Off The Vine, Volume 1, Number 2. "Carolyn's Current Favorites"

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.

First time to see this Spirea bloom - we purchased it last spring when it was done blooming. Foliage will be bright yellow green

Off The Vine, Volume 1, Number 2. Craig's article "On the Trail of "Lost" Commercial Varieties - Success at Last"

Spring showing up in Hendersonville on March 4

Here is the third article from Off The Vine, Volume 1, Number 2. It is an article I wrote that makes it very clear I was deep into hunting for lost varieties that appeared in seed catalogs between the mid 1800s and early 1900s. This is a pretty info-packed article - I am going to give it a read and have quite a reaction piece at the end.

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On the Trail of “Lost” Commercial Varieties:  Success at Last!

by Craig

The tomatoes in the SSE collection, though numbering in the thousands, can be divided into three general types.  First are the huge number of heirlooms that have been maintained by families or individuals.  These are the ones that have been handed down over the years, finally reaching an SSE member, who grows it out and makes it available for all of us to try.  Sometimes, these varieties have detailed and interesting histories attached to them, such as Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter, Viva Lindsey’s Kentucky Heirloom, or Cherokee Purple.  Often, the history is sketchy at best, or even absent, or forgotten.  Even more surprising to note is that in many of these cases, varieties matching the descriptions were never commercially developed, or available.  The most obvious case is of the bicolored beefsteak varieties, such as Ruby Gold and Georgia Streak.  Among the possible origins of these tomatoes are introduction from other countries, crosses or sports that appeared in gardens over the years, or renamings of commercial varieties by various gardeners.  For example, if a particular family was growing Acme for generations, somewhere along the line it may have received a different name, such as Fritsche Family, or Hunt Family Favorite, in order to personalize it a bit.  All of these reasons, and perhaps others, could conceivably have contributed to the observation that thousands of named tomato varieties exist in the various seed collections (SSE, USDA, Davis), yet far less than 500 types were commercially produced and released by seed companies.

Another group of tomatoes that are represented in the SSE collection is the newer commercial open pollinated varieties, such as Fireball and Rutgers, and some of the experimental varieties that have been generated by amateur plant breeders.  Examples of these are Green Grape, Purple Perfect, and Elberta Girl.  Many people are (unfortunately) also beginning to offer seeds saved from hybrids, such as Sweet 100.  There has been little interest or activity in using the old fashioned methods of tomato “breeding,” such as looking for sport plants in the fields, or hybridizing for the sole purpose of stabilizing the offspring for release of new open pollinated types.  A major reason is the one of profit; hybrids are big money for seed companies, since they force you to return to them each year for seed.  Of course, you can save seed and grow tomatoes from hybrids, but it is any body’s guess what you will get.  I am currently working with a truly fine hybrid cherry tomato, Sun Gold, growing out 4 or 5 of the F2’s each year just to see if I can get an OP version that has the excellent qualities of the hybrid.  Seed savers should be warned that it takes years of grow outs to truly stabilize varieties that originate from F1 hybrids.

Finally, there is the small number of authentic heirloom commercial varieties that were developed between 1870 and the 1920’s.  Among well-known examples of this type are Abraham Lincoln, Stone, and Marglobe.  This category, in particular, has interested me for a long time, for a number of reasons.  These old varieties represent the first attempts at improving the tomato in America.  Growing out these varieties gives us an opportunity to see what people were growing and eating at the turn of the century.  And, many of these varieties were used as breeding stock for future tomatoes.  And so, one can be assured that they are growing something old and historically interesting when some of these varieties are in the garden.

In the mid 1800’s, tomatoes of various sizes and colors were being grown, having probably come to this country from Europe.  It seems as though the fruits of these old varieties were quite rough and irregular, and reading the reprints of the Fearing Burr and Vilmorin books give a pretty good image of what was available back then.  Early attempts at improving the tomato involved selecting the fruits on a particular plant that had the desired characteristics, such as saving seed from the largest or smoothest fruit of a particular plant.  Of course, growing the saved seed gave fruit that were very similar to the parent plant, since selecting particular fruits do not lead to improvement or genetic variation.  The major breakthrough occurred when Alexander Livingston of Ohio realized that identifying and selecting seed from superior plants in a particular plot of a variety would lead to the desired improvement and refinement in the tomato.  Nearly all of his early releases resulted from his careful observations made in large plantings of tomatoes.  We will report on his efforts in a more detailed article in the future.

It has been assumed that many of the early varieties of commercially released tomatoes are extinct.  In reading Carol Deppe’s book on home plant breeding, I was alerted to the USDA tomato germplasm collection, and decided to see what they had in storage there.  Much to my delight, Carolyn and I found that they had a significant number of the Livingston-bred varieties, as well as numerous other commercial OP varieties, in their collection.  We requested from the USDA, and received, a large number of these old varieties, and in fact, are growing them in our gardens this year.  This discovery has led to what is the most exciting garden that I have yet planted, and many of these are setting fruit as I type this article.  The best information source that we have found for descriptions of commercially released varieties is the Michigan State College Special Bulletin 290, Tomato Varieties, 1938, by Gordon Morrison.  Much of the information cited below is from that source.

Among the varieties we will soon be harvesting and tasting are the following Livingston-bred varieties:  Acme (1875), Magnus (1900), Favorite (1883), Lutescent (probably same as Honor Bright, 1897), Beauty (1885), Dwarf Stone (1902), Paragon (1870), and Golden Queen (1882).  Other old commercial varieties that we are growing are Buckbee’s Beefsteak (Buckbee, early 1900’s), Landreth (synonym for Earliana, 1900), King Humbert (similar to San Marzano, very old, from Italy), Triumph (1879), Early Large Red, Beauty of Loraine, Optimus (Ferry Morse, 1885), Queen Mary, King George (these two from the Blood collection of the 1930’s), Mikado Scarlet, Redfield Beauty (a selection from Beauty), Alpha Pink (Isbell, early 1900’s), Excelsior (1900), Mikado (Henderson, 1889), Wins All (Henderson, 1925), Geswein’s Purple Bonny Best, Early Ruby (1891), White Queen, Alpha (1882), Essex Wonder, Banana Leaf (a curiosity!), Queen of the Purples, Green Gage (1879 is listed, but much older, from Europe), Alice Roosevelt (1900), Trophy (1870), Royal Purple, and Abraham Lincoln (Buckbee, 1923).  In a number of cases, the varieties growing from the USDA collection seed look very different from our previous experiences with them, such as Abraham Lincoln (larger fruit, later) and Acme (smaller, smoother fruit, off color).  A number of the above, such as Trophy (the seeds of which were sold for $5.00/20, very expensive for the 1870’s), Paragon (Livingston’s first introduction, said to be the first really smooth, large tomato), and Acme (the first smooth pink by Livingston), were the breakthrough varieties of their time. 

Among other old commercially developed varieties which are already in the SSE are Early Michigan (1889), Peach (1891), Dwarf Champion (1892), Stone (1891), Earliana (1900), Chalk’s Early Jewel (1905), Globe (1906), Ponderosa (1891), June Pink (1906), Early Detroit (1909), Bonny Best (1916), Gulf State Market (1921), Greater Baltimore (1925), Cooper’s Special (1926), Marglobe (1927), Break O’Day (1932), Oxheart (1932), and Pritchard’s Scarlet Topper (1932), and Rutgers. 

We will be making close observations on these varieties, and then comparing this data to descriptions from the old seed catalogs.  Also, we will report on our findings in the next issue of Off The Vine.  And, we will be saving lots of seed from these types, in preparation for the potential high interest that the SSE members may have next year. 

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Whew - that is indeed a LOT of information. We found out quite a bit of info in the years to follow, so I can provide some corrections and updates. As I suspect you all know, I am a real stickler for historical accuracy.

In the first paragraph I note that the large red/yellow beefsteak types never appeared in seed catalogs. The variety Ruby Gold did indeed appear in a seed catalog - it was released by the John Childs seed company in 1921.

