutritious and taste better. The development of hybrid seeds has increased crop sizes and created larger yields, but in doing so, they have sacrificed taste. We tend to dissassociate words like genetic engineering and delicious, with good cause.

 Recent research has revealed that in many cases, hybrid vegetables are significantly less nutritious than heirlooms. Finally, heirlooms are cool because they are a piece of history. Every vegetable has a story behind it, where it originated and how it got to America. When you grow heirlooms you are preserving a piece of that history. So I urge you to go to seed saving suppliers or heirloom plant suppliers near you and get started on your own history!