Working with some tomatoes

Definitions of “heirloom tomatoes” vary, but generally they’re plants that have reproduced true to form for at least 40 years.

If I could have only one item in the garden that’s what I’d pick—the hard part would be deciding which variety.  The Brandywine is hard to beat for BLTs.  

My choice is Rutgers for juice, Roma for sauce and the beefsteak is great for “Holy cow, is that a tomato or a beach ball?”  

Little yellow tomatoes were, according to historical accounts and the inside cover of numerous seed catalogs, grown by Native Americans in Peru several hundred years before the time of Christ.  

Spanish explorers and Christopher Columbus are credited with spreading them to Europe and North America.  

Mutations occurred, resulting in different sizes, shapes and colors.  

People had their favorites, saving seeds from the best, treasuring and handing them down for generations.  

While high-yielding hybrids now far-surpass the heirlooms in popularity, a lot of gardeners believe they don’t match the old-timers for flavor.  

The two dozen we’re growing this year, which include a couple of yellows, another that remains green when ripe, one that matures to a chocolate brown, plus some Brandywine, beefsteak and a few Romas, were started by our neighborhood seed-saver, Gary Goodemote.       

For years Gary has been selecting and saving seeds the way our ancestors did. He, however, has the advantage of electric lights and Miracle-Grow.  

I don’t know how many he raises, but if it was pot he’d either be wealthy or incarcerated.  

He showed up this spring, as he has for many, with the back end of the odd little white vehicle he drives full of plants—sturdy plants with big, lush foliage that filled our patio with the distinct tomato-vine aroma.

An advantage of many hybrids is that they mature earlier than most of the heirlooms.  

Ours were just beginning to ripen when the hailstorm hit last August.  

While losing the roof was unpleasant, my friends at Pioneer Mutual saw that it was replaced before winter.  

They could not, however, help me with the tomatoes.  

No thick slabs of Brandywine for the grilled burgers, no BLTs, no fresh salsa and, equally tragic, we faced a winter of deprivation.  

Without home-canned sauce, or juice, or canned whole tomatoes, I could related with George and Lizzie Madden when their wheat crop failed and they endured the harsh winter of 1857-58 without a good loaf of bread.  

We survived with store-bought substitutes, but it was an ordeal.

As of this writing the heirlooms are filling their cages, five feet tall and reaching, loaded with fruit just beginning to blush.  

There hasn’t been nearly enough rain, but for these guys we’ve carried water.  

There’s no chance of getting hailed out two years in a row.  Is there?                 

Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.