Very first forsythia blossom seen March 7

On to an article written by Carolyn where she lays out some of her favorite heirlooms. This is a fun read. She talks about quite a few varieties she got from me, as well as some real gems that she received from the mysterious Joe Bratka. Fun read awaits!

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Carolyn’s Current Favorites

by Carolyn

In our first issue of Off the Vine I said that the three most common questions asked when folks requested seeds from me through SSE had to do with isolation distances to maintain purity, methods of saving seed and my personal favorites. The first two questions were dealt with in Volume I, #1 of Off the Vine. Now I’m going to try the “almost impossible”… describing my current favorites. By now I must have sampled 400-500 varieties of heirloom tomatoes and it has been difficult to settle on just a few favorites. But these are the varieties I grow every year … these are the varieties I head for, for myself, when I wade into the tomato field! Remember that I’m writing this in early August and somewhere in that field of 153 varieties there’s bound to be a new favorite or two. I’ll discuss them in the following order: reds, pinks, bicolors, cherries (all colors), greens, yellows and oranges.

First, let’s talk about red tomatoes, the standard accepted color of most tomato growers. Russian #117 is a large, wedge-shaped (wide oxheart) tomato which is quite prolific and has a wonderful rich flavor. It’s one of the heaviest, not largest, tomatoes that I grow and not much is known about its background other than the fact that the seeds came from a Russian sailor. Cuostralee is another favorite: three years ago a French seed collector traded seeds with several SSE members and this variety is from him; I don’t know its true country of origin. Again, it's a large, superb-tasting tomato which is slightly oval in shape. A close runner-up to Cuostralee is Druzba, a medium sized, perfect globe-shaped tomato from Bulgaria. To be honest, I’ve never met a Bulgarian tomato that I didn’t like! I’ve always liked Red Brandywine, a deep red globe-shaped variant of Brandywine. German Red Strawberry I grew for the first time last summer and I was impressed both with taste and yield of this large pseudo-oxheart-shaped tomato. Opalka is one of my best paste tomatoes … it has long sausage-shaped fruit with very few seeds and excellent taste.

There are so many excellent pink tomatoes that I had a hard time selecting my favorites. One of them had to be Eva Purple Ball; purple in tomato language means pink, except for Purple Calabash, which really is purple and is a contorted mass of tasteless flesh! Eva is from the Black Forest region of Germany and arrived in America in the late 1800’s with the Bratka family. Many of our best heirlooms arrived here in a similar manner; they were treasured family heirlooms that were brought to America by immigrant families. Eva gives you perfect pink 6-8 oz. globes all season long. The taste is outstanding and the vines are very disease resistant. The skin has a faint mottling of white: when the fruit are completely ripe they tend to drop from the vine. Another favorite is Soldacki, a large pink beefsteak type with potato-leafed foliage. I happen to be partial to potato-leafed types because they are so beautiful and are also quite resistant to both early and late blights. Soldacki is Polish and arrived here in the early 1900’s. I obtained the seed from a colleague at work. Sandul Moldovan I obtained from a family who immigrated to Albany three years ago. It is slightly flattened, about one pound, very prolific and has a lovely sweet taste. Anna Russian, an oxheart, is another good one, in addition to Jeff Davis, a potato-leafed variety, Large Pink Bulgarian, beefsteak-shaped and Fritz, a large very deep pink beefsteak tomato from Germany. Tad Smith, an SSE member and a gifted tomato hybridizer, hybridized Purple Perfect from two heirlooms. It has roughly the same coloration as Cherokee Purple, which is a dusky rose, and I like the taste better than the latter. Grosse Cotelee and Marizol Purple are two other pinks I regard highly. Finally I’d like to mention Ukrainian Heart (TNMUJ Strain) which is near the top of my list of favorite pinks. The problem is that it crosses easily and I’ve had a hard time keeping this variety pure … but I will grow it every year because it is so outstanding.

The most common bicolored tomatoes are gold/red, but other combinations such as gold/green and white/pink, for instance, also are known, my tow selections are gold with red radiating from the blossom end; sliced fruit show the beautiful marbling of red throughout the interior of the fruit. The first one is Marizol Gold which was also brought by the Bratka family from the Black Forest region of Germany. There currently is a town there called Maria’s Zell (place), and it would seem reasonable to suppose that Marizol might be a contraction of that name. Marizol Gold is very prolific with slightly ribbed fruit in excess of one pound. The foliage is bluish green and the main stem is like a miniature tree trunk in size. Like most bicolors is a very sweet and the reason I like it so much is because there is very little rotting at the stem end which is a problem I’ve encountered with varieties such as Pineapple, Georgia Streak, Big Rainbow and other bicolors. Regina’s Yellow is another bicolor choice. Yes, there is a Regina and she’s from Ohio. While Marizol Gold is a slightly flattened, ribbed tomato, Regina’s Yellow is in the 1-3# class and is beefsteak-shaped. Like Marizol Gold it is luscious, visually beautiful both on the vine and on the plate and is also quite resistant to cracking and rotting at the stem end.

