Maryland Grows

2024 is Grow It Eat It’s Year of Heirloom Tomatoes! We’re going to have lots of resources available soon to help you celebrate these delicious and historic vegetables (botanically fruits), and we hope you’ll participate by planting a few in your garden. I thought, as an enthusiastic heirloom tomato gardener myself, I’d take a moment to make some introductions.

First of all, what is an heirloom tomato? Well, I think we know what a tomato is; what puts it in the same category as Grandma’s topaz necklace or Grandpa’s grandfather clock? They’re all handed down through the generations. “Heirloom” doesn’t have any single definition when it comes to vegetables. It can mean that the origin of a particular variety goes back more than 100 years, or 75 years, or that it was first grown before a certain date. Many people use World War II as a marker, because the growth of hybrid crops boomed in the subsequent decades, and a lot of older varieties disappeared from seed catalogs. Varieties grown in a particular community or culture, or through several generations in a particular family, are also considered heirlooms. Family names are often part of a variety name, which makes you feel like a cousin when you grow them!

You will sometimes hear that there are two types of tomatoes, hybrids and heirlooms. A more biologically accurate distinction is between hybrids and open-pollinated crops. All heirlooms are open-pollinated, but not the other way around. Many open-pollinated varieties, which will grow true-to-type when their seed is collected and planted again, have been developed too recently to be considered heirlooms. There’s a movement among modern growers to create open-pollinated tomatoes with a flavor as good as heirlooms, plus other beneficial characteristics. If we’re still growing them in a hundred years, though, will they be considered heirlooms? Those that were created by an individual hobbyist, sure; those by a seed company, maybe. Some varieties with a commercial origin many decades in the past flirt with heirloom status, but opinions vary.

Great taste is not actually part of any definition of heirlooms; I think the cause and effect goes the other way around. After all, why would you keep growing a plant through the generations, saving and passing down the seed, taking all that trouble, if it didn’t taste fantastic? This is the main reason most of us grow heirloom tomatoes. They also have wonderful stories attached to them, and many of them are very cool-looking, but taste is the important thing. Heirlooms should be the furthest from bland, boring, average, just-okay tomatoes out there. Therefore we put up with their faults, so we can savor the essence of pure summer.

Faults, you say?! Uh-oh, is it going to be hard to grow these yummy flavor bombs? Well, it depends. Frankly, I think heirlooms get a bad rap. You’ll hear gardeners say, as if it was gospel, that heirloom tomatoes get all the diseases, that they produce one tomato per plant, and that the one tomato is so weirdly-shaped and cracked that you can only eat about half of it. And yes, that can happen. But you can also grow heirlooms that produce reliably and heavily and hardly have a blemished leaf.

After all, again, why would someone keep a variety going through generations if it was so frustrating to grow? If it’s an heirloom, it worked for someone. Really well. Heirlooms are—by definition—suited to a specific place and particular conditions. If your garden has the same conditions, that heirloom will thrive for you. There is, I will admit, some trial and error involved, before you find a suite of heirloom tomatoes that works in your space. But there are some shortcuts. You can ask experienced gardeners who live near you. You can read descriptions carefully. You can pick out varieties with origins in similar climates to yours. Here in central Maryland, with our muggy summers, we might want to be looking for heirlooms that come from the South. In western Maryland, mountain tomatoes might suit you. On the shore, look for a coastal origin.

Otherwise, seek out varieties that sound delicious to you. You can find heirlooms in every color that tomatoes come in, including striped, in many shapes and sizes, and in every type from slicer to paste to snacking cherry.

After that, it’s up to you to provide the best conditions for your plants: full sun, lots of air circulation, plenty of water, great soil, fertilizer as needed. If they succumb to disease when you’ve given them every chance, then cross that variety off your list. (I usually try twice, because different years provide different conditions, and sometimes I make mistakes in siting and care.)

How to get started? As with any tomato, you can acquire plants, or start your own from seed indoors.

• Plants. If you’re new to heirlooms, I recommend starting this way. The selection will not be as large as from seed, but frankly the number of varieties available in seed catalogs is enormous and overwhelming, and you can find heirloom tomato plants in surprising places these days. Try garden centers, farmers markets, fundraiser plant sales, and even big-box stores (I bought a perfectly good Cherokee Purple plant at Home Depot a couple of years ago). You can also buy plants online from reputable seed catalogs and plant shippers. Don’t rely on cheap shipping prices or unknown sources.

• Seeds. It used to be that if you wanted a decent choice of heirloom tomato seeds, you had to look at an heirloom specialty catalog like Seed Savers Exchange, but nowadays everyone’s got ‘em. Just remember to hold back on starting your seeds (I recommend April 1) so that your transplants will not be ridiculously enormous. If you become part of a gardening group, you can trade seedlings with other gardeners so you can have a larger selection without buying so many packets of seeds.

Here are some varieties that taste great, have grown reasonably well for me, and might be available as plants in your local area:

• Brandywine (large and red). The classic heirloom.
• Black Krim (medium, dark red). Might be my favorite?
• Green Zebra (large, green-yellow ripe). If you’ve never tried a green-ripe tomato, this is a good one (though I like Aunt Ruby’s German Green better).
• Cherokee Purple (large, dark red). Really delicious and special.
• Black Cherry (small, dark red). Like it sounds!
• Mortgage Lifter (large and red). Tasty and with a cool story attached.
• Pineapple or Big Rainbow. These are both yellow/red in streaks and pretty big. Also look for Mr. Stripey.
• Matt’s Wild Cherry. Tiny flavor bombs and very prolific.

This list is just a start, though! Chime in with your recommendations in the comments.

If you want to find out more about heirloom tomatoes, I recommend these two books:

• The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table by Amy Goldman
• Epic Tomatoes: How to Select and Grow the Best Varieties of All Time by Craig LeHoullier

I hope you’ll try some heirloom tomatoes this year!

By Erica Smith, Montgomery County Master Gardener. Read more posts by Erica.