In a future article, I talk about how all of the USDA-acquired varieties performed in my garden, so I won’t provide any comments in that regard in this blog post. Do take a look at all of the varieties we ended up locating. It was quite thrilling to realize that Magnus was sitting in the germplasm collection - a variety adorning the cover of one of my first seed catalog purchases (1900 Livingston). Growing it in my garden was just priceless!

Cell of tomato seedlings on day 4 after seeding - getting some filtered sun on a mild day

Off The Vine, Volume 1, Number 2. Early American Tomato Varieties, guest post, by Andrew Smith

Andrew Smith’s republish effort of Livingston and the Tomato, and his The Tomato in America - both essential reading

Craig’s intro to this article

Carolyn and I both got to know great author and historian and friend Andrew Smith. He was responsible for ensuring that “Livingston and the Tomato” was finally back in print, and has a host of fascinating historical book on a variety of topics. We were so delighted that he penned the following article for our humble little newsletter.

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Early American Tomato Varieties

by Andrew Smith

The tomato plan originated in the coastal highlands of Peru, Ecuador and northern Chili. Of the nine species of Lycopersicon, only two, L. esculentum and L. pimpinefolium produce fruit that are edible. The fruit of wild tomato plants (L. Esculentum) are similar to today’s cherry tomato varieties. Through some unknown means the tomato migrated to Central America. Mayan and other Mesoamerican peoples domesticated the plant and used its fruit in their cookery. They capitalized upon a mutation which produced large lumpy fruit. By the 16th century, tomatoes were cultivated at least in the southern part of Mexico. The Spanish first encountered them after Hernan Cortez began his conquest of Mexico in 1519. The Spanish then introduced the tomato into the Caribbean and the Philippines. From the Philippines, its culture dispersed to Southeast Asia, and ultimately the rest of Asia. Through the Spanish, the tomato was also disseminated into Italy and Spain where it was quickly dispersed throughout Continental Europe.

 The first known reference to tomatoes in what is today the United States was published in Botanologia (London, 1710) by William Salmon, who reportedly saw them growing in “Carolina” in the late 1680’s. Within a hundred years, tomatoes were grown and consumed in all regions of the nation. They were particularly prominent in North and South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana, and probably in Georgia and Alabama.

In 1793, Charles Willson Peale, a portrait painter and the creator of one of America’s first museums in Philadelphia, received “Red Tomato” seeds in a shipment of “a number of subjects of Natural Science” from France. He gave them to his twelve-year-old son, Rubens Peale, who planted them in his garden and gave seeds to Cuthbert and David Landreth. In the 1790’s, the Landreths sold fruits and vegetables from a garden stall by the side of the old Philadelphia courthouse. They sold tomatoes to the French immigrants, but there was little demand from others. By 1800, tomato seeds were also sold in Philadelphia by John Lithen and Bernard M’Mahon. In New York, they were sold in 1807 by Grant Thorburn who established a seed farm and began selling seeds shortly after the turn of the century. Seeds were sold in Baltimore by 1810 and in Boston by 1827. By the 1830’s, tomato seeds were sold throughout the country.

Specific tomato varieties were rarely listed or described in early broadsides and seed catalogs, but many different types of tomatoes were grown in the United States. For instance, Thomas Jefferson exported tomato seeds from France during the early 1780’s to America. While president (1801-9), he noted that tomatoes were sold by market gardeners in Washington. After he retired to Monticello, General John Mason sent him some “Spanish” tomato seeds, whose fruit was “very much larger than common kinds.” Jefferson also planted “dwarf” tomatoes, by which he may have been referring to cherry tomatoes. In 1824, he imported seeds from Mexico. Jefferson was not alone in the quest to explore the diversity of the tomato.

During the 1820’s, large and small varieties with red and yellow colored fruit were noted in agricultural periodicals and advertisements. During the 1830’s, currant tomatoes (L. pimpinellifolium) were found growing wild along the banks of the Mississippi river. By the mid-1830’s, the number of varieties spiraled to several types differing in size, shape and color. In 1835, self-proclaimed botanist and medical practitioner Constantine Rafinesque enumerated fourteen varieties, although, based upon his descriptions, it is difficult to determine the distinctions among many of them. In 1840, the Geneses Farmer advertised large, red, large yellow, small red cherry and Cuba or Spanish tomatoes. More varieties appeared as the decade progressed, such as pear-shaped, cluster, preserving, fig-shaped, yellow cherry and egg-shaped varieties.

Of special interest to tomato growers was a variety brought back from the South Pacific in 1841. An American Exploring Expedition had run across some tomatoes, which were dubbed “Fegee” tomatoes. A sailor had sent seeds back to a friend in Philadelphia, while Charles Wilkes, the Captain of the expedition, sent seeds to the Secretary of the Navy, James Pauling, who evidently dispersed them throughout the United States. They had no discernable effect upon tomato culture, and died out after a few years of cultivation. This variety was later incorrectly identified as the forerunner of the Fejee tomato, which became a popular variety after the Civil War. Despite its name, this later variety originated in Italy.

Several plants advertised as tomato varieties in the 1850’s were not botanically related to Lycopersicon at all, including the Tree Tomato, imported from France around 1859, and the Cape Gooseberry. This suggests that by the 1850’s the name tomato was in such high esteem that it was used to sell other plants. Despite this inflation in the number of purported tomato types, the American Agriculturist maintained that four varieties were most esteemed and cultivated. The large smooth-skinned red, an excellent variety, differed “from all other large sots, in having a smooth skin entirely free from protuberances or inequalities of any kind.” The common large red, with the fruit depressed at both ends, furrowed on the sides, and varying in circumference, from three to eighteen inches, “was a prolific bearer” and was “universally cultivated.” The pear-shaped was “much smaller than either of the preceding, very fleshy, and contained fewer seeds.” The cherry-shaped red has a beautiful little fruit, much resembling a cherry in size and appearance. While some varieties were considered oddities or curiosities, there was a nascent relationship between some varieties and their culinary usage. Red tomatoes were best for ketchup and cooking. Fig-shaped tomatoes were frequently recommended for making confectionary. Pear-shaped, cherry-shaped, yellow types, and the pink-red tomatoes were used for pickling.

Precisely what these varieties looked and tasted like is unknown. Few paintings or illustration s of specific varieties have been located. Vegetables were never a popular subject for still-life artists, and only four American paintings containing tomatoes are known to have survived. These paintings, one by Raphaelle Peale (the brother of Rubens Peale) dated to about 1795, one by an unknown artist painted about 1840, and two by Paul Lacroix painted in 1863 and 1865, show dramatic changes in the tomato’s shape. Peale’s tomato is extremely ribbed and lumpy; the next is less lumpy, but extremely large; and Lacroix’s tomatoes are much smoother and more closely resemble today’s varieties.

Tomatoes sold in the market were described as “thick-skinned, hollow subjects, which bounced like a football.” Farmers and gardeners slowly bred tomatoes with different characteristics, such as a round shape, smooth skin, solid flesh and ripeness all over. Also, American farmers consciously began breeding tomatoes which ripened earlier and yielded more abundantly. In Rochester, New York, J. Slater began saving seeds from the roundest and smoothest tomatoes he could find. His tomatoes were neither flat nor wrinkled, “but as round as an orange, and as smooth and as large as the largest Northern Spy apple.” Dr. T. J. Hand, originally from Sing Sing, New York, began crossing the small cherry tomato with larger, lumpy varieties. The benefits of these breeding efforts began to bear fruit just after the Civil War. Hand’s efforts were rewarded when he ended with a tomato with a solid mass of flesh and juice, with small seeds and smooth skin. Under the name Trophy tomato, its success was unbounded with the promotor, Colonel George Waring, who sold seeds for 25 cents apiece.

