Cherry tomatoes from July 2019 harvest - our last garden in Raleigh

Wow - somehow we are one third of the way through this mini project. Now that all of Volume 1 has been posted in weekly blogs, let’s dive in to Volume 2. This is the typical Carolyn opening post, laying out her , thoughts, details on subscriptions, articles, our newsletter aims, and our seasons. These types of columns are certainly the most “Carolyn” of the articles she wrote for Off The Vine - and they are such fun to read.

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C and C’s Column

by Carolyn

It’s time to renew your subscription if your mailing label has 21 written next to your name (21 means Volume 2, #1). If we’ve educated and entertained you we hope you’ll stay with us. Separate renewal notices will not be sent out so please send your renewal after you’ve read this issue. I would deeply appreciate it if you would write renewal on your check or on a short note; I sent second copies of Vol1, #3 to several folks who didn’t write renewal and I thought they were new subscribers. Until last December I could remember the names of most of our subscribers but I no longer can do that. Also please mention your favorite large red and pink tomatoes; I’ll have enough data to do that article for the fall issue of Off the Vine.

Subscription renewal prices for SU residents are $5 for one year and $12 for year years, for Canadian readers renewal rates are $6(US) for one year and $14(US) for two years and the renewal rate for other foreign addresses is $7(US) for one year and $16(US) for two years. The two-year rates reflect the increase in rates, starting with Vol. 3, that we announced in our last issue. Please check your address labels to be sure they are accurate and let me know if there is a problem with the expiration date given. Also, please remember to notify me of any address changes.

First, I’d like to apologize to those Off the Vine subscribers who received copies of 13 which were not of good quality. New subscribers received good copies. I had hired two students to help with the stapling and stamping and when I went to pick up the copies from the copy place, a national chain, they were bad. The manager agreed, but they didn’t know when their machine would be fixed and so I made an instant decision to take them because I had already hired the students to work at a specific time period. While the copies were a bit smeared and some of the print was wavy they were still perfectly readable. Hopefully it won’t happen again.

The months of February, March and April challenged me as those months have never challenged me in the past. Between trying to meet my academic obligations and process SSE seed requests, new subscriptions to Off the Vine, F2 seed requests, back issue requests and renewal return I was totally snowed under! Craig also was very busy with SSE seed requests, planting seeds, work and taxiing two daughters to all their various activities. All seed requests went out within one week and all new Off the Vine’s within two weeks but it was difficult. Craig and I were pleased and surprised to find so many of you interested in the F2 seeds we offered, so we definitely will do it again next year, but we’ll have someone help me and you can send your requests for F2’s directly to that person (details in our fall issue). Many of you asked specific questions which I simply didn’t have the time to answer and I asked you to please call me at home before 9PM; I hope you still will because I love to help folks if I can and I hope you can appreciate the time constraints that I have at that time of the year. Summer is better!

I’d like to acknowledge the help of two very important people in getting your Off the Vine’s to you. Starting with the last issue, Jeff Fleming of Michigan is generating by computer the mailing labels, for which we are ever so grateful. Jeff is an SSE member and also a long time friend of Craig’s. Jeff works for Upjohn Pharmaceuticals and his computer skills are deeply appreciated. The layout is now being done by a colleague of mine in computer sciences. His name is Mike Kuhrt and I don't’ know if he even eats tomatoes! Mike and I need to tinker with the format to get what we want, so be prepared to see changes in the future. Starting with this issue we’ll try to do articles more sequentially so you won’t have to flip so many pages, and you won’t have to flip so many pages because we want to get the format back to what we promised in issue one, which was 4-5 (or so) pages double sided. That will mean reducing the font size back to what we started with. At least I’m learning!

We have a mix of interesting articles for this issue. Amy Goldman of Rhineback, NY has contributed an article about Desert Sweet tomatoes, which are a group of tomatoes developed in Israel that are grown using brackish or saline water for irrigation. With lowered water tables and increased salinity being seen in many places in the US and elsewhere, the research that went into developing these tomatoes is of major importance.

Amy is an SSE member, a psychologist currently on “sabbatical,” a wife to Larry and a mother to young Sara, Executive Director of the Sol Goldman Charitable Trust and gentlewoman farmer who is determined to take the top prize in the Dutchess County Fair! This year she’s growing about 95 different varieties of tomatoes, 50 kinds of peppers, 26 varieties of winter squash and anything else that might garner her a blue ribbon. She “doesn’t do corn” like I don’t ”do windows or pump gas.” Amy and I met about a year ago after I got a phone call from her the Tuesday after Memorial Day weekend when she explained that her tomatoes had been “frosted” and she was seeking replacements . We untangled about 200 plants from my seed pans, which I keep until the transplants are out in the field and flourishing, and she happily drove home with her new varieties. Typical of Amy, she insisted that I must taste some Desert Sweet tomatoes. They were flown in from Israel and she had them delivered from Rhineback to Loudonville where my mother and gerdens both reside because I was teaching. I expected to find medium size or beefsteak type fruit and was very surprised to find cherry tomatoes on the vine! The gorgeous deep red fruit were still attached to the vine, in clusters, but the leaves had been removed. What can I say, they were delicious: they kind of “popped” in my mouth, were sweet and full flavored. I was very very impressed! Amy states in her article that seed is not available, but naturally I had to save some. While they are probably hybrids, there’s only one way to find out: they’re on the list for next year.

