more road blogging, this time from Detroit....gardening progress

Flowering cherry making an early appearance

I’ve seen a lot of airports and hotel rooms recently, but it is worth it - last week’s wonderful experience speaking in St Louis, and tomorrow in Taylor, Michigan (near Detroit), sharing the stage with Jessica Walliser and Carol Michel. This is my last Sue-less event; she will be joining me on speaking trips to DC (mid April) and Connecticut (mid May).

All seeds for my upcoming seedling sales, donations and gardening are planted. The hardening off process is well underway, and the seedling flats are now comfortable with full sun, and temperatures into the upper 30s. So…it is time to transplant. I’ve purchased the first 10 bags of Metro Mix 360 and have a box of the 3.5 inch pots, boxes of white labels and sharpie markers all ready to go.

just one of nearly 20 containers of fall planted greens that spent the winter under floating row cover

I started pulling the plugs of densely planted seedlings and giving each cluster its own 3.5 inch pot as true leaves form and I find time to do transplanting (and night time weather begins to moderate. Below are three pictures of this technique with a plug of Bisignano #2.

with just a gentle squeeze, the plug of more than 30 seedlings pops easily out

Each plug of seedlings gets its own 3.5 inch pot - the Bisignano plug awaiting addition of planting mix

All nestled in - once all 18 cells are planted, they will get a deep watering.

This is a great way to hold quantities of seedlings until they get separated into individual seedlings. There is a far lower risk of the seedlings drying out. This works fine with eggplants and peppers - any thickly planted type of seeds.

If all goes well, transplanting into individual pots will start Sunday, and seedling availability in the Raleigh area may begin in mid April. Seedlings by appointment only; email me at nctomatoman@gmail.com for a list and details.

Next will be purchasing of some straw bales and the onset of preparation. The coming months will be a patchwork of speaking events, writing, transplanting and getting my own garden planted. Time will certainly fly…because I will be having fun!

Last but by no means least…my most recent podcast with Joe Lamp’l, recently recorded and posted, is here.

Moving some seedlings among the greens and other plants

more notes from St. Louis - anatomy of a speaking trip

Front of the Convention Center in St Louis, which hosts the Home and Garden show

Time does funny things when one is away. What felt like it would be a long stay is nearing the end. It is early Saturday morning….some ambient music (“Plumes” by Loscil) is playing on my laptop as I give this a try. (I’ve not often done “trip diary” types of blogs, and will finish this and give it a good read before - and if - I publish it).

Epic Tomatoes came out very late 2014, and sent me on my speaking adventure immediately after - so this is the 5th year of hitting the road with my gardening stories. (Time does do funny things, because it seems impossible that it’s been 5 years.) Despite averaging 20 events each year, this particular trip - speaking at the big Home and Garden show - is the most extensive in terms of time away, and number of times on the stage. I really didn’t know what to expect….some questions that I pondered on the plane flying here - “what would the stage be like - location? projection system for my slides? acoustics? typical audience (or not)? what would I do in between? how will I keep my energy and enthusiasm while giving two talks per day, alternating topics? Did I order too many books? Do I have enough seeds with me”….just a small sampling of what was whizzing around my brain.

My schedule was pretty packed, on one hand, and pretty relaxed - depending upon how one looks at it. There was a local TV spot on Thursday morning at 8, then talks at the show at noon and six. Friday - talks at noon and six. Saturday (today) - a talk at noon, then an Uber to Bowood Farms garden center for a talk at 2, then back to the show for a talk at 5:30 - then a chance to meet my friend Keith and his wife (first time in a LONG time; he lives in KC). Tomorrow - one talk at noon, then to the airport - then my own bed tomorrow night. Whew.

But that’s just a schedule - the experience that has been filling in those days is what is making this a very special trip with marvelous, indelible moments. So, following is what this has felt like, rather than what was on my to-do list.

Ready and waiting

Just after landing in St Louis on Wednesday afternoon, my host, Ellen, picked me up at the airport and brought me to the hotel, which is just across the street from the Show. Ellen has been just wonderful - she has been managing this show for a long time, and it is apparent that she has things well under control, including making her speaking guests feel informed and comfortable. I got a chance to orient myself on Wednesday - load my talks onto the laptop, meet the AV man Bobby, check out the stage (away from the noise and bustle of the show in a corner), marvel at the video quality of the projection screen (my slides just pop off the screen), find the place for snacks and bottles of water, locate my books and seeds sent ahead. After that I was free to unwind from the flight, grab a bite to eat, refine and finish my talks and run through emails.

My slides through a swing set

This kind of show starts slowly and winds up as the weekend approaches. The format leads one to feel quite relaxed; I showed up an hour early on Thursday morning, got wired up for sound, set seed packets and handouts on seats, test ran the slides - then just ambled around the show. There were no announcements, and no one introduced me - the informality reduced the stress, so when the time approached and people were gathering, I just eased from chatting to audience members to moving into the material. My area has about 90 chairs, and the show was very quiet on that Thursday noon time, but 20-30 folks found their way to my container/straw bale talk and we had a great time. Some books were sold and signed, seeds taken, cards handed out, new gardening friends made. It was a nice start!

After grabbing some lunch and taking some time in my hotel room to unwind (as in nap!), it was back to the show for the Thursday night tomato session. I was delighted to find most of the seats filled, an enthusiastic crowd of interested, and interesting, gardeners, and the overall energy was just great…more books sold and signed, more gardening friends made.