During and after the Civil War, the number of tomato varieties increased spectacularly. Fearing Burr’s Field and Garden Vegetables of America, initially published in 1863, reflected his experience as a seedsman and gardener in Massachusetts. He listed 22 tomato varieties, only one of which was not botanically within the Lycopersicon genus. His 1865 edition included two more varieties. Alexander Livingston, who, as a child, was told by his mother that tomatoes were poisonous, became one of the most important developers of tomato varieties in America. By adhering to the principle of single plant selection to clearly define demands in the tomato trade, he developed or improved thirteen major varieties from 1870 to 1893. Among the more important were paragon, acme, perfection, golden Queen, Livingston’s Favorite, Beauty and Stone tomatoes.

In 1866, Liberty Hyde Bailey located and tested seventy-six varieties sold by seedsmen. The following year he included 179 sorts from American, British, French and German seedsmen. This increase was due to several factors: the development of many new American varieties; the introduction of renamed European varieties; the tendency of seedsmen to list as distinct varieties those which differed little from already named ones; and the reluctance of seedsmen to remove duplicates from their list because of customer loyalty to particular names.

Nearly all 19th century tomato varieties were indeterminate, with the exception of “dwarf” or “tree” tomatoes such as Dwarf Champion. The plants were long and straggly, and their fruit continued to set until the frost destroyed the plant. In 1914, Bert Croft found by chance a seedling that was determinant and self-topping. It was a spontaneous mutation which occurred in a tomato plant in Florida which caused the plant “to grow in an orderly, compact, determinate fashion.” It was called the “Cooper Special” after C.D. Cooper from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, who marketed it. This mutation has benefited tomato-improvement programs ever since, and most tomato seeds available today, except for the heirloom varieties, are determinate.

Unfortunately, few of the tomato varieties cultivated in America before the Civil War have survived. The Oliver Kelly Farm in Elk River, administered by the Minnesota Historical Society, purports to grow several tomato varieties that date to the 1850’s. heirloom seeds from the latter part of the 19th century are available today through several different seed companies and organizations. (Please see article on USDA varieties in this issue of Off the Vine. Eds.) Seed Savers Exchange lists several thousand varieties, available to members, and Southern Exposure Seed Company in Earlysville, VA. documents the history of many important heirloom varieties. There are several other seed companies that carry heirloom varieties. Despite the efforts of SSE and others, large numbers of tomato varieties known to have existed during the 19th century have disappeared.

Bibliography

In the interest of space we won’t print the 11 references which accompany this article. If any of our subscribers have a particular interest in the original literature citations, Carolyn will be pleased to provide the bibliography to those folks

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Craig’s comments after reading the above for the first time in a long time

Wow, there is so much to absorb from this really entertaining, informative article. To start, I must say that the phrase at the very end - Bibliography - will remain unfulfilled. Carolyn didn’t share that list with me. I would highly recommend these books from Andrew Smith for additional info and an expansion on the above - The Tomato in America, by Andrew F Smith, published 1994, and Livingston and the Tomato, in which Andrew republished Alexander Livingston’s book with lots of additional information that follows Livingston’s text.

The main takeaway, to me, is that though we seem to have relocated quite a few of the Livingston varieties (Mike Dunton and I actually met and became friends over our individual efforts to find them), many of the very earliest varieties have indeed been lost - at least under the names they were originally called. Most varieties between 1850 and 1880 were not likely very refined, stable varieties, however, so the loss is probably not all that devastating. When I grew Early Large Red (from Oliver Kelly Farm), I feel as if I did indeed view what many of those earliest tomatoes looked like - flat, convoluted, corrugated, pleated, folded, partially hollow - and not particularly appealing!

Inside front cover of Livingston and the Tomato

Off The Vine Volume 1, Number 2 - first article - "C and C's Corner"

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!).

Color appearing this morning - February 17 - and these crocus were not planted by us. I think that the squirrels and birds have been doing some of their own gardening in our yard.

Final article from "Off The Vine", Volume 1, Number 1. "Fax Facts" - an interview of Faxon Stinnett by Carolyn

Back page of our first issue of Off The Vine. With this blog, the entire issue is now posted.

This may be where the true treasures in Off The Vine reside - the interviews Carolyn and I did with prominent tomato folks. Faxon Stinnett was one of those foundational SSE members that brought so much character, and so many wonderful varieties, into the annual SSE yearbooks which ended up in so many gardens. Here’s Carolyn’s interview.

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Fax Facts

Carolyn

Fax Stinnett is one of our pioneer SSE tomato growers.  When I interviewed him by phone in late July he had just come inside from tending the 85 varieties (about 200 plants) he’s growing this year and was prepared to settle in by the air conditioner for the rest of the hot Oklahoma afternoon.  I had talked with Fax before and we had exchanged a few letters, but on that Saturday morning in July we had a chance to talk in more detail.

Fax was born in Arkansas in 1907, named Faxon after a hero in a novel, and he and his family moved to Oklahoma in 1910.  He is the oldest of eight brothers and sisters, five of whom are still alive.  Taking after his grandmother and father Fax became a teacher.  He passed his teacher certification exam after graduating from high school and initially taught in rural one room schools.  By the time he retired in 1971 he was the Principal of the local high school.  He and his wife Mary celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary on June 25, 1993; they raised 2 boys and a girl, all now in their 50s.  Their daughter lives “within shouting distance” from them on the 10 acre plot he and Mary have occupied for the last 51 years.

Gardens have been a part of Fax’s life for 81 of his 86 years!  He clearly remembers responding to an “ad” for the SSE in the Muskogee Daily Phoenix in 1978 and attended the first SSE Campout in 1981 when Diane and Kent were still in Missouri.  There were seven SSE members present.  Fax remembers Dale Anderson (from Indiana), Auburn Cooper and Virgil Johnson (both from Kansas), Russell Crow (from Illinois), Tom Knoche (from Ohio) and Al Razor of Iowa.  He and Mary are still in touch with some of those folks and it’s clear that to them, the SSE friends they’ve made over the years are very special friends.

The first “Yearbook” or SSE Annual that Fax received listed each member’s offerings next to his/her name.  His first offering was Little Yellow, a small yellow tomato that appeared as a volunteer.  His tomato collection grew over the years to about 400 total varieties of which he was offering about 100 per year in the yearbook.  In the past few years he’s planted less (200 plants is less?) because of “advancing” age.  But other than an occasional aspirin and eye drops for glaucoma he says his health is pretty good.  Recently he’s made a master list describing in detail all 400 or so of his varieties.  He gave copies to a few close tomato friends and also to the SSE which has samples of all of his varieties.  He enthusiastically praised Beth Rotto of the SSE for her efforts.  A few years ago he started the transfer of his collection to a man whom Fax expected would grow and reoffer the seeds through the SSE.  This has not happened and clearly Fax is disappointed.

Other tomato friends he spoke of often during our conversation were Gary Staley (Florida) and Thane Earle (Wisconsin), both still active in the SSE, and Don Branscomb, who has not been a member for 2 years and whose present location is not known.

Of course I had to ask Fax for his favorites.  He prefers pinks and immediately mentioned Brandywine and Arkansas Traveler as two of his favorites.  Fax is not an heirloom tomato “purist”.  He grows some hybrids, like Better Boy, because they are good, and experiments with newer ones to see how they do in his garden.  He grows some of his plants in metal cages but most of them are tied up along both sides of a metal fence (hog wire) 3 ft apart along the fence and 1 ft apart on opposite sides of the fence; the opposites are of the same variety.  He fertilizes with 10-20-10, usually twice, and also uses a foliar feed.  He and Mary can tomato juice and whole tomatoes but I have a hunch they give away a lot of produce, tomatoes included!  While Fax tends the vegetables, Mary grows a wide variety of flowers; I’ll bet they are spectacular.

Fax says that their association with the SSE over the years has been wonderful and I know I speak for many SSE members in thanking Fax and Mary for part contributions and wishing them continued good health and happiness in the years ahead.

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Craig’s thoughts upon reading this for the first time on a long time

Here are a few thoughts and a bit more information after reading this interview for the first time in a very long time. His full name was Orville Faxon Stinnett, born in Reed, Arkansas on August 28, 1907. Fax died in Sallisaw, Oklahoma, on May 25, 2004, at the age of 96. His wife, Mary Elizabeth, died in 1996.

