Page 1 of Off The Vine, Volume 1, number 2

Volume 1, Issue #2 is when we started a regular article in each newsletter called “C and C’s Corner” (for Carolyn and Craig, of course). We laid out the issue contents and also addressed some feedback and comments from prior issues. It surprises me, in reading these newsletters, how much ground we covered, and how much we packed in to each issue. This will be a fun and informative set of articles for you all to read (me too!)

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C&C’s Corner

(written by Carolyn with input from me, likely via some phone calls)

What a wonderful surprise to find so many folks interested enough in heirloom tomatoes to subscribe to our Off the Vine! As of mid-August we have about 150 subscribers. Since it should be fairly obvious that we have no budget for advertising, we thing that’s great. About 75% of you are SSE members and the rest of you responded after seeing Craig’s article in The Carolina Gardener, Carolyn’s article in a lovely new magazine called The American Cottage Gardener, the article in the Heritage Seed Magazine (Canada), both of our articles in The Tomato Club Newsletter (unfortunately no longer in business), or the announcement in Southern Exposure Exchange Seed Catalog. We’d like to have enough subscribers to be able to print the newsletter instead of xeroxing, but not too many such that we can’t handle it. We now have enough money to get Off the Vine computer typeset near Carolyn’s tomato patch and someone has offered to attempt the address labels, in the future, by computer. Thank Heavens for both of those development since Carolyn’s computer skills are limited to very basic WordPerfect for Windows!

It’s become clear from your letters that many of you are “new” to the fun of growing heirloom tomatoes and are asking for guidance relative to good varieties to grow, reassurance about saving your own seed, knowing how to tell when a seed sample is “pure”, how to hybridize tomatoes, what varieties do best where and all sorts of other topics. We hear you and will try to oblige. We expect our third issue to be out in December and have already decided on most of the articles. Again, we encourage you to let us know what you want to know and we encourage any of you who might wish to write an article to discuss it with us first to see if it “fits” with what we have in mind for Off the Vine. No, we don’t pay for articles and we don’t give free subscriptions; we want to remain on a friendly, low-key basis and have this newsletter be written by all of as equals in the name of THE TOMATO.

Let’s discuss the contents of this issue first, and then discuss the responses received to the question about reoffering of seeds through SSE, which was posed in the first issue. Our featured “tomato” person for this issue is Dr. Charles Rick of the University of California at Davis. His name will be new to many of you, but after reading Craig’s article about him I think it will be quite clear why we want you to know about him. We just hope, that when we reach our 80’s, we will still be going into the office every day as does Dr. Rick. Andrew F. Smith (aka Andy) is the author of a brief summary article on the early history of the tomato. Andy runs an educational consulting company and has written several books on various topics. I know many of you will be interested in his new book entitled The Tomato in America: Early History, Culture and Cookery, which will be available from the University of South Carolina Press this October. Seven year in the writing, this informative book can be ordered from the Press (1-800-768-2500 toll free). The ISBN number is 1-57003-000-6, and the price is $24.95 plus $3.50 for shipping. Carolyn has seen part of the chapter dealing with the purported medicinal qualities of the tomato and enjoyed and learned from it immensely. Andy has already started work on the sequel which will start with the period after the Civil War. Craig has written an article on the historically important varieties we obtained from the ISDA through the PC:GRIN program. Since some of these varieties were previously thought to have been extinct, and so stated in Craig’s article on historic varieties in Vol.I#1, we are both terrifically excited about this summer’s growouts. Since Carolyn’s garden is about one month behind Craig’s garden, we won’t have the final observations for you until next issue. As promised in the last issue Carolyn has written an article on her current favorites. This article was adapted and expanded from one that she wrote for the Tomato Club Newsletter which, unfortunately, is no longer being published. Many of the varieties cited are available only through SSE and that might pose a problem for some of our non-SSE members. Since future issues, we’re sure, will also mention varieties only available through SSE, we’ll have to give some thought to this problem. We would encourage any of you who have strong feelings about the preservation of heirloom fruits and vegetables to join SSE. An informational brochure is available for $1 (include SASE); membership is $25/year (Seed Savers Exchange, 3076 North Winn Road, Decorah, IA 52101). There are also commercial sources for some of the varieties to be mentioned and we will give you a source list in the next issue.

In our first issue we discussed the fact that very few people were reoffering in the SSE Annual seeds that they had acquired from listed SSE members and that if that trend continued only a few listed SSE members would be preserving the bulk of heirloom varieties … not a good situation. A word of explanation to our non-SSE subscribers about the structure of SSE would be in order. All members of SSE pay $25 per year. About 1000 members elect to list and offer seeds through the Annual; they are called listed Members. About 8000 members do not offer seeds and they are called unlisted members. Currently, for tomatoes, listed members can order from each other for 50 cents per pack (bargain of the century!) and unlisted members can order from listed members for $1 per pack (bargain of the century!). In our experience the bulk of requests, obviously, come from unlisted members who, for a variety of reasons are not reoffering the seed and becoming listed members. Many seem to be using the Annual simply as a seed catalog and have no intention of becoming listed members. To those of us germinating, transplanting, planting, fertilizing, weeding, picking, fermenting seed and spending hours filling requests this is not a good situation. But there are many reasons why someone might not reoffer seed. We received several letters in response to our question and would like to share some of the responses with you.