Friday was more of the same, except that with each talk, more seats were occupied. I am now rationing my seed packets a bit, because I want to have them last until Sunday. I think my book supply will end up being pretty spot on. Today - Saturday - will be a bit more of a test of my stamina, as noon (strawbales/containers), 2 (tomatoes, with a dive into home breeding), and 5:30 (tomatoes), then time with my friends, will make a busy - but undoubtedly very quickly passing - day and night.

I saved the best for last….the quality of people that are attending my talks or stopping by to say hello. Many ask if I was the “guy on TV Thursday morning”, or “the fellow on that PBS video (the Growing a Greener World episode - Joe Lamp’l, if you are reading this, LOTS of people are watching your show). I’ve had nearby vendors or staff that man children’s’ gardens or work at the arboretum pause for extensive chats on all sorts of gardening topics. The conversations with my talk attendees before or after end up going everywhere - each of our youths, our pets, the weather, gardening in general - but the common factor is that everyone is simply so nice.

80 year old incredibly talented local gardener - his story is inspiring, and I’ll always remember our conversations

In all of my time doing this sort of thing post-Epic Tomato release, events like this create a bubble of gardening joy that educates (all different ways - I learn as much from my audience members as they learn from me). My events have never - not once - veered into any of the topics that are causing such deep divisions in our country today. I am so thankful for having the privilege to participate in this these types of events, and for the joy, peace, unity and community that they provide. It gives me such hope.

So, I deeply thank all of those who make the effort to attend one of my talks - not only here in St Louis, of course, but any of my events, past and future. Some have asked me if I ever feel burned out. Hardly….in fact, just the opposite. I feel energized, renewed and encouraged.

(PS - well, I finished it, read it - and decided to push the button and publish…so here it is!)

Blogging from the road - trying to sort out my 2019 garden inhabitants

I’ve got a few hours until my next talk - I am in St. Louis, so pleased to be the headline speaker at the Home and Garden Show. Music is playing on my phone, the coffee is nearby, and I am thinking about….what else? Tomatoes (and peppers and eggplants and….). Sue is just about to move the plethora of germinated seedlings out of the safety and warmth of our front room to the garage, under shop lights.

Safe seedlings - we hit the 20s on a few nights while I am away, and the garage seemed to be too much of a risk. Better leggy than dead seedlings!

It may sound a bit funny to be still planning what to grow when thousands of seedlings are up and growing, but I always plant more varieties than I can fit. While I was in the airport, I took out my 2019 garden notebook and started to make some categories and sort my options.

The list of varieties that are my primary flavor types (indeterminate) - the must-grow-because-must-eats - is as follows: Azoychka, Akers West Virginia, Andrew Rahart Jumbo Red, Nepal, Italian Heirloom, Dester, Polish, Stump of the World, Brandywine, Ferris Wheel, Cherokee Purple, Cherokee Chocolate, JD Special C Tex, Carbon, Indian Stripe, Yellow Brandywine, Sun Gold, Lillian’s Yellow Heirloom, Egg Yolk, Cherokee Green, Green Giant, Mocha Stripes, Little Lucky, Lucky Cross, Casey’s Pure Yellow, Striped Sweetheart. That’s too many - I will have 10 straw bales, so need to whittle the above down to 20. Bye bye Italian Heirloom, Dester, Polish, Brandywine, Ferris Wheel and Striped Sweetheart (which I will grow in a 5 gallon grow bag just for some fresh seeds). The others in the cut list were recently grown. I will have seedlings of all of the above for local spring seedling sales.

Now on to the Dwarf Tomato Breeding Project varieties….and that is a real puzzle. My strategy is to grow some of the recent releases I’ve yet to try, and some promising leads from yet to be finished lines. On the former list are Hannah’s Prize, Maura’s Cardinal, Sneaky Sauce, Sarah’s Red, Melanie’s Ballet, Mystic Lady, Vince’s Haze, Tiger Eye, Egypt Yellow, Jasmine Yellow, Sunny’s Pear, Laura’s Bounty, Grandpa Gary’s Green, Parfait and Andy’s Forty. Also released, but favorites, on the grow list are Sweet Sue and Blazing Beauty. For works in progress, I hope to grow best leads from Sweetie, Buzzy, Beastly, Fancy (two different ones), Hearty, Teensy (six different colors), Ivory Ink, Pink Ink, leads from Choppy, Freezy, Walter’s Fancy, Ann’s Dusky Rose plum (purple variant), two from Scotty, three from green striped Beauty finds, and four from Emerald Isle as I continue looking for green hearts. I also plan to grow a few new crosses - Rangi (Tom’s Yellow Wonder X Beryl Beauty), and Lillian’s Yellow Heirloom X Zlubu Kytice.

More tomatoes - just in case I feel like doing some additional crazy crosses, I hope to grow Blue P20, Honor Bright, Variegated, Velvet Red and Surprise (for the antho, yellow leaf, variegated and fuzzy leaf genes). A hodge podge of varieties sent to me over the years are on the grow list, probably in smaller grow bags just to get an idea of the fruit size, color and flavor, and a few seeds - Fruity, Fuzzy (flat and upright growth), Roman Figun, scalloped Tiny Tim, a few new Micros from my friend Dan, Russian, Hibor, Swamp Sweet, Civil War, Bartelly Cherry, Redman Giant, Abraham Brown chocolate, Abraham Brown yellow skinned green, saved seed from a tiny cherry growing in front of Mackey’s Ferry peanut shot, Blue Bling, Abraham Lincoln (another try at the bronze leaf original), historic varieties from the USDA Matchless and Peak of Perfection, a mystery red tomato…..whew. Can I fit all of these? Will they all make it? Stay tuned and read my blog for the coming months to see!