I requested seeds from Fax twice - in 1989, requesting Big Ben, Greater Baltimore and Long Tom, and 1994, requesting Mexican Beefsteak and Mexican Beefsteak Pole. I also had a nice correspondence with him about Abraham Lincoln, the authentic version of which he was also searching for. It was he that notified me that a conversation with someone at Shumway confirmed that the true strain was lost to the company.

A few years after joining the SSE I made the trip to Decorah to attend the summer Campout. Though I didn’t get to meet Fax, I did get to make acquaintance with quite a few other SSE members that joined quite early on and had impressive seed collections. It was such a special event, and was very important to all that transpired in my gardening world since.

Since this blog post is the conclusion of the article-by-article blog series of Volume 1, Issue 1, I hope that those of you who are reading these are getting as much joy from them as I am, being reunited with our printed words and thoughts from decades ago. I will begin posting articles from Volume 1, Issue 2 next week!

Mid February sunset from our deck in Hendersonville

More from "Off The Vine", Volume 1, Number 1. "Saving Seeds" by Carolyn

The article on seed saving by Carolyn, transcribed below, with comments prior to and after by me

The next two articles to be posted are by Carolyn Male. The first, in this blog, transcribed below, details her methods for saving tomato seeds. Reading it is just like having a phone chat with her, something we did often. Those that know her - and me - probably only imagine the length of those phone calls!

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Saving Seeds

Carolyn

When filling SSE requests the three most common questions I’m asked are (1) cross-pollination and isolation distances (see Jeff McCormack’s article in this issue) (2)  how to save seeds (see this article), and (3) my favorite tomatoes (future articles!).

Step 1 in saving seeds is to cut your fingernails!  I know this may sound odd but the seeds can get caught under your fingernails and then get washed off into the next variety you are processing thus contaminating the seed you’re processing.  Select firm, ripe fruit from several vines of the same variety and be sure to include a range of fruit sizes; don’t save just the “big” ones.  It’s OK to process fruit that is a bit “over the hill”.  If frost is expected and you MUST save seed from some varieties remember that a tomato that has any color on it will have mature seed.  If you are saving seed just for yourself I don’t see any problem with just scooping out some seeds and drying them.  But if you’re going to offer seed to other SSE members it would be best to process them by fermentation because (1) you get a lot of seed, (2) you eliminate viruses and bacteria which cause tomato diseases, and (3) you end up with fuzzy, squeaky clean seeds which are free of skin, pulp and dirt.

I’m going to describe the method which works best for me; feel free to experiment and find out what works best for you.  I buy 1 lb clear plastic deli containers from the local supermarket; clear containers are best because you can monitor the fermentation process.  Label a container with tape stating the variety name.  Squeeze enough pulp/seeds into the container until it is ¾ full.  Wash your hands thoroughly between filling each of the containers so you don’t carry over seeds and contaminate the next batch.  Place the open containers out of the sun either indoors or out where “critters” won’t tip them over and where fruit files and the anticipated “ripe” odor won’t bother anyone.  Depending on the tomato variety and temperature you’ll usually see a mat of white wrinkled fungus form on the surface of the pulp within a few days and you’ll see bubbles forming under the fungus which indicates the fermentation process has started.  Some folks stir each mixture daily (beware of the contamination between containers), but I don’t stir.  Fermentation is a process which occurs beset in the absence of oxygen and I feel that stirring induces oxygen.  The acid conditions developed from the fermentation are felt to kill most of the virus pathogens and fungus is felt to produce antibiotics which kill most of the bacterial pathogens.  After about 3 to 5 days the seeds have separated from the pulp and have sunk to the bottom or are only loosely attached to the pulp.

Now I’m ready to process this mess! First I directly label (no tape) paper plates with the variety name; Styrofoam plates are not good because they don’t absorb water well from the wet seeds you’ll be putting on the plates.  Then I sit down with a large bucket between my legs and a hose with a pistol grip handle by my left hand (I’m right handed).  Pour off the top layer of pulp and fungus into the bucket; yes, you’ll lose some seeds.  Now spritz some water into the container while swirling with your right hand.  The good seeds will sink and you can pour off the pulp, skin and other debris.  You’ll need to sprtiz, swirl and decant several times until the water is clear.  Drain off the water and dump the seeds onto a labeled paper plate, spreading the seeds around with your finger so there’s only one layer of seeds.  Seeds dumped in a pile may germinate if the weather is damp because fermentation also removes a germination inhibitor.  For heavens sake don’t site under the maple tree with plates of seeds on a windy day or off they’ll go into the wild blue yonder!  Trust me, I’ve done it!  The amount of seed  you get is most dependent upon the variety of tomato, seedy or not, but is also dependent on how efficient the fermentation process was in releasing seeds from their gel capsule and the pulp.  For a tomato like Opalka, a long paste type, I may have to do 3 or 4 containers because the variety has so few seeds.

Dry the seeds in a protected area away from the sun.  I use an empty bedroom which becomes decorated with plates.  I almost forgot, don’t stack the plates with wet seeds because the seeds stick to the plate above them.  The seeds usually are dry in a week or so.  And you should know that mice LOVE tomato seeds so beware!  After the seeds are completely dry, I put them in small screw cap vials.  I use a different color take each year to label the vials.  Jeff McCormack has given some additional ideas for how to keep the seeds under low humidity conditions, which is important if you’ll be keeping the seeds for several years.

That’s how I save my tomato seeds. Some folks use a sieve to separate the pulp from the seeds after fermentation; that method has not worked well for me, but it has worked well for Craig.  Fermentation of seeds is a bit messy and smelly, but if you’re going to share seeds with others it would be nice to share clean disease-free seeds.  I would estimate that in any given year 90% of the seed I receive has been fermented.  I hope the above will be helpful to the many SSE members who have been hesitant to list varieties and become listed members because of not knowing how to ferment the seed.  In 1993 I sent out over 1000 packets of seed.  I know from experience that less than 5% of that seed will be reoffered.  If that trend continues, much of the SSE collection will end up being reoffered by a very few members; that is not a desirable situation.  But we will discuss that issue elsewhere in this newsletter.

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Craig’s comments upon reading - the 2022 view

There is so much wisdom, and some accurate prognostication, going on in Carolyn’s article. She pleads for everyone growing OP varieties to save seeds - it isn’t difficult, is extremely rewarding, and provides lots of seeds to share, donate to seed libraries, and grow on into the future.

The other huge point is the very last bit - the extremely low of seed reoffer rate in the SSE yearbook from seeds sent out. When we were doing this newsletter, Carolyn and me, a few others such as Gary Staley, Calvin Wait, Edmund Brown, Glenn Drowns, Will Bonsall (not an exhaustive list!) held significant tomato variety collections offered through the SSE yearbooks, and just speaking for me, the number of requests were overwhelming, yet rewarding. However, I confirm what Carolyn said - there was a very low reoffer rate. The way I put this into context is to realize that the SSE has been going since 1975…sitting here in 2022, that’s 47 years. In all that time, the maximum number of SSE members offering back seeds in the yearbook was barely over 1,000. Heirloom tomato growing, seed saving - this type of gardening will likely always be a niche activity. It is also vital to keeping these treasured varieties alive and growing and being shared and loved.

I use SSE yearbooks to raise my laptop for Zooms and podcasts! Definitely multi-use, treasured items!

Continuing with "Off The Vine", Volume 1, Number 1. Craig’s article “Tomato History”

The page that holds the article - it will be easier to read transcribed, below, where I add a preface and ending analysis and commentary from where I sit today.

One thing that will become apparent when seeing the articles I enjoyed writing for Off The Vine is that I love tomato history. I think it goes back to wanting to find out which types my grandfather, Walter, grew in his garden, because they were the tomatoes that I first ate and loved, and his garden was the one that first captivated me. The rest is…well, history! And about that title - this really only represents but a small slice of tomato history - with the US lens applied.

