Tasty tomato varieties that grow well

(The Virginian-Pilot)

By Lorraine Easton
The Virginian-Pilot

IT'S TIME TO cultivate a whole new habit.

Instead of tending the same old hybrids, plant heirloom tomatoes this spring. After the first taste, you may never look back. And after the first crop, you may never buy tomato plants again.

Heirlooms might not produce as early or as heavily as hybrids, said Martha Hufford of Virginia Beach. It's the flavor and the history that keep her growing hundreds of plants each spring for herself and for local nurseries.

Heirloom tomatoes are old varieties. They have names like Lucky Leprechaun, Banana Legs and Nebraska Wedding. Their seeds have been saved and passed down from generation to generation, although many companies now sell them.

The fruit is often oddly shaped or colored - from a blackish brick red to mottled green to nearly white. The flavor runs from tart to sweet, and some connoisseurs say there are even chocolate, chablis and cabernet undertones in some heirlooms.

The names are frequently quirky, and often come with a storyline.

Take the humble Mortgage Lifter, for example. This tomato was developed during the Depression, when a West Virginia radiator repairman, "Radiator Charlie" Byles crossed the four largest tomatoes he could find. People drove hundreds of miles to buy his plants, which bore two-pound-plus fruit. Profits allowed him to pay off his mortgage early.

All heirlooms are open-pollinated, meaning that seeds from the fruit can be planted, and the plant and fruit will have the same characteristics as the generation before it.

"Take the seeds from the hardiest heirlooms in your garden, the biggest and best, and you'll get plants tailor-made for your garden," said Marie Butler, heirloom grower and landscape coordinator at the Virginia Zoo.

Plant seeds from hybrids such as Better Boy and Early Girl, and you never know what you'll get. While some heirlooms don't have the disease resistance or tolerance that has been bred into hybrids, "the flavor of heirlooms," Hufford said, "will knock you away."

Now, culled from local experts, some tips for starting your own heirloom habit.

Buying/p>

It's like buying hybrids - don't buy plants that are wilted or have yellowing leaves. You want them bushy, not leggy or limp.

Planting

Pick a spot that is sunny for most of the day. Soil is also key, and expert tomato growers work manure or humus into their beds.

As for timing, the "old fashioned way," Hufford said, "is to plant tomatoes when the pansies start to get leggy, or after April 21, the average last frost date in the area.

Don't rush it.

"Plant too early and they will sit there and mope," Hufford said. "After all the babying and worry about late frosts, you might get to eat one a day or two earlier.

"If you want early tomatoes, plant early-ripening varieties."

The soil temperature should be above 65. That's easily determined by jamming a meat thermometer into the soil.

Area tomato experts know well this adage: more roots, more fruits. That means picking off the lower leaves and planting the stem deep. Water immediately and deeply. Then mulch.

Plant a few more in mid-summer, and you could be eating heirlooms well into November.

Feeding and watering

Tomatoes need a lot less water than many gardeners think - just deep watering once a week near the base of the plant.

Gill Gillespie, a Norfolk Master Gardener who tends a patch of heirlooms each year, along with a few at the Virginia Zoo, works 1/4 cup of lime in the bottom of each hole before planting, a source of calcium that wards off blossom-end rot.

Hufford sprays with a diluted seaweed/fish emulsion such as Neptune's Harvest once the tiny green fruits emerge from the flowers.

Many local gardeners use 10-10-10 fertilizer at planting and at the first blooms.

Saving seeds

This is easy, but the first part is hard. If you want to grow heirlooms next year from your own plants, you must select a sacrificial fruit.

It should be your best fruit from your best plant, with no spots or disease. Let it get good and ripe on the vine - overripe, even.

"It should be very soft," Gillespie said. "Not nice to eat."

Then it's time to scrape the seeds out. Cut the tomato in half and spread the seeds over a piece of paper towel, "like spreading butter," he said. (Hufford recommends paper coffee filters, saying the seeds don't stick so much.) The object is to space the seeds out and to free them of the gel membrane that covers each one.

Let the seeds get bone dry. Then roll the paper towel up and put it into a jar. Label the jar and store it in a dark, cool, dry place for planting next spring.

Gillespie has been successfully saving seeds with the paper-towel-and-jar method for years.

Since she trades seeds with heirloom tomato growers all over the country, Hufford uses a more complicated method called fermentation, which kills seed-borne disease. For an illustrated fermentation "how to," go to davesgarden.

com/journal/j/viewentry/7740/

Good news for gardening procrastinators: Seeds can remain viable for eight to 10 years, Gillespie said.

Planting seeds

This is Hufford's method for planting seeds. Do this between March 1 and 15 next year with the seeds you saved from this year's crop.

You will need: seeds, sterile seed starting mix (garden soil is too heavy and does not provide adequate drainage or moisture), a spray bottle, seedling planting trays, labels.