MAY / JUNE 1999

It’ll be anytime now that the queries will start—subtle reminders from good friends who become even better friends when tomato season comes on the horizon. “Are you growing that sweet one again?” they ask. The pressure is palpable. I have to grow a good set of tomatoes for those tastings where everyone has an opinion.

Over the 20-plus years that I’ve grown tomatoes in the same garden out back, there have been some failures, but by and large, tomatoes are easy to grow. You may not get the quantity you had hoped for, or you may be swimming in round red globes by summer’s end, but usually tomatoes are a reliable crop.

The difference between so-so and abundance is how you grow the plants. We’ll show you photos in this issue of the end results, but the reason we’re concentrating on tomatoes now is to help you get them planted, to show you ways to get more plants in a smaller space, and to give you clues as to what may happen between now and August.

People always ask what varieties we grow, looking for that special one that gives the flavor that you remember even now. Taste buds vary; the sweet, juicy flesh of one tomato doesn’t impress someone who needs tart to make it special.

For those of us who like the big, lively, sweet taste, many varieties fill the bill. But I keep coming back to a variety that was bred in the last century, whose foliage looks more like a potato leaf than a tomato, and whose fruits seem to take forever to mature. A colleague told me he grew nearly 100 varieties at his farm and held tastings every year, and this variety consistently rose to the top. That was enough to get me to try it, and now I wouldn’t be without it.

The variety is ‘Brandywine’ and it is an heirloom, meaning it was bred long before the fancy genetics that give us the hybrid varieties of uniformly smooth, round shapes and disease-resistant plants. It has seen such a resurgence in interest that almost any seed catalog now carries it. You can find it on seed racks in garden centers.

But what’s available out there in seeds doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be able to find transplants. Last season, the general press of busyness led me to seek tomato plants in late May instead of seeding them earlier myself. I went several places seeking my favorite variety without finding a single plant.

Finally, I went prowling in the back at Schaefer’s Greenhouses in Montgomery, an activity I highly recommend if you like to see a whole lot of plants in one place. On a bench in the far corner were two flats that weren’t marked, but I thought I recognized the distinctive leaf shape in one tray.

I found Bret Schaefer and asked. He responded that only the grower knew what was in those trays. Phooey. I wandered back to the greenhouse, saw an employee, asked if he was the person I was seeking and discovered he was. He said he had taken a couple of seed packets off a rack in the store and started them. One was ‘Brandywine’ and the other tray was ‘Mortgage Lifter’, another heirloom beefstake variety. I bought several of each.

The only downside of this tale is that by the time the tomatoes were ripe, I was never quite sure which was which. But both were wonderful. And this year, I have my seeds and will make sure I have the transplants ready for the garden. I hope you’ll find something in Kate Jerome’s article on tomatoes to help you grow the best plants ever. I know I will be scouring it for help as well.

And congratulations to Kate for her award-winning article on foliage plants (see page 11). She receives a trip to Florida where she will be wined and dined by some truly wonderful people. I know because I won the same award once and stay in touch with several of them.