Many folks said that they had not even considered reoffering seeds, didn’t realize it was a problem and planned to do so in the future. John Chambers of CA was equally forthright in stating that he didn’t have the time to do it. He’s retired from teaching, is active as a judge in the Odyssey of the Mind program, has extensive gardens and raises several thousand irises each year as a part of his breeding program. Denise Rifenbert of NY echoed a common theme in stating that she was concerned about purity of seed that she might send out. (We’ll address this issue soon. Eds.) Denise also mentioned that she DOES reoffer extra seeds in packets to others, so that, in a way they do get reoffered. Beth Crowder of NM suggested that it might make sense for Off the Vine readers to designate certain varieties as the ones to save in a certain year … an interesting idea. Summarizing the major themes it appears that the following are barriers to reoffering seed: 1) Not knowing about the option of reoffering, 2) Not realizing the importance of reoffering, 3) Concern about the isolation distances, 4) Concern about the purity of seed, 5) Not knowing how much seed to save and 6) Concern about seed isolation techniques. Numbers 1 and 2 might be addressed by a discussion in the SSE Annual; I (CJM) have written a letter to SSE asking that this be considered. Numbers 4 and 5 we can address in an upcoming article and #6 was addressed in our first issue.

Let me share with you some of the thoughts others had about increasing the reoffer rate. Jeff Fleming of MI was one of several who suggested that unlisted members pay a price for seeds considerably higher than that of listed members, thus increasing the incentive to be a listed member. This has been brought to the attention of SSE in the past by others. So far the price differential has remained the same; no doubt there is a reluctance to possibly discourage new and renewing memberships. It is our understanding that the pricing structure is currently under review. Chuck Wyatt of MD, a retired military man, suggested that instructions for seed saving be included in packets of seed sent out. That is certainly “doable”: What do you think? Would it help?

I (CJM) must confess that there was one response I favored. I won’t use the gentleman’s name, because I couldn’t reach him on the phone to obtain permission. In addition to starting that he “devoured” our first issue, and expressing concern about determining purity of saved seed, he went on to say that I sounded, “incidentally like my kind of wild woman, although you are ever so slightly more substantial than my wife of X years. If she ever dumps me (not likely), I’ll look you up.” I was flattered! His optimism in sending money for several years worth of Off the Vine was both encouraging and daunting at the same time!

Our NEXT QUESTION FOR YOU TO RESPOND TO deals with sharing with OTV readers WHAT your favorite heirloom tomatoes are and WHY they are your favorites. Lots of folks would like some guidance in this area of pickling good ones and you, the growers, are the logical ones to respond. Some readers have suggested doing this by geographic area, but I don’t think we have a large enough base to make that feasible at this time. So, write to Carolyn (address at the end of this article) and let us know what your FAVORITE LARGE PINK AND LARGE RED heirloom tomatoes are, why they are favorites and where seed can be obtained. We’ll get around to the other colors/shapes in a future issue. Since Carolyn’s phone bill is going out of sight (no, the tomato calls are not factored out and charged to OTV), we will feel free t publish what you write unless you state otherwise. Remember we want to make this newsletter interactive so YOUR RESPONSES ARE CRITICAL TO OUR GOAL OF SUBSCRIBER INVOLVEMENT!

Lastly, we’d like to give you an update on our summer 1994 growouts as of mid-August. Thus Craig has seen most, but not all of his varieties and Carolyn’s are just starting to ripen. Carolyn doesn’t plant out until after Memorial Day because of the inability to protect so many plants from frost and indeed, this year, there was a killing frost and indeed, this year, there was a killing frost on the Friday of Memorial Day Weekend. She is growing 152 varieties this year, and 33 kinds of peppers. But, practically nothing else got planted because of her encounter with three kidney stones, blockage and concerns about kidney failure. She underwent Lithotripsy (bursting up the stones with directed ultrasound) on an outpatient basis, and had an uneventful recovery. But the whole problem started in early May, the stones weren’t confirmed until after several ER visits in early June and lithotripsy was done at the earliest possible date on June 23. Nevertheless, crawling along the rows to plant, sometimes in less than good shape, she got them all in. on the other hand there were no carrots, beets beans, squash or anything else. Actually all she has are tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and melons. Oh well, there’s always next year. The growing season for her has been great, no irrigation needed since early June, and the “big ones” are turning now. of course prime interest is being paid to the USDA varieties mentioned elsewhere, but there are many new varieties she’s obtained from Latvia, Ukraine and Yugoslavia through contacts at work. She’ll have to defer discussion of her heirlooms until the next issue.

A report on Craig’s garden will be found in a separate article in this issue.

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Craig’s comments on reading the above

Wow! There is a lot of information packed into the introduction column that Carolyn penned. It is so - well, HER - Carolyn’s personality, approach, points of view are never in doubt when one reads her writing. I was surprised to be reminded of the number of our subscribers (not bad at all!). I was surprised to be reminded of how “out there” each of us already were, in publications, seed catalogs, etc. I think that I have all of the the issues of Bob Ambrose’s Tomato Club newsletter somewhere, and may consider reproducing them in future blogs, once the Off The Vine articles are all posted.

I found it all really interesting. What a treat to be reading through these again! For those of you who subscribed, I hope you are enjoying these as well. For those who never heard of Off The Vine, or were hoping to get to read them some day - enjoy! And please, don’t pay much attention to addresses and costs of things above (as something that would be accurate today!).