Then we get to eggplants and peppers….on the grow list are the latest selection/generation from my Orient Express dehybridization work - Twilight Lightning, Midnight Lightning and Skinny Twilight, my green/lavender selection from a Cloud 9 cross - Mardi Gras, then my dehybridization of Islander pepper work - Carolina Amethyst, Fire Opal, White Gold, Candy Corn and Royal Purple, as well as Chocolate Bell (from a hybrid). Finally, a few other hots from a friend - Arbol, Cascabel, Manzano, the latest from variegated sweets from JC Raulston arboretum (spectacular last year), the latest from my Gemstone/Bouquet ornamental hot pepper work, Pinata jalapeno type…and that’s that.

If all of this works out, is 120 plants - a big effort, but in line with what I’ve been achieving the past 10 years or so. It will be fascinating, delicious, offer some surprises, a LOT of work….and fun!

That’s that - blog done…off to talk tomatoes in St Louis! See you in Raleigh starting mid April for seedlings (for the list and more details, send an email to nctomatoman@gmail.com )

Ready to talk tomatoes, with props, in St Louis

The State of Heirloom Tomatoes in 2019 - part 3 (conclusion)

Cover of a Seed Savers Exchange catalog showing tomatoes

The tomato journey I’ve taken you on, which started in the mid 1800s, will now reflect on what we can grow today and ponder where we may end up next. This is a remarkable time to be a tomato grower and tomato lover. Thanks to efforts of the SSE and the many companies that focus on heirloom and open pollinated varieties, as well as all of the inventive research and development being done by seed companies, universities and amateur plant breeders, the array of home garden tomato options has never been greater.

Heirlooms - the explosion of varieties listed in the Seed Savers Exchange yearbook is stunning. We are talking thousands and thousands of varieties from every corner of the world, beginning with a handful in 1975 and reaching the stunning numbers only a few decades later. I’ve frankly lost track of many of the recently uncovered heirloom types; it is not possible to be on top of very many, never mind all, of them. Heirlooms continue to emerge even to this day, as families in possession of tomato treasures connect with gardeners who are seed savers and sharers. Three examples that I am very familiar with were shared with me at various speaking events, or through email contact - Cancelmo Family Heirloom, and yet to be formally named varieties from Mimi Koch in Durham (family heirloom from Italy), and from Nora Wojciechowski, hand delivered to me at my event in Oakland County Michigan last year, a local variety grown and shared by a Mr. Cutler. Both were sent to Mike Dunton of Victory Seeds, and so hopefully will make their appearance in their seed catalog before too long; I loved them both.

Cover of Victory Seed Company catalog

It is hard to make generalizations about the ability of a particular heirloom to thrive - or fail - in one’s garden. Since each variety has a unique set of genes, the ability to tolerate or resist diseases may or may not have been developed over the years. My advice is to give a well regarded variety a few chances in your garden. If it struggles, there are only multiple thousands of others to try.

There are so many sources for heirloom varieties in 2019 - seed companies, from small to large, as well as countless offerings on Facebook, ebay, and Amazon, to name just a few sources. My advice is always to tread carefully. I’ve been to farmers markets - and even our Tomatopalooza event of some years ago - and noticed tomatoes don’t always match up to the original descriptions. Crossing, seed mix ups, or simply chasing dollars rather than accuracy lead to issues. Gardening takes work and does cost some hard earned money….be sure to use trusted seed sources for your seeds, and be clear on what to expect.

Cover of a Southern Exposure catalog

Tomorrow’s Heirlooms - Open pollinated varieties that emerged beyond the 1950s are, to me, “tomorrow’s heirlooms”. If they are great varieties and end up being regrown and handed down for many years to come, the “tomorrow” will eventually be dropped. Some of these are accidental - Cherokee Chocolate (which emerged from Cherokee Purple in my garden in 1995), and Cherokee Green (as an off-type from Cherokee Chocolate in 1997) are in this category. Many are created - some by selecting from an accidental cross, as with Lucky Cross and Little Lucky, some created by actually carrying out a specific cross and then selecting until a new variety is stable, as with our Dwarf Tomato Project varieties.

They are proliferating at a rapid rate as more and more gardeners learn about the fun of doing crosses and then hunting for great things during the selection process. Some of the earliest examples of these emerged from Tom Wagner (as with Green Zebra and Lime Green Salad). Brad Gates has released numerous interesting colored varieties from his Wild Boar Farm, including Berkeley Tie Dye. Another gorgeous line of tomatoes is the Artisan series, including the various Bumble Bee and Blush selections, small fruited and with distinctive stripes.

The other tomato color rage seem to be those with high levels of anthocyanin, giving the fruit dark black/purple/blue shoulders and more when the fruit are exposed to direct sun. The first of these were a bit (to more than a bit) lacking in flavor to my palate, but this family of open pollinated varieties seem to be exploding in number as more and more breeders see what they can do with this fun color characteristic. A well known example of this type is Indigo Rose.

Hybrids - Lots of work is being done to make hybrids more interesting as well. With lots of disease tolerance factors being worked in, it is apparent that those creating hybrids are really trying to tackle some of the challenging disease issues tomato lovers face while at the same time working in improved flavor and better texture. There is a Goliath series of hybrids, lines of hybrids with essentially the same names as well known heirlooms, such as the Brandymaster series, the Chef’s Choice line of tomatoes, a series called Heirloom Marriage, A look through the catalogs of companies such as Tomato Growers Supply or Totally Tomatoes provides lots of examples of these interesting sounding and possibly well worth trying hybrids.