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Tomato History (by Craig)

As all of you know, the SSE Winter Yearbook contains descriptions of a few thousand tomatoes.  All told, the SSE Heritage Farm holds seed samples of more than 3500 named varieties.  One wonders how many of these are truly different, as there has certainly been far less than that number actually “developed” by seed companies or other plant breeders.  Since the SSE lists only open-pollinated, or non-hybrid, varieties, and little breeding work on these types has been carried out since the advent of hybrids (probably in the 1950’s or so), many of the SSE listed types are probably mutations or sports, garden crossings, selections, and local or family renaming of known varieties. Untangling this web of variety confusion would be a daunting, if not impossible, task.

 The point of this article, however, is to look at some of the significant tomatoes that have been developed and decide whether they still exist.  A major sources for this information is a Michigan State agricultural bulletin from 1938 that described various tomato varieties available at that time.  Old seed catalogs from the late 1800’s/early 1900’s provided additional information.  One thing to keep in mind is that bees can cross tomatoes, and there is evidence that in areas where sweat bees are prevalent, this can become a problem.  What this means is that it is likely that the old commercially released tomatoes, such as Stone or Acme, may not be exactly the same as they were when developed and released, since it is unlikely that any variety has been grown in isolation for the last 100 years or so.

 Aside from the smaller fruited cherry, currant, plum and pear tomatoes, which have been known since the mid 1800’s and earlier, this article will focus upon larger, or slicing, tomatoes which were specifically developed by breeders or observant gardeners or farmers.  A. W. Livingston was paramount in these early efforts, and he in fact released a number of named varieties between 1870 and 1900.  These resulted primarily from noticing a distinctly different variety growing in a field or plot of another, such as one plant bearing red fruit in a plot of a pink variety.  He also developed some of his varieties from seed that various customers sent to him.

 Starting in about 1900, new varieties were created by crossing or hybridizing varieties, which is the method currently being used to create the many hybrids that populate the majority of today’s seed catalogs.  The main difference is that rather than release the F1 generation (hybrid) seed, the process of growing out, selecting and, therefore, stabilizing open pollinated varieties was used. This is the manner in which Rutgers and Marglobe were derived.  This process is used today for the development of new OP’s.

 As I stated earlier in this article, the vast majority of tomatoes in the SSE collection were never commercially developed or available, being local or family developments or renamings.  The following tomatoes were actually developed, named and offered in various seed catalogs, and are offered in the SSE Winter Yearbook.  Listed will be the tomato name, color, and approximate date of introduction: Acme (pink, 1875), Golden Queen (yellow, 1882), Stone (red, 1889), Peach (fuzzy, pink, 1891), Ponderosa (pink, 1891), Dwarf Champion (pink, 1892), Earliana (red, 1900), Chalk’s Early Jewel (red, 1905), Livingston Globe (pink, 1905), Greater Baltimore (red, 1905), June Pink (pink, 1907), Bonny Best (red, 1908), Early Detroit (pink, 1909), Gulf State Market (pink, 1921), Abraham Lincoln (red, 1923), Cooper’s Special (pink, 1923), Winsall (pink, 1925), Marglobe (red, 1925), Break O’Day (red, 1931), Pritchard’s Scarlet Topper (red, 1931), Oxheart (pink, 1932), and Rutgers (red, 1937). In addition, there are tomatoes in the SSE collection that fit the description, but do not have the same name, as the following:  Early Large Smooth Red (1868, like Large Early Red); White Apple (1887, like Transparent); Mikado, or Turner’s Hybrid (1889, like Brandywine); and Honor Bright (1898, perhaps like Lutescent).

Among those that are either extinct or otherwise renamed are:  Large Yellow (1868), Tilden’s (1868), Large White China Sugar (1868), Large Red Fegee (1868), Keyes’ Early Prolific (1869), General Grant (1871), Hubbard’s Curled Leaf (1872), Trophy (1872), Canada Victor (1874), Hathaway’s Excelsior (1876), Early Conqueror (1876), Triumph (1879), Paragon (1880), Essex Early Hybrid (1891), Golden Trophy (1879), Alpha (1882), Favorite (1883), Optimus (1885), Beauty (1887), Cincinnati Purple (1887), Ignotum (1891), Royal Red (1893), Buckeye State (1895), Magnus (1901), and Dwarf Stone (1905).

 It is interesting to note that some of the tomatoes that have persevered are rather unremarkable, such as Stone and Chalk’s Early Jewel, being rather ordinary red varieties.  Some, such as Abraham Lincoln, no longer seem to match the descriptions originally used in the old seed catalogs.  And, still other varieties that are so popular in the SSE, such as the bicolor beefsteaks (Ruby Gold, Big Rainbow, Georgia Streak, Marizol Gold, etc.) and long plum types (Long Tom, Opalka, Super Italian Paste), never appeared in the old catalogs; they may be imports from Europe, or varieties that were bred by home gardeners, or even mutations that showed up along the way.

 I am constantly accumulating information on older varieties, and do not consider the above lists in any way complete.  But, it gives us a place to start in trying to make sense out of the tomatoes that we have, and are missing from, the SSE collection.  I hope that this article will encourage many of you to write to us and share some of your experiences with the varieties that you have collected or brought to the SSE, especially in their history.

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This book, purchased at a used bookshop in Pennsylvania in the 1980s, is a real treasure. It covers the status of pretty much every crop grown in the US. Of course, I found the tomato section particularly fascinating!

My comments, January 2022

That was a pretty odd read for me. There are some things that are not quite correct, which is not surprising - I was at the very beginning of my tomato sleuthing. Since writing this article, my seed catalog collection has grown substantially and some that I thought were lost have been found (though of course we can’t say if they are exactly as they were when released).

A few date corrections - in paragraph 5, listing the introduction dates of tomatoes listed in the SSE, Oxheart was introduced by Livingston in 1926. In the next paragraph, listing tomatoes that seem to have been lost (or otherwise renamed), we found seed sources for Trophy, Early Conqueror, Triumph, Paragon, Alpha, Favorite, Optimus, Beauty, Buckeye State, Magnus and Dwarf Stone. Aside from Buckeye State, which was made available to Victory by a Ohio source, all varieties were located by searching the UDSA Grin database. Seeds of all were obtained, and most are now commercially available again through one or more seed catalogs. I grew most of them in my gardens, and it has been fascinating to see what the goal of tomato size was in those early US tomato breeding days. Of all of those that we “rescued”, my favorites are Favorite, Optimus and Magnus - not huge, not flashy, but really, really good! Trophy was a real game changer, from 1870 - descriptions in old seed catalogs were always quite imprecise, but the medium sized scarlet tomato I grew from USDA seeds were very likely quite different from the original release, which was likely a larger, less regular, oblate tomato. Early Conqueror was quite distinct in being quite lobed and quite oblate, a shape and form that fits nicely into the 1880 or so time frame. We’ve used Dwarf Stone for the dwarf parent in our Dwarf Tomato Breeding project. Alpha was a really odd variety - a quite short growing potato leaf with medium small red tomatoes.

I really am glad that republishing Off The Vine is allowing me to read thing I wrote so long ago. What is fascinating is that this article captures me at the very beginning of my dip into tomato genealogy. The other benefit (aside from finding all those assumed-to-be-lost tomatoes) was that as I was doing this in North Carolina, Mike Dunton was doing the same in Oregon. Our intersecting quest for the Lost Livingstons allowed us to meet through emails and, later, phone calls. Mike of course founded and runs Victory Seeds. He and I cherish the friendship that was catalyzed by a similar quest, separated by 3000 miles.

A particularly interesting pair of pages from that 1937 Ag yearbook

Next Article - "Off The Vine" Volume 1, Issue 1. Guest Article by Dr. Jeff McCormack on Tomato Isolation Distances

This is the illustration that Jeff’s guest article refers to - see below

Off The Vine had occasional guest-written articles. This is the first - written by founder of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Dr. Jeff McCormack. It’s a great read and provides lots of things to consider for tomato seed savers that strive to prevent bee-induced crossing in their gardens.