Our second guest author is William Woys Weaver of Paoli, PA. Will is a well known food historian who has specialized in Pennsylvania Dutch cookery and has authored several books and articles on that subject. His most recent book, entitled Pennsylvania Dutch Country Cooking (ISBN 1-55859-568-6, Abbeville Press), won a prestigious Julia Child award. I was fascinated by the food history and the color illustrations are exquisite. I’m even more excited by the book Will is currently working on which is about heirloom vegetables. It will be called Epicure with Hoe, and is expected to be published by Henry Holt, Publishers, in the fall of 1996. We’ll keep you updated. This summer is a special challenge for Will because he’s growing all the vegetables that will be photographed for the book. Will grows a tremendous variety of flowers, fruit and vegetables at Roughwood, his restored 1805 farmhouse. He also develops and tests recipes for inclusion in his books and articles. Would that I lived closer! I first got to know him last year when he sent me an SSE request for a particular tomato that I thought had no redeeming virtues and had said so in the SSE Annual. I wrote him a little note telling him that I didn’t think it was a good tomato and that I was sending him some extras to make up for its deficiencies. Back came a letter explaining that he was researching the introduction of tomatoes from Haiti to Philadelphia and thus his interest in the tomato he had requested, Plate de Haiti. We had further chances to chat about what heirloom tomatoes he might include in that chapter of his new book. And yes, as he points out in his article, I did challenge him to make Riesentraube wine after he told me about the recipe he’d found. To be honest, I really didn’t think he’d do it, but I’ve since discovered that Will thrives on challenges! He recently sent me a sample of the Riesentraube wine and I think it is fantastic. It tastes, to me, like a medium sweet sherry and if, as he says, it will get better with age, I’ll be happy to sip from time to time to judge its progress! I’m delighted he’s written the Riesentraube article for us and hope that he’ll contribute more in the future … after the copy for his new book is completed!

A third article is the result of Craig’s interview with George Gleckler. Many of you, I’m sure, have ordered heirloom tomato seed from Gleckler’s and most of you should be interested in the insights George shared with Craig concerning the seed business. As usual, I write this column to update you on this and that, introduce our guest authors and outline the articles being presented. Finally, Craig and I have each written articles which share with you the mental processes we go through when deciding what to grow out each year.

Recently I had an opportunity to taste a very special tomato. I got a call from Rolf Boessmann, who lives her Rochester, NY, who said that the Wegman’s food chain in the area had been chosen as the initial world test market for a genetically engineered tomato called Endless Summer. He made an offer I couldn’t refuse. Rolf packed them well and one week later I received two 10-12 oz. deep pink (red?) fruit which were not soft. I took them to work and we had a taste testing at the start of a committee meeting. We were not impressed. Visually they were prettier than the standard picked green and gassed with ethylene winter types, but if there was an improvement in taste it was in the range of perhaps 5-10% over the standard winter rocks called tomatoes. At $2/lb. I’ll wait for summer. They were developed by researchers at DNA Plant Technology Corp. in Oakland, CA who identified a ripening gene and “switched it off”. Presumably they can be picked later than the winter rock type, thus improving the natural flavor. While the shelf life of standard tomatoes is 7-10 days the shelf life of Endless Summer tomatoes is stated to be 30 days. I believe it! A few weeks later George Losoncy, an Off the Vine reader, sent me an article which appeared in the NY Times on 4/11/95 about Calgene’s genetically altered tomato called Flavr Savr. I knew about these two years ago, but have never seen them offered. The NY Times article explained that the genetic changes made to the tomato resulted in fruit that bruised easily and Calgene is having major problems with adequate packing and shipping. I’m not sure what I expected from genetically engineered tomatoes: probably some taste in a winter tomato, but I know I haven’t seen it yet!

As of May 17th, Craig has already planted outside his 120 or so tomato varieties while mine are still in the greenhouse of a commercial farmer friend who grows them for me after I seed and transplant them. It’s been cold and windy here in upstate NY; I’m probably not even going to start hardening them off until this weekend. I’m growing about 160 varieties this year and that means 500-600 plants in the tomato patch! Germination was excellent save for two varieties received from others, which didn’t germinate at all: they’ll be candidates for potassium nitrate treatment next year. Since we have both received inquiries about germination problems we will write an article for the call Off the Vine issue telling you how we germinate seeds. It’s very distressing to me, for instance, to have someone tell me only one seed out of 10 came up while I get close to 100% germination with the same seed. We promised ourselves that Off the Vine would not publish articles about tomato culture, that’s not what our mission is about, but we think the germination situation requires some comment.

Once again we encourage you to consider writing an article about some aspect of heirloom tomatoes. Please check with us first, and if we can use it, we will. We’ve repeatedly stated that we want Off the Vine to be interactive with our readers, and that can’t happen unless some of you participate with contributions.

Have a wonderful summer growing season, without late blight, and we look forward to sharing with you again in our fall issue.

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Wow, this is a pretty interesting and packed issue - Some big time names for sure - Amy Goldman and William Woys Weaver, as well as Gleckler - and GE tomatoes. Lots to look forward to in the coming weeks.