I confess to grow only a very few hybrids, such as Sun Gold (regularly), and on occasion, Big Beef and Lemon Boy. I’ve still got far too many open pollinated/heirloom types to test, and love to save and share seeds.

Cover of a Tomato Growers Supply catalog

Grafted varieties are also becoming much easier to find, and different root stock can be grown to provide the opportunity for gardeners to create their own grafted plants. There are two key considerations to make this a worthwhile investment. The whole point of using a grafted plant is to prevent a disease agent in the soil from inhibiting success of the plant. So, consideration 1 is knowing what specific diseases inhabit your soil and give your tomatoes trouble - then using a rootstock that resists or tolerates the disease(s). Consideration 2 is caring for the upper part of your plant (above the graft line) well, since anything that attacks the plant from above could negate the benefit of the graft. Be sure to mulch well, minimize wet foliage, provide good air circulation and remove blemished foliage as it appears.

Plant stature (fulfilling needs of the space-constricted gardener) concerns are finally being considered, as gardeners realize the unwieldy growing character of most of the delicious heirloom types. The two options for more easily controllable tomato varieties are determinate (emerging in the mid 1920s when a “self topping” variety called Cooper’s Special appeared), and dwarf in stature. Though dwarf (also known as tree type) tomatoes have been around in limited numbers since the mid 1800s, little was done to further expand the options until the work of Tom Wagner, Ken Ettlinger, our own Dwarf Tomato Project and the various other dwarf projects that are ongoing. We’ve come a very long way in the last 50 years or so in this arena.

What’s next? There are some possibilities. We’ve certainly moved into a bit of “fad” type themes - tomatoes with stripes, tomatoes with the blue antho colored shoulders, What is most valuable, however, is to continue what we’ve begun with our Dwarf Tomato Project in terms of trying to vision what gardeners will need. To expand gardening, it is important to take space needs into consideration. There is some good work happening with microdwarfs - plants that are a foot or so tall and can be grown in very small containers. Flavor will always be a top priority, and we are now learning to accept as many colors as possible so we can “play with our food”. I think that the next logical step is to focus on disease tolerance, trying to get a handle on what is attacking crops where and carrying out the breeding work to install the genes into new varieties that will best fight the diseases. It isn’t very easy work to do, and takes time.

To finish up this three part series, I will reiterate a really important observation…we who are gardening at this time have the largest array of tomato varieties to choose from when compared to any point in history. We are lucky…go forth and fill your gardens with whatever sounds good to you after perusing catalogs, or reading SSE yearbook descriptions. Give my favorites that I list in Epic Tomatoes a try and let me know what you think!

The State of Heirloom Tomatoes in 2019 - Part 2

In Part 1, I discussed the definition of “heirloom” and took you on a very brief tour of the history of the tomato in the US from its emergence as a popular food to eat and grow (mid 1850s) to the first commercially released hybrid variety, Burpee Big Boy, launched n 1949.

Before I cover the period between that and today, here is an interesting consideration about the possibility of a hybrid to be an heirloom, a point that arrived via a Tweet from a good friend. A bit of a twist of thinking is needed for this to be true. For the vast majority of gardeners, the ability to grow a variety, save seeds, share it and have it grow the same represents an open pollinated variety, which using my parameters means varieties in existence pre-1950 or so. This is how a non-hybrid can be passed along.

If, however, one knows the parents of a particular favored hybrid, the method of producing it - knowledge of the two parent varieties - can become an heirloom, akin to a handed down recipe. Let’s illustrate this with an example, using the story of one of the hybrids we created for our dwarf project, Sneezy. I love that hybrid - it is delicious, large, bright yellow and prolific. To create Sneezy, my Australian friend Patrina crossed two open pollinated varieties, Green Giant and Golden Dwarf Champion. When seeds are saved from the Sneezy hybrid fruit, growing them out provided a wild, diverse mix, some of which were worked on for years and stabilized to create some of our favorite releases from our Dwarf Tomato Project (such as Dwarf Mr Snow, Dwarf Sweet Sue and Summertime Green) But once Sneezy hybrid seed is gone, or becomes too old to germinate, one would have to go back and repeat the cross to experience the hybrid Sneezy again. Aside from hybrids created by home gardeners and amateur plant breeders, we typically have no idea what the parents of our favorite hybrid varieties are. Hence, if the hybrid producing company some day decides it no longer wishes to create Lemon Boy, or Better Boy, or Sun Gold, those varieties would vanish, never to be grown again unless one can pry the identity of the parents from the company, or social pressure induces the company to create and sell it again.

Tomato page from a 1952 Henderson catalog, featuring two of their large, open pollinated varieties, considered to be heirlooms today.

OK - let’s get back on track and return to the big breakthrough of Burpee. In the late 1940s, the company’s breeders crossed a large pink heirloom tomato with a medium sized red heirloom tomato (I’ve heard what those two may be through the grapevine, but nope…not telling!). The resulting hybrid, rather than used to breed an open pollinated variety, appeared to be such a superior variety that the actual hybrid seed was sold. It was christened Big Boy (which started a long line of other girl and boy tomatoes that arose over the coming decades) and started the predominance hybrids in seed catalogs right up until the emergence of the widespread availability and popularity of the heirloom types, beginning in the mid 1980s.