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Isolation Distances for Tomatoes (by Jeff McCormack, PhD)

Most seed saving guides lack specific information about the minimum isolation distance for predominantly self-pollinated crops such as tomatoes.  Published isolation distances for tomatoes vary considerably.  Some sources say no isolation is necessary while other sources recommend distances up to 150 feet.  Some seed saving guides omit this information entirely because of its controversial nature.  The matter is controversial because isolation distance depends on a number of variables.  In addition, the importance of each variable is modified by conditions specific to each growing site.

Tomato isolation distance requirements depend on the intended use of the seed.  Thus isolation requirements are different for seed companies, breeders, seed savers exchanging seed, and for seed savers saving seed for only their own use.  Tomato breeders may separate modern tomato varieties by as little as 10 feet, partly to avid mechanical mixing of the seed crop.  Large commercial plantings are often made in areas that are bee-poor due to pesticide use of lack of suitable habitat.  Therefore modern varieties planted in a bee-impoverished environment may require only 10 feet isolation.  Most seed companies isolate tomatoes anywhere from 10 feet to 150 feet or more.  The isolation distance also depends on the purity of the seed grown (certified seed, stock seed, etc.)  Other factors affecting isolation distance are the variety and number of plants being grown.

I have heard reports that tomatoes being exchanged by members of the Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) have significant purity problems.  One experienced member of the SSE reports that 10 to 15% of the tomato varieties show evidence of crossing to some degree.  Clearly, many seed savers are not isolating their tomato varieties adequately.  How can a seed saver determine the required isolation distance for tomatoes without making a study of the subject?  Some general guidelines are needed.

Natural cross-pollination (NCP) of tomatoes frequently occurs when two or more varieties are grown in close proximity in a garden under certain conditions.  Even a small percentage of NCP over a number of years could eventually cause the loss of one or more characteristics that are unique to a particular open-pollinated variety.  If there is a 5% crossing each year, what will be the compounded effect of this crossing in 10 years?

Prompted by these concerns, I am suggesting some guidelines for isolation distances specifically suited to seed savers who wish to exchange seed with others.  In preparing these guidelines I reviewed the scientific literature on tomato pollination, talked with tomato breeders in different areas of the country, and talked with gardeners who have saved their family heirloom seed for many years.  In addition, I have made my own observations and photographed several different species of bee pollinators active on tomato blossoms.

Most tomato seed results from self-pollination, a process that is enhanced by gentle breezes that vibrate the blossom.  Although cross pollination by the wind is possible, the actual amount of such cross pollination is of little significance.  I have observed tomato pollen being blown for a distance of at least 8 feet.  Similar observations have also been made by several of our seed saving customers, but the chances of wind pollination are so small as to be inconsequential.

Home gardeners tend to plant row crops of many varieties in a small space.  These crops are frequently visited by wild bees (halictid bees, such as sweat bees) and bumblebees in search of pollen.  These insects may contribute to a high frequency of NCP in bee-rich areas in crops that are primarily self-pollinated.  The amount of NCP tomatoes is a function of a number of variables:  (1) wind movement; (2) variety characteristics such as style length; (3) environmental variables affecting style length such as light intensity, day length and carbon-nitrogen ratio; (4) type of bee pollinators; (5) pollinator behavior on the flower; (6) isolation distance; and (7) the presence of other pollen-producing plants in the area of the seed crop.

Tomato varieties having long style (pollen-receptive organs) are more likely to be cross-pollinated by bees than varieties with short styles.  If the length of the style exceeds the length of the anther cone (pollen producing organ), NCP be bees is more probable, and probability increases as the style length increases. (see Fig 1).  Gardeners attempting to preserve old varieties need to be aware of this point because many older varieties have generally longer styles than modern varieties.  Most modern varieties have styles equal in length, or shorter than, the anther cone (see Fig. 2).  Our modern varieties were derived originally from wild tomato ancestors (primarily from Ecuador and Peru) which relied on bee pollination to a large degree.  As these wild types were transported out of their center of origin to new geographic areas, the absence of their usual bee pollinators resulted in selection for variants that had shorter styles and an increased capacity for self-fertilization.  Although style length is genetically determined, environmental conditions may cause style length to increase, thereby affecting the probability of cross-pollination.  Generally, small fruited cherry type varieties, and current tomatoes have a long style that extends beyond the anther cone (exserted stigma).  Large fruited Ponderosa type varieties have a large stigmatic surface which in some older varieties extends at least 1-2 mm beyond the anther cone.  Some seed savers claim that potato leaf varieties cross more readily than normal leaf varieties; however, I have not observed this to be the case.  Many potato leaf varieties do bear large Ponderosa type fruits that develop from a flower structure that is more susceptible to crossing.  To my knowledge there is no correlation between foliage type and NCP>

Another factor affecting NCP is insect activity.  Generally tomato flowers are not attractive to bees if other pollen sources are available; however, in some bioclimatic regions of the US, bee visitation of tomato flowers may be quite common even in the presence of other pollen sources.  Such a situation exists, for example, in regions of California and parts of the mid-Atlantic region.  In parts of Virginia I have observed and photographed bumblebees and sweat halictid bees such as sweat bees collecting pollen from tomato flowers.  Bumblebees tend to vibrate the flowers while halictid bees appear to chew the anthers to get at the pollen.  In terms of their behavior and position on the flower, halictid bees seem more likely to cause cross-pollination than the bumblebees, but this has not been fully investigated.

Controlled studies of cross pollination in inter-planted tomatoes have yielded values of 2-5% NCP; however, factors such as style length, frequent visitation of tomato flowers by bees and suitable environmental conditions may produce much higher NCP values.  Various studies have reported values of 12, 15, 26, and 47% NCP values in inter-planted tomatoes.  The wide range of results reflects the influence of different methods and variables used in these studies.  Clearly, NCP values can be very high under the right conditions. 

What does all this mean for gardeners wishing to save their own open-pollinated tomato seed where there is high bee activity on tomato blossoms?  Modern tomato varieties (style length equal or less than the anther length in most cases) should be separated by a distance of approximately 10 feet to give a high degree of purity.  Large fruited older varieties, small cherry type tomatoes, and currant tomatoes require 25-75 feet isolation distance (for our location in Virginia).  These recommended isolation distances give average purity values of approximately 99-99.5% or better.  Because occasional out-crossing may occur at large distances, plants used for stock seed may require an isolation distance of 75-150 feet or more.  At the minimum, seed savers (who exchange seed) should separate tomato varieties by at least 10-12 feet.  For large fruited varieties or varieties wish an exserted stigma the isolation distance should be increased to at least 20-25 feet.  These are general guidelines for minimum isolation distance.  Factors that call for an increase in isolation distance include: (1)  an increased number of plants of each variety; (2)  an increased number of varieties; (3) a large pollinator population, especially bumblebees and sweat bees.  Factors that allow a decreased isolation distance include: (1) presence of alternate pollen sources actually utilized by the potential pollinators; (2) collection of seed from the center of the block planting; (3) collection of seed during the period of peak production rather than at the start of production; (4) presence of tall barrier crops; (5) isolation in time rather than space.  Certain flowers are especially attractive to bumblebees and halictid bees.  These include bee balm, coneflower, hollyhock, and sunflower.

The relationship between isolation distance and NCP is geometric rather than linear.  Thus as isolation distance increases, the amount of NCP falls off rapidly.  A study by Currence and Jenkins (1942) illustrates this point very well.  It is evident that even a separation of a few feet between varieties in a small garden will greatly reduce NCP of tomatoes even though minimum isolation distances cannot be achieved.  NCP can also be reduced or eliminated by taking advantage of different blooming times of early and late varieties (provided early planted tomatoes are pulled out before the late planted varieties bloom).

