Heirlooms have true tomato taste

“I'm tired of buying tomatoes that look wonderful and taste like cardboard,” a friend of mine remarked the other day. Much of the public feels the same way and has turned to heirloom tomatoes for better taste.

Most heirloom varieties have an interesting history and are classified as heirlooms if they were grown before World War II. They come in a wide variety of colors and shapes. Because of their soft skin, they are not suited for shipping but have excellent taste. Once you bite into a juicy heirloom tomato, you might agree that you have found the perfect-tasting tomato.

Luckily, Yuma has a local source of delicious-tasting heirloom tomatoes grown by Hillside Farms. Tim Butcher and Joseph Dominguez, owners of Hillside Farms, have a goal of giving Yuma the very best-tasting tomatoes around. To do that, they grow both hybrid and heirloom varieties. Two greenhouses shelter their tomatoes from the cold and allow an early start to the season.

“Our customers tell us they are the best-tasting tomatoes they have eaten; and we of course, agree,” Dominguez said. “Our tomatoes are vine-ripened, which makes a big difference in flavor. Commercial hybrids are picked green, shipped across the country, and then gassed to produce their red color. Sorry to say, real tomato flavor is not found in a green tomato.”

Winter visitors are often surprised they can purchase vine-ripened tomatoes in Yuma in winter, but that is what makes Yuma fabulous, our winter growing season is the best around.

“Home gardeners can plant their own tomatoes in late February or early March just after our last frost and can have a nice crop of tomatoes before hot weather stops them from blooming,” Butcher said.

To grow your own tomatoes from transplants, prepare the soil by adding compost and a little aged steer manure. Dig these amendments into the soil. Plant the tomatoes in the ground and place a tomato cage over each plant to support the mature vines. In four to five weeks, blooms will appear and tomatoes will soon be hanging off the vines. I tried burying my tomatoes, leaves and all, halfway up the plant this year. I now have healthy tomato plants with green tomatoes waiting for warmer weather to ripen.

To grow tomatoes from seeds, in January sow them in small pots and cover with about ¼ inch of soil. Keep pots indoors and soil moist until seedlings appear. When seedlings have several leaves, thin them to one per pot and plant outdoors in late February.

Some varieties Butcher recommends are Brandywine, Black Krim, Better Boy, Big Boy, Cherokee Purple, and Mortgage Lifter.

The Mortgage Lifter tomato was developed in the 1930s by Mr. Byles of Logan, W.Va. He was interested in paying off his home mortgage and went to work creating a new variety of tomato by crossing a German Johnson, a Beefsteak, an Italian and an English tomato to produce the sweet and tasty Mortgage Lifter.

The Brandywine variety is one of the first heirloom tomatoes to become popular nationwide. It came from Doris Sudduth Hill from Ohio, who shared seeds with Ben Quisenberry. Ben shared seeds with other seed savers and began this variety's popularity. Brandywine dates back to the 1800s and is a large tomato that is pink at first, then turns red, and at full maturity is a purple-red color.

Black Krim is a dark red tomato that originally came from the Crimean pennisula in the Black Sea.

Cherokee Purple is over 100 years old and was grown by the Cherokee Indians.

“We are excited at Yuma's response to having a source of local, organic produce. We foresee an increase in people buying locally as they become aware of what our local farmers have to offer and how great fresh-grown produce tastes.”

Like the song says, “everything old is new again” — even heirloom tomatoes.

Karen Bowen is a master gardener and member of Yuma Garden Club. She can be reached at bowenkaren@ymail.com. This column is sponsored by the Federated Garden Clubs of Yuma.