There are many examples of the big company seed catalogs providing text strongly suggests that customers focus on growing the newly created hybrids, instead of the older, open pollinated standard types. Aside from claims of higher yields, more plant “vigor” and larger fruit size, some specific disease tolerances were beginning to be included as well. This led to the listing of particular letters after the variety (F for tolerance or resistance to Fusarium wilt, N for Nematodes, V for Verticillium, etc).

Page from a 1952 Henderson catalog featuring two new hybrid varieties.

I am sure that all of you notice that hybrid seeds cost more, This actually makes sense, because each seed that winds up in the packet is the result of the physical act of transferring pollen from flowers of one parent onto the style of flowers of the other parent. Most hybrid tomatoes were (and largely continue to be) scarlet (also known as red) varieties, typified by Big Boy, Better Boy, and Celebrity. An occasional yellow or pink hybrid showed up in catalogs, but this is changing - more color variety is being worked in to new hybrid types, which I will cover in part 3.

For the coming decades, open pollinated varieties decreased and hybrid varieties increased, leading to the extinction of some older historic types. Disappearance of varieties would have been devastating if not for the emergence of the Seed Savers Exchange in 1975. Finally, an awareness of what was being lost, and effort to maintain what we still had, along with a mechanism, planted the seeds of the rapidly increasing popularity and awareness of heirloom varieties that continues to this day.

What is really remarkable is the realization that far more varieties of tomatoes with stunning diversity in terms of colors, shapes and sizes existed - but were often very local, limited to one community, or even one garden, arising from a chance mutation or cross. All of a sudden, green fleshed, yellow and red swirled, nearly white, deep orange and even striped tomatoes became options for the adventurous gardener. The Seed Savers Exchange provided the mechanism for sharing of the highly diverse, colorful heirloom tomatoes which can be found in so many gardens today. Small seed companies, such as Seeds Blum and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, emerged that featured these stunningly colored tomatoes along with many other heirloom/open pollinated vegetables of all types.

page from a 1970 Bolgiano seed catalog - note the featured hybrid tomato variety at lower right.

The first set of well known heirloom tomato varieties included such names as Mortgage Lifter, Brandywine, and Persimmon. Seed Savers Exchange winter yearbooks dating from the late 1970s offered hundreds, and soon, as the organization grew and participation exploded, thousands of varieties - green fleshed, white fleshed, swirls of yellow and red, canary yellow, rich deep orange - the diversity is truly breathtaking. In 1990, with Black Krim and Cherokee Purple, the dark fleshed (“black” - some purple, some brown) varieties started to appear. Not only was the color array remarkable, but those of us who sampled liberally and grew lots of different types learned about the matching diversity of flavors - sweet, tart, rich, mild and all sorts of nuances such as peachy or fruity.

Full tomato page from the 1970 Bolgiano seed catalog - note that 14 are red, 3 are yellow, and 2 are pink.

In part 3, I will take a look at where we are today in terms of tomatoes, and where we may be going.

A First! Fulfilling a Blog Suggestion. The State of Heirloom Tomatoes in 2019 - Part 1

Even grocery stores carry tomatoes in a range of colors in 2019….let’s talk about how we got here.

Each day I receive gardening emails. They are uniformly wonderful, insightful, and interesting - as well as deeply appreciated. An email received a few days ago from a Washington state gardening friend, David, was just remarkable. It was amazing to find that we have much in common (even the names of our wives!). What really struck me, though, is that he suggested a topic that has been on my mind recently. I hope that this blog fulfills your request, David!

This is turning out to be a really meaty topic, so I am going to do it in three parts….Part 1 (this blog) will provide a bit of background and look at US tomato history up until the advent of hybrids, starting in 1950 or so. Part 2 will cover Burpee’s Big Boy and what follows through the early days of heirloom tomato popularity. The final part will focus on where we are, and possibilities of future directions.

When I joined the Seed Savers Exchange in 1986, the organization was just 11 years old. The major annual seed share offering, known as the yearbook, underwent a major format shift, providing listings by type of plant and variety, rather than by member codes, thus making it much easier to peruse the full gamut of each veggie or fruit type. Growing heirlooms was still considered to be on the fringe. The major seed companies, and tomato research and development, focused on steady parades of new hybrids each year. Small seed companies focusing on open pollinated, rather than hybrid, offerings were sprouting quickly, led by outfits such as Seeds Blum and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and Gleckler (the first company to offer the really odd and unusual!).

Here we are in 2019, the SSE is now 44 years old, Seeds Blum and Glecklers are no more, but Victory and Baker Creek and High Mowing and Fruition and countless others vie with ebay and Amazon sellers to create a baffling array of choices, with selection and quality and pricing all over the map. It is much more than heirlooms popping up in the tomatosphere - our own Dwarf Tomato Project, long time breeding efforts by Tom Wagner, Brad Gates, Fred Hempel and many others are blurring the definition of heirloom and increasing the available tomato number to the many thousands, represented in every possibly imagined combination of fruit shape and size and color and plant habit and leaf shape - even foliage color. We are at a true pinnacle of tomato diversity.

I’ve read articles through the years that opine on the use - and even definition - of “heirloom”. It has always been clear to me, perhaps because of my love of genealogy, history, stories and family. I think of it in general terms - the dictionary definition of “heirloom” is “a valuable object that has belonged to a family for several generations”. Some use the term “heritage” - “property that is or may be inherited”. In both cases, hybrid varieties are eliminated, because they can not be passed down from saved seed.