Seed savers should not be discouraged from saving their own seed because of the probability of NCP.  Though a small amount of NCP could eventually improve a variety, it could just as easily cause the loss of quality of a variety.  If you are trying to preserve a variety in its purest form, then isolation distance becomes very important.  Although a small amount of NCP may not be a problem one year, its effects are additive and detrimental to preservation efforts in the long run.  The goal is not just to save the variety from year to year, but for generations to come.  Toward this end I’ve recommended that seed savers grow larger amounts of plants of each variety in order to produce more seed.  That way it will not be necessary to grow out as many varieties each year provided your seed is properly fermented (stirred at least twice daily), dried with silica gel and stored in an airtight container (preferably frozen); you’ll have enough seed to exchange for years.  I’m sure you’ll want to grow some varieties every year.   Why not set aside an areas for these to be planted side by side for edible harvest only?

Copyright 1993 by Jeff McCormack, Ph. D., Director, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (revised and updated from the 1984 Seed Savers Exchange Harvest Edition).

Selected references:

Bennet, J.  1983.  A tomato blossom for all seasons.  Horticulture Volume 61, page 53.

Currence, T. M., and Jenkins, J. M., 1942.  Natural Crossing in Tomatoes as related to distance and direction.  Proc. Am. Soc. Hort. Sci, Vol. 41, pg 273-276.

Rick, C., M. 1949. Rates of natural cross-pollination of tomatoes in various localities of California as measured by the fruits and seeds set on male-sterile plants.  Proc. Am. Soc. Hort. Sci. Vol 54, pg 237-252.

Rick, C. M., 1950.  Pollination relations of Lycopersicon esculentum in native and foreign regions.  Evolution Vol. 4, pg. 110-122.

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I’ve been fortunate to be a friend of Jeff for many years, though it has been quite a few since we’ve had a chance to see each other or talk. I have an enormous amount of respect for his intellect and gardening knowledge. As I’ve told folks who ask about my seed saving when planting many varieties quite closely together, I use timing for my seed saving, focusing on the first few clusters of flowers, as I’ve noted bee activity is absent in my area early in the season. The one tactic that Jeff does not cover is bagging blossoms for those gardeners who wish to, or need to, guarantee that crossing cannot occur. Loosely shrouding a cluster of unopened flowers with a light, airy material, such as Reemay, creating a barrier to bee visits, works well. After the flowers open and small tomatoes are observed, that cluster can be marked and used for seed saving with complete confidence that the variety will be uncrossed. It was good to read that article again. It is amazing to think that Jeff wrote the first version of this topic back in 1984 - nearly 40 years ago.

Sue and Koda looking at High Falls in DuPont forest on our Jan 19, snowy hike

Let's Continue. "Off The Vine" Volume 1, Issue 1. Carolyn and Craig Introduce Themselves

Off The Vine Volume 1, Issue 1 front cover

First, Carolyn Male

After talking about this newsletter for a couple of years I’m delighted we’re able to send you the first issue.  Craig and I are each writing a short description of where we’re coming from and where we’re going.

I’m writing this as I sit on the porch of the farmhouse where I was raised.  As I look out over the fields I remember when I was a kid knocking Colorado Potato Beetles off the tomatoes into a can of kerosene.  My father would get mad at me because I couldn’t bring myself to squash the orange eggs on the leaves; I still won’t do it unless I have gloves on.  Valiant, Rutgers, Marglobe and Fireball are some of the tomato varieties I remember from childhood and we picked them in 3.4 bushel baskets (HEAVY!).  My grandfather had purchased our farm in 1921 from the Shakers, a religious sect founded by Mother Ann Lee in Watervliet, NY, which is a few miles from our home.  My family has lived here since the 1880’s and my widowed mother, age 80, still lives here but I live in an apartment a few miles away.  Trust me, it works better than way.  We raised all sorts of vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, peas, beans, etc., and huge peach orchards kept us busy in the Fall.  My grandparents raised a lot of fruit, of which only a few clumps of renegade red raspberries survive.  My grandmother had beautiful perennial flower gardens and I still have her single hollyhocks and various kinds of old fashioned peonies.

I have most of the summer to tend my gardens full time because I’m a college teacher.  After graduating from Cornell I received my PhD in Microbiology from the U. of Rochester Medical School.  For many years I taught medical students in Denver but in 1982 I moved back East to care for my elderly parents; my father died in 1985.  I currently teach at a private college and teach anything and everything related to biology, although my own special expertise is in the area of human infectious disease.

Flowers will always be a prime love with me.  I have extensive perennial and herb gardens and I fool around at hybridizing miniature roses and daylilies.  I’m a charter member of the new American Dianthus Society; the Dianthus group includes pinks, carnations, and sweet Williams.  And I also belong to the American Hemerocallis and Rose Societies.

The Creator/Creatress did not make me perfect.  I’m organized but messy, and I file by pile.  I’ve inherited arthritis from my mother and the extra 60 lbs on my 5’10” frame doesn’t help.  On the other hand I don’t easily fade into the background.  I’m 54 and single.  I had two cat “kids” but both of them, age 16, died last year, one from heart disease and the other of kidney failure.  I see an Irish Wolfhound in my future, along with more cats, but not until I retire to my anticipated log cabin in the woods.  Of course, there will be gardens of all types, fruit orchards, and a swimming hole!

In the meantime I grow almost every kind of vegetable you can imagine, but I concentrate on heirloom tomatoes and to a lesser extent peppers.  Although I haven’t counted lately, I must now have seed for about 600-800 varieties of tomatoes, of which I grow out about 100-130 (300-400 plants) each summer.  I feel quite strongly about genetic biodiversity and preserving the genetic material of heirloom vegetables.  With respect to tomatoes I am, quite frankly, fascinated by the diversity of shape, size, color and taste of the fruit and the various patterns of foliage.  I’m absolutely shameless in pursuit of new heirloom varieties, especially from foreign students and faculty at the college where I teach.

I want to do everything I can to help preserve heirloom vegetables an educate the public about their virtues.  I give talks and workshops locally but I see our “Off The Vine” as an important vehicle to teach a larger audience with respect to accomplishing these goals.

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Here’s Craig’s intro

Most of you that have been reading the blurbs under my name in the address section of the SSE Winter Yearbook have probably noticed that I always have some sort of “project” that I am planning.  Those will all be updated in this introductory column;  this newsletter is the first of my “project wish list“ that has made it off the ground!  I must thank Carolyn for helping to motivate me in this regard, as I am quite good at procrastination...but, here we are, and this is a good time to give a little information about what I hope for this newsletter, why we are doing it, and some information that will tell you all a little about how I became involved with the SSE, and, especially, heirloom tomatoes.

 First, I suppose I should provide a little background about myself (mostly because Carolyn asked me to!).  I am 38 years old, married with two girls (Caitlin, 8, and Sara, 12), and am constantly having to reassure my family that I have not “lost it” when they see me planting 97 varieties of tomatoes in my garden, or appear excited about numerous cups of foul smelling, fermenting, fruit fly infested tomato pulp.  My roots are in New England, as I grew up and did my undergraduate education in Rhode Island, and received my PhD.in chemistry from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. We then spent a year in Seattle, which must be the best place to live anywhere...then reality set in, it was time to go to work, and that is how we got to Pennsylvania, and now North Carolina.  When I am not gardening, I am a chemist, first at SmithKline, now at Glaxo pharmaceuticals.  It certainly pays the bills, but chemistry is not the first thing that passes through my mind when I think of relaxation and happiness...

 My love for gardening was “planted” (forgive the pun...) as a young child, maybe 6 years old or so, during the hours I spent with my grandfather in his huge garden.  I recall seeing amazing dahlias, strawberries, sweet peas, squash, and, of course, tomatoes.  In fact, I hated tomatoes until I had eaten the ones that he grew for us.  My interest in gardening became dormant for many years as school took its toll on my time and attention.  It was not until graduate school and marriage to Sue that we decided that it would be fun to grow our own vegetables, and we had several beautiful gardens in a community plot in the early 1980’s.