Yes, I know, cherry tomatoes are a dime a dozen, to coin a phrase, pun intended! Reisentraube is a very old German heirloom known to be in existence prior to 1850. The name means “large grape”, but a more apt description is “giant bunch of grapes”. Riesentraube is different from ALL OTHER tomatoes I’ve grown in that it has large sprays of blossoms which contain 200-300 flowers. You could pick the sprays as a cut flower if you wished but you’d be missing out on the 20-40 red, elongated fruit with a pointed end which subsequently develop. The taste is superb; I couldn’t rate it higher! Another choice is Galina, a potato-leafed yellow variety from Siberia. The second year I grew it I found it had crossed so I’ve been planting seed each year to see what I’d get. I have both ivory and red variants, with regular foliage, and each of them has had the same wonderful flavor. Green Grape, a cherry tomato hybridized from two heirlooms by Tom Wagner of Tater Mater Seed Co. is a third choice. This ripens to an amber yellow color and, like all other green tomatoes I’ve grown, the interior is a bright neon green. You’ll have to overcome your prejudices against green tomatoes because you’re really missing out on wonderful flavor! Amish Salad is my favorite pink oval cherry tomato, Galina (ivory mutant) my favorite white and Mini-Orange my favorite orange cherry even though it can be a bit bland, depending on growing conditions.

Live a little, try a green tomato! I must confess that being a life-long gardener of primarily red tomatoes I was hesitant to try green ones; the other colors didn’t bother me, but GREEN? It turns out that I was the loser all those years. Most folks in the “know” rate green tomatoes near the top of their list of taste favorites and I would agree. Most large green tomatoes that I’ve grown have been wonderful in taste, but severely distorted in shape. Last year I grew for the first time Aunt Ruby’s German Green, an heirloom from Tennessee. It is a normal beefsteak shape with a spicy, rich flavor that you won’t find in non-green tomatoes. Others like a green tomato called, cleverly, Green, which I will try next year; it’s also supposed to be smooth.

Next I’ll mention the yellows. Until I started growing heirlooms I found most yellow tomatoes to be bland and not worth growing. Lillian’s Yellow Heirloom, from Tennessee is a potato-leafed variety with large beefsteak-shaped fruit of the most complex and delicious flavor; the consistency of the flesh is almost creamy. A few of the fruit may be misshapen, but who cares when wonderful flavor is the goal. Lillian’s ripens to a clear yellow, not a gold as do most yellow tomatoes. That’s also true of another selection called Manyel. Manyel is suggested to be of Native American origin, the name meaning “many moons”, and is a large globe shaped tomato. It too, has a terrific taste and I wouldn’t be without it. Paragon Yellow may be derived from the historical variety Paragon, and while the skin can sometimes be a bit rough Paragon Yellow is a prolific producer of large globe-shaped fruit with excellent taste. A new favorite from last summer is Dr. Wyche’s Yellow. Again, it is prolific and bears large quantities of very large beefsteak fruit which ripen to a lovely gold. My last selection is a real treasure … Jaune Negib, one of the many varieties received three years ago from Norbert Parreira of France. He requested seed trades with several SSE members and many excellent varieties from his collection have become available as the SSE members reoffer seed in the SSE Annual each year. Jaune Negib is early and bears small oblate (flattened) fruit which are often scalloped. Being early, pretty, and tasty makes it rate high in my tomato book!

I’ve grown many orange tomatoes and have found only two, so far, that I like. One is Kellogg’s Breakfast which is a very large, pale orange/gold beefsteak type. Unlike Amana Orange, which it resembles, Kellogg’s Breakfast has excellent taste; the former is too bland for me. My second choice is Flamme, another variety from France. It’s a small globe, early and tasty. For some reason I find orange tomatoes to be either too bland for me or too “strong”, and I don't’ know what I mean by the latter, but Persimmmon and Verna Orange would be examples.

These are my favorites as of August, 1994. I’m sure a new favorite(s) will appear this summer, they always do. Some of you are probably saying, “where’s Brandywine or Winsall or this one or that one”. Speaking only of Brandywine, I’ve tried four different strains and have been underwhelmed with all of them. What performs well for me may not perform well for you. If someone praises a certain tomato highly and it doesn’t perform for me the fist year, I save seed and plant it the next year. Often the tomato will adapt. One of our subscribers has been very successful doing this, especially in the arid southwest, and his article describing this adaptation will appear in an upcoming issue of Off the Vine. The search goes on each year to find that super tomato and that’s what makes growing out new varieties so exciting. So many tomatoes … so little time!

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This is a really fascinating read. It reminds me that in some cases, Carolyn and I agreed on a tomato’s attributes. In other cases, we were miles apart. Some tomatoes that we both really loved are Opalka, Sandul Moldovan, Anna Russian, Aunt Ruby’s German Green, Lillian’s Yellow Heirloom. Some that neither of us were particularly enamored with are Amana Orange and Verman Orange.

There are also cases when Carolyn loves varieties that I find a bit lacking. Some of these would be Cuostralee, Eva Purple Ball, Marizol Gold, Regina’s Yellow, Manyel, Dr. Wyche’s Yellow - all of which I find on the bland side. And she didn’t care for Brandywine - but I find it one of the best tomatoes I’ve tasted. Different palates, different expectations, different growing zones, different soil are among possible reasons for diverging opinions.