I have great discussions with my Oregon friend Mike Dunton of Victory Seed Company, and we’ve often discussed usage of the term “heirloom”. Since I tend to focus on tomatoes, I’ve applied a yardstick of around 1950 as a cut off date for designating varieties “heirloom” or simply “open pollinated” (equally valid terms for genetically stabilized varieties). When Burpee created and released their hybrid tomato Big Boy in 1949, it signaled a shift in the efforts of seed companies toward hybrid varieties rather than stabilized open pollinated varieties. This, of course, leaves more recently created types outside of the heirloom descriptor (varieties such as Green Zebra (1970s), Cherokee Chocolate and Lucky Cross (1990s), and our Dwarf Tomato Project varieties (2010s).) When will they be considered heirlooms, rather than simply open pollinated varieties? This is where we hit a grey area and opinions proliferate.

Does it really matter? Whether something is designated “heirloom” or “open pollinated” is a topic deeper than many gardeners will wish to dive. Often, the term “heirloom” is used to elevate its value (meaning more can be charged, as with the restaurant “heirloom tomato plates” which may or may not have heirloom varieties as components). The critical part of this is the distinction between “open pollinated” (stable varieties from which seeds are saved to carry it forward) and “hybrid” (varieties that will segregate into myriad possibilities if grown from saved seed). What concerns me about all of this is when early generation offspring of newly made hybrids get shared and circulated - what are they to be called? (this tangent deserves its own blog, so I will move along from it at this time)

I stated above my rationale for the 1950 cut off for tomatoes (heirloom vs open pollinated). What about corn, or peppers, or eggplants? Each crop type has its own history, its own progression of a move from traditional breeding, selection and development of stable open pollinated varieties that end up in seed catalogs, toward selling of the actual hybrids. Some crop types still focus on open pollinated varieties to this day - beans, for example. This is actually an interesting topic to dig into at another time, but for now, let’s stay on tomatoes.

Let’s look at “heirloom” varieties that were the best known at a few points in time. In truth, we don’t have to go that far back to see the very beginnings of tomato breeding and improvement in the US. Alexander Livingston, who had the ingenuity to do his tomato development by doing single plant, rather than single fruit, selection, led the way in expanding a handful of lumpy, irregular mostly red (along with an odd pink or yellow) tomatoes to dozens of “improved” varieties, typically smaller in size and smoother in contour. From his first important release, Paragon, in 1870, nearly 30 new varieties were introduced by 1911, as shown in the catalog scan below. I suspect that most tomato growing gardens back then included a good number of these historic varieties, such as Paragon, Acme, Golden Queen, Stone, Globe and Beauty (note how simple and relatively unimaginative these names are, when compared with those of some of the popular heirlooms and hybrids known today).

Of course, Livingston was joined by many other seed companies, some with significant tomato development efforts, such as Henderson, Burpee, Salzer and Maule. Aside from the Livingston varieties noted above, other varieties were very widely grown, such as Ponderosa, Mikado, Earliana, June Pink, Matchless and Chalk’s Early Jewel.

Seed companies developed new varieties by growing large plantings of known types and seeking the unusual single plant (indicative of a mutation or a cross) from which to develop a new tomato. Some companies crossed two known varieties to create a hybrid, then worked with seeds saved from the hybrid to find something distinct and worthwhile in the segregates that arose from growing out the second and beyond generations. (This is the process we are using in our Dwarf Tomato Project). Between 1911 and 1950, a few varieties gained great prominence and can also be considered heirlooms, such as Marglobe, Rutgers and Pritchard Scarlet Topper.

The above all represent a type of heirloom that I call “commercial heirlooms”. Gardeners today are much more familiar with “family heirlooms”, tomatoes that come to us with stories, such as Cherokee Purple or Brandywine. Though numbering in the many thousands, they tended to be extremely local - perhaps growing in one garden, one farm, one city. It is the formation of the Seed Savers Exchange in 1975 that provided the mechanism for those particular types to be more widely shared.

Part 2 will focus on the period from 1950 (Burpee and their hew hybrid Big Boy) to 2000 or so, where the effects of the work of the SSE and the many seed companies that arose really impacted gardens all over the world.

Page from 1925 Henderson catalog showing their large pink new tomato Winsall

Working through the mental cobwebs and beginning to plot my 2019 gardening adventures…

Sam and Pico preventing progress in my office

As I draft this blog, Mozart is playing on our Echo (Marriage of Figaro - we rewatched Amadeus the other night and it made me curious about his operas), the clouds are gathering for an afternoon rain (thankfully a mild one…mid 50s in mid January isn’t too shabby). Sue and I are both ready to flip our personal calendars, with my birthday today, and hers 2 days away….where does the time go? My birthday gift this year will be a big Patriots game and a nice dinner cooked by Sue. And a chocolate cake! (Sue will get a nice dinner of her choice and a carrot cake).

I remain in the amorphous state that is pretty typical for gardeners in January. For me, the coming months will see decisions made on which seeds to start, how many seedlings to prepare for sale and events, which projects to undertake….preparations for a reduced (but exciting) set of talks, including St Louis, Taylor (Michigan), Washington DC, Connecticut (White Flower Farm), and Longwood gardens (Pennsylvania), with a nice sprinkling of local events. The Dwarf Tomato Project book is in progress…moving slowly now, but soon to rapidly accelerate. Dwarf seeds continue to come in from our project members, which leads to documentation and cataloging into my “system”. We have our week in Ocracoke booked for the spring, and are just beginning to plan a fall trip to the Southwest, most likely visiting some of the National Parks in western Utah.

winter blooming camellia, reminds us of our beloved chocolate lab Mocha (her ashes are buried on this spot)

To help work the fog out of my noggin, below are a few early thoughts on gardening efforts for 2019.

