Marlin keeping an eye on things, mid May 2022

I wrote an article to share the increasing challenge of deciding what to grow, as my seed collection grew each year. I haven’t read this in a long time - and am interested in seeing how my decisions were made, and how my current garden choices align with this garden from nearly 30 years ago!

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What To Grow in 1995? A Tomato Enthusiast Out of Control!

by Craig

So, when one has hundreds of varieties of tomato seeds sitting out in little glass vials on the shelf of the garage, what happens in late winter when it becomes time to think about the garden? What kind of selection process do I use to decide what to grow in the coming summer’s garden, and which will have to wait another year or more? For many of you, deciding what to grow may be an easy process, but not for me! I can always seem to come up with a good reason to grow any particular variety of tomato, but with such a large collection, discipline and planning is a must! Here is the reasoning process that I have struggled with this year in planning my tomato growouts.

I guess that the first thing that I do is mentally divide the tomato varieties that I have in my possession into several categories. The two major priorities are what will taste best (since it can be argued that the most important reason to have a garden is to eat of its bounty), and what needs to be grown for seed purposes. There are many factors that contribute to this second priority, such as how many people are reoffering, if any, in the SSE annual, the age of the seed (meaning, how long has it been since it was last grown), what is the priority if it has yet to be grown, etc. Often, such as in this year and, I suspect, all years hence, it comes down to how much room I have for tomatoes in my garden, and how close do I dare space them! Usually, I then start looking for friends and remote gardens in which to inject my varieties.

Rather than to continue to explain the process, I will use actual details that are in progress for my 1995 garden. This year, my original goal was to concentrate on those varieties that have performed best for me over the years. There is interest from a local grocery store to market heirloom tomatoes, so I was going to grow several plants of these “best” types to sell to the store. First in priority are the potato leaf pink tomatoes, since most of the best that I have tasted are in this category. For this purpose I selected Brandywine, Polish, and Stump of the World. But, do I plant saved seeds or the seeds from the original source? I decided to try some of each. Next are large pink regular leaf types that are extremely sweet and delicious. I chose Mortgage Lifter, but from two sources (Charlotte Mullens and Jim Halladay), both original and saved seed. I also decided to add Wins All, which excelled for me last year and is a legitimate old commercially developed variety, sent to be by someone in North Carolina who has been keeping it going for many years. Next, keeping with the pinks, are the wonderful heart shaped varieties that are so spindly as seedlings, such as Anna Russian, Ukrainian Heart, and Nicky Crain. (Again...saved or original?? Both!..). Already it is getting cumbersome and complicated. On we go to the red tomatoes, and I selected Bisignano #2, Opalka, Reif Italian Heart, Big Sandy, and Favorite. To provide tomatoes of unusual and different colors, I chose to grow Yellow-White (also known as Viva Lindsey’s Kentucky Heirloom), Hugh’s, Lillian’s Yellow, Potato Leaf Yellow, Yellow Brandywine, Green, Golden Queen, Robinson’s German Bicolor, and Aunt Ruby’s German Green. Oh yes, I forgot two favorites, Eva Purple Ball and Cherokee Purple, as well as Madara yellow cherry. That gives me a total of 25 varieties to grow to eat and sell to the grocery store for market. Accounting for the number of each type I wish to grow, this will take care of about 36 plants (I will be able to fit about 80-85 or so in my garden, with about 30 in remote locations).

This year, I acquired 41 varieties from the USDA germplasm collection in Geneva and Fort Collins. Most of those will be grown in the remote locations, but I am still very curious in what they will look like, and I certainly want fresh seed from them. The ones that are old commercial varieties, and will find a home in my garden, are: Imperial, Stick, Earliest of All, Enormous, Buckbee’s New 50 Day, Success, Gold Ball, Diener, and Peak of Perfection. The others, Abel, Nectarine, Golden Beauty, Giant Beauty, Santa Clara Canner, Ham Green Favorite, Golden Monarch, Jagged Leaf, Vivid, Cream City, Potato Leaf Type, Golden Glory, Heterosis, Tops All, Albino, Trimson, Early Giant, High Crimson, Giant Tree, Yellow Ponderosa, Orange Chatham, Orange King, Bountiful, Giant Italian Potato Leaf, Royal Wonder, Yellow, The Orange, and Matchless will have to be grown in other locations. (The jury is still out on if these will be exactly the ones to be orphaned!). Some apparently shorter growing varieties, such as Dwarf Stone, Dwarf Recessive, Victorian Dwarf #1, and New Big Dwarf will be grown in pots on the periphery of my garden.

Last year’s growouts of the USDA varieties left some unsolved mysteries. I will try growing one more time Acme, Queen of the Purples, and Mikado in hopes that they might be true to the description. A few of the USDA varieties did not germinate last year, and will get a potassium nitrite treatment and another chance this year (samples of Beauty and Alpha Pink are in this category). A few of the USDA collection will be grown for the first time, such as Mikado Ecarlate, or regrown to get another look at the variety, such as Abraham Lincoln and Magnus.

Now we come to varieties that come from seed savers and need growing out for seed and observations about performance. In this category are Big Yellow, A. C. Red, Mennonite, Orange Strawberry, Potato Leaf Hillbilly (I am dying to see a potato leaf bicolor), Southern Night, Yellow Brandywine and Brandywine from a fellow in Ohio, Italian Giant, Indische Fleische, Bull Heart, Russian Persimmon, Snowball, Azoychka, Cosmonaut Volkov Red, and Orange. (These will be grown in my home garden). Finally, the experiments, such as my search for the regular leaf bicolor of Nina’s Heirloom and F3 growouts from Sun Gold, round out the list.

Does this represent everything that I would like to grow? Not by a long shot. I have hundreds of varieties that I will need to get to within the next 3-5 years, and there will be renewal of seed of other varieties. And, I suppose, more people will send me their favorites, and there are a host of other interesting varieties sitting in the USDA collection, or somewhere else in the world waiting to be grown. What fun this is!

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After re-reading this, my head is spinning. I was only about 10 years into my heirloom tomato adventure, and my annual decisions on what to grow were already very complex. Many of the tomatoes I wrote about continue to be favorites, and others bring back fond memories, though I’ve not grown them in some time. Perhaps re-reading this article will influence what I grow next year!