Book Review: The Heirloom Tomato

The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table

Amy Goldman, 2008

I’ve been on a bit of a heirloom tomato kick the last couple years. If you pick up The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table and take a look at how beautiful they are, you might understand how I became smitten. There are dozens of tomatoes pictured, all plumply ripe, and visibly delicious (if that’s possible. I think it is. Pass the salt shaker and fresh basil please!) 

I stumbled on this book by accident. Even though this was an amazingly mild winter, the lack of growing things started to get to me, as usual, in January. To take the edge off I stopped at the garden center one day on my way home from work, to peruse their selection of seeds. They had an excellent selection of many flowers and vegetables, but there weren’t any “interesting” tomatoes (i.e. heirloom varieties that I wanted to grow). I thought about waiting until Canada Blooms, as there are always several seed vendors there, including those selling unusual heirloom vegetables. But what if they weren’t coming this year? After dinner I went on the internet to have a look at this year’s Canada Blooms vendors.

One thing led to another, and before I knew it I had stumbled on the mother of all heirloom tomato seed websites, Tatianas Tomatobase. 593 varieties of heirloom tomato seeds were available!  And yes, I went through the website and looked at every last one. Amazingly, the site has photos (at various stages of growth and development) for each variety, along with details on the plant’s history, growth habit, etc. This is the work of a genius or a well organized tomato addict, possibly both. Even better, the grower is in Canada, the seeds were $2.50 a package, and the shipping costs were extremely low. I was quite proud of myself for only ordering 5 packets (which arrived in less than a week!)

While I was poking around on Tatianas Tomatobase I followed some links and discovered www.tomatoville.com which bills itself as “the world's largest online community of tomato growers.”  There are countless forums and articles on, of course, tomatoes. If you have a tomato-growing question, this is the website for you.

Anyhow, somewhere on Tatiana’s website she listed The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table as a good resource, so I picked it up at the Toronto Public Library. As mentioned, there are many beautiful photos of tomatoes, and lots of detailed information on quite a few varieties. But not nearly as many varieties as you’ll find on the tomato website. However, if you like to browse through a lovely book instead of clicking a mouse, this is a good way to get your information. The back quarter of the book is devoted to recipes, the front eight to growing and seed saving.

As I’m not one to read the complete details of every plant described (but instead leaf through, look at the pretty pictures, and delve into the full details only of varieties that looked especially interesting) I found it a pretty quick read.

If you’re interested in a book that’s more of a tomato story than a reference, I highly recommend Heirloom: Notes from an Accidental Tomato Farmer by Tim Stark, 2008.  If you’ve ever grown a tomato, you’ll enjoy this book.

Seed Starting Update

My little seed-starting experiment is humming along nicely. Maybe a bit too well, actually. I started my first batch of tomatoes ("Mortgage Lifter") on March 12th. Let's just say they've been enthusiastic growers...

Tomato "Mortgage Lifter"

These tomatoes are close to a foot high. Today is April 19th. I don't think I have to wait until the Victoria Day weekend to plant them out, but given the fact that we had snow squalls here on Saturday, it's not going to be any too soon. Thankfully, my father was kind enough to build me a cold frame a couple weeks ago, so I should be able to transfer them out there shortly.

Even though they're pretty huge, all of the tomatoes are healthy looking, and seem to be developing good strong stems. I usually put an oscillating fan on them for an hour or more every day, to help develop strength in the stems (apparently the motion of bending back and forth in the wind stimulates them so that they grow sturdier stalks.)

Here's a shot of my entire operation:

 The reason the light stand is encased in snow fencing?

Pepper aka Plant-eating-cat

Her name is Pepper. She thinks plants of all kinds are delicious.

Snow fencing seemed like a good idea, and so far it's working. A little bit of a pain every night when I water and check in on everything, but at least the plants are all in tact.

I have another variety of tomato growing--Bloody Butcher--which I started on March 19th. They're a little more manageable in size.

Tomato "Bloody Butcher"

My Aunt Mollys' Ground Cherries (or Physalis  pruinosa) is coming along ok. They're supposed to (according to the websites I read) grow like tomatoes, but I'm finding that they're a lot slower growing. I planted them on March 19th, just like the Bloody Butcher tomatoes, and they're so much smaller I haven't even transplanted them up to individual pots yet.

'Physalis pruinosa'  or Ground Cherries

And lastly, I have some Clematis 'Radar Love' going, along with some Turkey Grass.

Clematis 'Radar Love' on the left, Turkey Grass

on the right.

I had a bit of excitement the other night when one of the shop lights I had just purchased (to replace one of the original set that my friend gave me with the light stand) started smoking. I quickly unplugged it, check to see that the light tube was in properly, and plugged it in again. This time it started smoking from the other end! So that one's going back to Home Depot (sorry HD, I keep trying your lighting products and I keep having problems--smoke coming out of a fixture freaks me out.) I picked up another shop light at Lowe's the other night and it seems to be doing much better (looks to be built a bit sturdier too.)

I bought new flourescent tubes too, after reading what Ken Brown had to say about which kinds were best (hint: cheap works just fine, thank you). 

The other interesting thing I learned was that playing with tomato plants doesn't agree with my skin. I couldn't figure out why the backs of my hands were so itchy and had little bumps on them, until I did my nightly watering & check-up and figured it out.

It's a small price to pay for the fun of watching things grow (and it's a good thing I have this to play with inside, as someone seems to have forgotten to tell mother nature to knock off the snow!)