My own driveway garden: As always, it will focus on tomatoes, peppers and eggplants, split between containers, grow bags and straw bales, with some greens, beans, squash and cucumbers, similar in size and scope to last year. With regard to tomatoes, I won’t work heavily on micro-dwarfs this year; they didn’t enjoy the hot, humid weather and significantly under-performed vs expectations. My dwarf project efforts will be reduced as well, focusing on the most promising leads yet to be completed. I do want to get to some indeterminate varieties that found their way into my collection over the past few years, and of course, will grow some of our flavor favorites. Peppers will again feature sweet bells from the Islander de-hybridization work, and eggplants from the Orient Express de-hybridization work, as well as a new selection that I named from a cross involving Casper, Mardi Gras.

Seed starting: I am going to hot water treat seeds prior to planting this year in efforts to reduce early blight and septoria issues, as well as eliminate the sporadic Fusarium disease (such as with Nepal last year) - I will do a blog specifically about this when it is underway. I also want to go back to some older Islander and Orient Express project seeds for some re-selection work - this, along with Mexico Midget (because it takes so long to wake up), will lead to some earlier seed starting - perhaps next week, nearly a month sooner than the main seed starting effort.

Cuttings of some of last year’s plants in my south facing office window…won’t be long before I ease them to outdoor living (with a close eye on the thermometer and forecasts, of course!)

Seedlings: yes, no, in between - and which ones? I am leaning toward offering another significantly reduced selection of seedlings - both in variety, and number. Stay tuned for more on this dilemma. I will not do much, if any, seedling shipping this year.

The book on the Dwarf Tomato Project: This will be a primary focus until complete. Current thoughts are to self-publish and hoping for mid-year.

Speaking opportunities: I am happy to entertain invitations to speak at various venues and events. My current slate of events is here. If anyone thinks that a local organization or venue would be interested in hosting me for a talk, please serve as a catalyst on my behalf. There are some major concentrations of gardening interest that have proven to be stubborn, such as the Denver/Boulder CO area, California, Oregon, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and New York. Please pass on good leads to me; any help you can provide is appreciated!

There….the cobwebs are a bit thinned out, and all of the above will make for a delightfully and consistently busy year! I look forward to interacting with many of you - at events, swapping seeds, working on projects….here’s to a successful 2019 for us all!

Driveway, big container growing greens with the Reemay (floating row cover) removed to get some winter sun and warmth.

Christmas 2018. Lovely day, yet this one feels really different...(and a look back, and a look ahead)

Greetings, readers of my blog, gardening friends, tomato lovers - here’s hoping your chosen holiday is all that you hoped and wished for. Sue and I were just remarking last night, on our way to Christmas Eve service at Duke Chapel, that Christmas - any holiday, really - should be more than a single point in time, something that you throw the switch on for…and then, too quickly, off again.

The house is quite quiet this year (a few creatures were stirring - our cats Pico and Sam, and dog Koda - though they are all pretty chilled out). Sara and her family are celebrating Christmas in Olalla Washington (Sue and I were with them for the last two Christmases). Caitlin and Patrick are having their special day at their home in Abilene. Sue’s brother in law and niece are in Marathon Florida. And so we are strewn about, those of us who are left, to enjoy the music, stories, customs….and so, so many memories of Christmases past. (2 pics below…..me at age 3 or so, Sara and Caitlin in 2002)

Sue and I had our quiet but quite wonderful Christmas morning opening gifts that were pretty much all surprises (we are at that stage of needing little stuff - just lots and lots of more time with each other). Thanks to the website Smitten Kitchen, we tried something new - and really delicious - for our Christmas breakfast…gingerbread waffles. So, so good. Now we await the arrival of Sue’s friend for a meal and some games. The Christmas memories continue to be accumulated, and we are so fortunate.

Santa with just a few gifts for Sue and I this year

2018 was quite a year - it felt like several distinct years all stitched together. It was a gardening season in which I shared a lot - a big stretch of daily progress, heavy use of Instagram, a slew of podcasts and speaking trips and blogging….and, lots of gardening and harvesting and cooking. For the first time, as the year wound down, I felt some burn out - overexposure - and a need to re-energize and go a bit “underground”. It was in that place that I decided to pull back on a few things - the Dwarf Tomato Project is officially closed as of December 31 (though it will slowly continue on in a much smaller, more localized way until the many remaining promising leads are finished). I decided to separate from my adviser role with the World Tomato Society. There have been far less posts, shares and blogs, all by design. The country - the world - has become a fragmented, angry place and the noise hurts my head and my soul - hence more pulling back. It has been so temping to disconnect from all of the social networking apps - Instagram, Facebook, Twitter - but I do like to share my gardening things, and do like to learn from those of you who similarly share - so not yet, but…I am inching closer.

As for 2019 - the space created by stopping the Dwarf project and leaving the WTS will be filled by completion of my third book, the story of the Dwarf Tomato Project. Aside from that, and the speaking events on my calendar, I am leaving the rest to be filled in over time. The size of my garden, a decision on whether to sell seedlings, other possibilities such as garden videos or a podcast - no answer on any of those yet, but there will be with time, and at the appropriate time. My main focus will be spending time with Sue - with our rescue Koda (he continues to warm up to me, but it is baby steps, and some days they go backward). There are trails to be hiked, places to explore, books to read, music to listen to. I will continue to share what seems worth sharing, but perhaps with less frequency.

This is pretty typical me, actually - liking just a bit of structure…but the exact what, where or when are pending. All I an say is a big thank you for reading, for your friendship - and stay tuned!