 Being a scientist, I am naturally curious, and was always interested in trying lots of varieties of everything. Trips to the local nursery were frustrating, however, as all one finds there are plants of the “top ten” or so, and growing Better Boy hybrid or Roma was becoming boring. Ordering seeds from catalogs and starting everything ourselves was an improvement, but there was still a certain sameness about the experience.  Then, my gardening life changed when I learned of the Seed Saver’s Exchange in 1986 from a gardening magazine.  Everything has mushroomed from there, and now I find myself introducing many people and organizations each year to the joy of growing heirloom vegetables.  I am sure that this story is very familiar to many of you, and you may have experienced similar things.

 So, enough background.  Oh, yes, I wanted to update you on my projects.  First there is this newsletter, and here we are with that.  I may write occasional articles for Bob Ambrose’s “Tomato Club” newsletter, which some of you may be familiar with.  I continue to grow out new (to me) heirloom tomatoes each year, as well as some of my favorites which have held their own against new competition in the trials. And, I was asked to write a tomato book by a publisher, and am about to get started on that rather daunting but exciting project (I may be asking some of you for input for the book).  There are other projects that are on the horizon, such as examining germination enhancement procedures, sorting out the tomato section of the SSE winter yearbook (looking for errors, synonymous varieties, etc.).  Finally, my trip to the SSE campout this year was truly inspiring, and my efforts for genetic preservation are newly focused, and energized.

 For my part, I will try to express my goals for this newsletter.  First and foremost, I would like it to be a forum for all tomato enthusiasts in the SSE to share information and concerns with each other, whether it is a special growing technique, search for a lost variety, sharing of historical information, alert for a particularly delectable variety, or even concerns regarding the SSE in general.  We will try to provide our own expertise and experience each time, but we will require more than just the input of two tomato gardeners.  There may be some proposed projects that many of you would like to take part in.  Who knows...this is the starting line, and it’s a race that goes on infinitely, so lets get started!

 Welcome to all of you, and thanks for your interest.  I hope that it will be informative, and fun!

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It was really nice to revisit Carolyn’s words about herself. It is as hard to read what I wrote there as it is to listen to myself on podcasts, or watch myself on video (cringe!!!!). But, for better or worse, there it is!

Collage of Off The Vine newsletter hardcopies

Here We Go! "Off The Vine" Volume #1, Issue #1. Carolyn and Craig's "Welcome" articles

Finally meeting Carolyn when Sue and I brought her plants on a swing by her home in New York while visiting family - May 20, 2011.

NOTE - I am pasting in our original articles exactly as written. There will be some awkward grammar, some misspellings - and I cringe a bit when I see some of what we wrote.

How this will go: Each week I will paste in an article from our newsletter. At the end, I will share some thoughts after reading the article for the first time in decades! I hope you enjoy reading some material written in the middle of the heirloom gardening boom stimulated by formation of the Seed Savers Exchange.

Carolyn Male’s Welcome -

Welcome to Off The Vine

We’re delighted to finally publish our first issue of “Off The Vine”!  In future issues we expect to present articles about home hybridization, history of tomatoes in the Americas, use of heirlooms in commercial breeding programs, feature articles on selected growers, tomato folklore, and “favorite” heirloom tomatoes.  We want “Off The Vine” to be interactive with our readers so in each issue we will pose a question or two and ask for your responses.  Please include your phone number in your letter so we can obtain your permission should we publish what you write.

We are both enthusiastic members of the Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) and since the original announcement for this newsletter appeared in the SSE 1993 Yearbook, our first question relates to the SSE.  Both of us are concerned that the yearbook has become, or is becoming, a seed catalog rather than primarily a mechanism for the preservation of heirlooms.  In our experience the majority of seed requests we receive are from unlisted members, most of whom are not reoffering seeds in subsequent yearbooks.  To us, this is a troublesome situation.  At most, seed from about 5% of the varieties sent out is being reoffered.  So, our first question is:  What ways can you think of that might increase the rate at which members reoffer seed?  Please send your responses to Carolyn at the address below; she will be handling most of the “paper work”.

We also welcome your ideas and suggestions for future articles and questions to the readers.  If you’ve liked this first issue, and the future goals and plans we’ve outlined, we welcome your subscriptions.  We are low budget, low key, and amateurs! 

We expect most issues to be 4 to 5 pages double sided. 

Finally, there are several people who have been supportive of our efforts to publish an heirloom tomato newsletter and we’d like to mention a few names.  Jeff McCormack of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange graciously offered to mention “Off The Vine” in his current catalog.  Kent Whealy of SSE voiced his support to Craig at the 1993 Campout and Steve Demuth of the SSE staff did our first layout.  Andy Smith, whose fascinating book on the history of tomatoes in the Americas up to 1840 will soon be published, has also been very encouraging to us.

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Craig’s welcome

The Birth of “Off the Vine” 

After two or three years in the incubation period, Carolyn Male and I are about to publish the first issue of a newsletter entirely devoted to heirloom tomatoes.  We have decided to call this newsletter “Off the Vine”, an idea that Carolyn came up with.  (We won’t discuss the options that I was able to concoct!).  In case some of you are wondering who we are and what we have in mind for the newsletter, here is some information for you.

First of all, we are members of the Seed Saver’s Exchange.  I joined in 1986, and Carolyn got bitten by the heirloom bug in 1989.  Actually, we have never met!  I can recall that one of my first seed request letters of 1989 was from Carolyn, and I was immediately taken by her friendly tone, sense of humor, and dedication to the cause.  We shared many varieties of heirloom veggies over the following years, and talked frequently on the phone.  Some of this talk led to the eventual direction that our hobbies were taking us.  And, one of our ideas was to fill the huge gap in gardening literature, regarding the lack of any tomato newsletters. 

Now for a bit of background on each of us.  Carolyn tends her gardens at the farm she was raised, near Albany, New York.  She grew up with farming and gardens as an integral part of her life; some things do not change!  When she is not watering, weeding or picking, she teaches biology-related courses at the college of St. Rose.  Carolyn enjoys growing everything, apparently, though she confesses that flowers are a special passion.  Somehow, she has found herself the proud owner of somewhere around 800 varieties of tomatoes, and each year must make the difficult yet delightful decision of what to grow! 

As for me, I have taken a roundabout route toward landing in North Carolina.  Originating in Rhode Island, where I gardened with my grandfather, I have spent time in New Hampshire, where I received my degree in chemistry, Washington (Seattle must surely be what heaven is like), and Pennsylvania.  Now, as a pharmaceutical chemist for Glaxo, I need to ensure that my gardening time does not get in the way of the many other interests that I pursue, not the least of which is my family!  After joining the SSE, my gardening experience became a real part of my life.  And, each year I also must decide between about 800 varieties of tomatoes. 

As for our newsletter, we envision a forum for gardeners that have a particular interest in heirloom tomatoes.  Among the topics we hope to address are gardening concerns, such as isolation distances, particular varieties, including their various merits or detriments, history, or apparent demise, and interviews with notable heirloom tomato collectors.  It should be a lot of fun, and we hope that some of you give it a try.

If you would like to subscribe, please send $5.00 (US) to “Off the Vine”, c/o Carolyn Male, 21-2 Latham Village Lane, Latham, NY  12110.  This fee will get you three issues per year (if all goes well...), each issue being 5-7 double sided pages.  Please remember that this is a very grassroots-style effort.  It won’t be glossy, but it will always be interesting!  We look forward to hearing from you.

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Well, reading that took me back. The world lost Carolyn on June 14. 2019. Our gardening friendship lasted 30 years, complete with many ups and a few downs (certainly expected for two opinionated people!).

Obviously, the addresses and subscription info listed above is long obsolete. It is included for completeness. It is remarkable to ponder how far each of us had already embedded into growing heirloom tomatoes. This newsletter came out about 7 years after I joined the SSE, and for Carolyn, about 5 years.

Carolyn, listening to Sue during our visit on May 20, 2011