What I Now Know About Heirloom Tomatoes

Sunsugar: “incomparably wonderful” and taste test winner

On Saturday I went to a conference called “Life in the Avon Hills” at Saint John’s University, the campus where I work. It’s about 5 miles from my house and I was feeling the community at this event. Between the university, the monastery, the farmer’s market and the co-op, I know a lot of folks around here! And it’s heartening to see all the people interested in sustainable living.

Most days, the last thing I want to do is go to a series of lectures. This was true on Saturday as well, so I decided to attend just three. I ended up just going to two, though I probably should have gone to the beekeeping workshop and the one on making a bluebird trail. There’s always next year, and right now my focus is on gardening. (I happen to know the bluebird trail person and so can get a personal consultation if I want one!)

The first talk I attended was on heirloom tomatoes. I discovered some people I know are really serious tomato growers. And we all have the same problem: blight. The guy leading the workshop is an ob/gyn who has become completely obsessed with tomatoes. It’s taken over his family life (at lunch I heard he has 9 children, though this might be an exaggeration). He now has greenhouses, hoop houses, and sells seeds and seedlings. He grows 25-30 new types each year to test against his favorites. He offers 64 types on his order form, as well as tomatillos, 36 types of peppers, eggplants and basil. He also has a tomato tasting dinner party at the end of August at his house, with 50 varieties of tomatoes to taste, pizza from their brick oven, crepes and apple juice pressed from their orchard.

If you order seedlings, you pick them up on an afternoon in mid-May between 11-2 at the medical center.

Red Velvet Tomato

I didn’t think this presentation would have much of an effect on me, but it’s actually completely changed the tomatoes I’m going to grow. I learned that blight is caused by humidity and there’s not much you can do about it, especially in July in Minnesota, and I heard how widespread a problem it is for my more experienced gardening neighbors.

I also learned I should be proud and delighted to have gotten two Cherokee Purple tomatoes off the plant I grew last summer, as they are not high yield plants and were very stressed by last summer’s weather. All the taste tests he reported on, and many of the varieties he showed as winners in terms of taste and blight resistance and beauty, were cherry tomatoes. For larger tomatoes, he recommended Boxcar Willie or Cosmonaut Volkov tomatoes. Russians and Poles have a lot to offer in the way of heirloom tomato varieties.

Black Cherry Tomato

I am going to grow only cherry tomatoes and canning (paste) tomatoes this year. I can grow yellow, red, purple and orange heirloom cherry type tomatoes and expect them to be productive a long time and relatively blight free. Every year so far my cherry tomatoes have been first and last to produce and not suffered from blight while my other plants died a painful-looking death. They are also the only tomato plants I’ve successfully grown from seed.

I also learned about a new paste tomato I can’t wait to try called a Polish Linguisa. They are heavy yielders, grow big tomatoes (up to 8 oz), but are a little later in the season. I’ll throw in a few San Marzano plants as well.

With any luck, I’ll have gorgeous, colorful tomato salads all summer and into the fall, make lots of great salsa and save viable seeds from each kind so I can grow all my own tomato plants next year.

And May 18, I’ll definitely be in the surgical center parking lot picking up my plants, and August 28 I hope to be tasting tomatoes at the party. I’ll take my camera so I can share the event with you, of course!

While there, I also heard some great stories. I adapted one and posted it on cowbird.com: Click here for “Wolves.”