Sue and I, Christmas morning 2018

A Special, Guest Blog - The Exchange, a Seed Saver’s Greatest Resource for Sharing Seeds

I am delighted to post this special guest blog written by Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) Exchange and Outreach Coordinator Kathryn Gilbery. It would be impossible for me to explain the incredible relevance of the SSE in the way we garden today, and in the vast array of heirloom treasures we who garden now are able to grow, enjoy and share.

Are you looking for a community of passionate and skilled seed savers or do you wish seed catalogs had more to offer? The Exchange, a gardener-to-gardener seed swap facilitated by Seed Savers Exchange (SSE), could be what you’re looking for.

The Exchange started in 1975 as the True Seed Exchange to allow gardeners to share their seeds with green thumbs around the country. Many of the original members were sharing their family’s heirloom seeds that may have been lost if other gardeners had not stepped up to grow, preserve, and share these seeds.

Today the Exchange features over 19,000 varieties of fruits, vegetables, grains, herbs, and flowers grown and shared by hundreds of members. The Exchange still features many  family heirlooms, such as the Bradford Watermelon, immensely popular in the late 1800s but almost thought to be lost until a 7th generation family member was found to still be growing the melon his family had developed so many years before.

The Bradford Watermelon is now shared by Exchange lister, Bjorn Bergman

The Exchange is also a source for rare and historic commercial varieties, and more common or recent varieties of open-pollinated seeds. Members of the Exchange grow and share their seeds from all over the United States and 8 other countries so they are regionally adapted to a wide variety of climates. Seed Savers Exchange also shares a selection of varieties from their seed vault, which is currently preserving over 25,000 varieties of seed. The Exchange is the only way for gardeners to access many of SSE’s these seeds.

This year SSE Staff were able to sample 14 different kinds of squash from our seed vault. These, and many others, will be available in the 2019 Exchange and Yearbook.

Craig LeHoullier told me, “We’re the luckiest gardeners in the essence of time because we have Seed Savers Exchange.” Craig has been a member of SSE and has participated in the Exchange since 1986. He has cited SSE and the Exchange as fundamental in nurturing his garden obsession and acquiring many of the heirloom tomato varieties he has grown in order to write his best selling guide, Epic Tomatoes. He has also become good acquaintances with other Exchange listers, some of whom he has entrusted to grow plants for his dwarf tomato project.

The SSE yearbook, the receipt of which each year is a true highlight of the members….I always feel like a kid in a candy shop when mine arrives (comment by Craig)

Join the Exchange Today

Right now is a great time to join the Exchange because we are compiling the 2019 Yearbook, a print catalogue of our listers’ seeds, seen by thousands of people. Create a free account on the Exchange Website to share your seeds. The deadline to list seeds online is November 29th, which is fast approaching. Requests for seeds can be made all year.

Thanks for writing this, Kathryn - it is a pleasure to feature this on my blog.

Preparing for my last speaking event of the year, thinking back...and looking ahead

In an hour or so I will finish packing up and head out to the JC Raulston Arboretum. My tomato stories will be shared with the Gardening Club of North Carolina, and once that is over, my 2018 speaking schedule will be complete. It is gratifying to end on a local event, and the contrast to my trip to Monticello to speak at the Heritage Harvest Festival perfectly sums up the joy in having opportunities to speak both near and far, smaller more intimate events and some of a pretty significant size.

Talking tomatoes in a big tent at Monticello on a warm Saturday afternoon

The size of the event and type of venue really have no relationship with the core meaning of speaking opportunities…building community and fellowship, sharing a passion, two-way learning, and most importantly, doing what I can to reach out and stimulate more people to get their hands dirty and grow something - in essence, to grow more gardeners.

With the speaking part of the year about to be complete, things don’t become any less busy. I’ve got four flats of young seedlings ready to be planted for a fall/winter/spring garden; among the plant types are collard, mustard, kale, lettuce, scallions, chard and beets. I’ve also got a few microdwarf tomatoes to tuck into small containers for some additional results for that particular mini-project.

Recently transplanted seedlings sizing up for fall planting

I am about to do a bit more seeking of speaking opportunities for next year, tucking a few additional events into an already busy schedule. I do look forward to meeting new gardening friends in places such as St Louis and Wayne County, near Detroit, as well as a return to Longwood Gardens. I am hoping to add Washington DC, and, perhaps, upstate New York.

Work continues on the Dwarf Tomato project book (which will be book #3 for me), and that will keep me busy over the coming months. I remain undecided on ventures such as webinar training courses and a podcast - this is not a particularly energetic time of year for me, coming off a pretty intense summer of gardening….many will notice that I am less “out there” on social media, preferring to take a bit of a break to re-energize. I am about to have Carpal Tunnel surgery on my right hand, and the issues from that over the past few months are keeping me away from my laptop.

Finally, loads of results from this year’s dwarf tomato project efforts need to be analyzed and sorted; I owe lots of people lots of seed samples from my very small Bouquet hot pepper efforts, and hope to get those packed and off over the coming month. I’ve yet to catalog in seeds from the dwarf project volunteers, and anticipate the arrival of much more. You should see my office - I can hardly step into it. I guess all of this adds up into my typical state of too much to do and not enough time to get to it all. Obviously, this is a state that I don’t mind, since it is a common thread throughout my life.

Off I go to do one of my favorite things - telling heirloom tomato stories and sharing tips with an audience of enthusiastic gardeners at a wonderful venue. I do realize how lucky I am…it is the first thing that crosses my mind each morning.

Quite a difference! Early October 2018 driveway garden