Heirloom Tomatoes

I recently bought some heirloom tomatoes from a local farm that specializes in them and has over thirty varieties. That got me thinking about heirloom tomato varieties and I have a question for anyone out there who grows/has grown them.

Do heirloom varieties such as Brandywine breed true? That is, if you take seeds from a variety X tomato plant that were fertilized by another variety X plant, do those seeds grow into another variety X plant? This very much is not the case with hybrid varieties. One year my dad grew Burpee Big Boys and made the mistake of throwing discarded tomatoes on the compost heap. The next spring loads of tomato plants sprouted and my dad carefully replanted them in the garden. But they didn't produce Big Boys. The tomatoes on each plant were of consistent size, shape, and color, but they ran the gamut from tiny cherry tomatoes all the way up to really big ones.

I would assume that since tomatoes are annuals the situation is not like grapevines. Varieties such as cabernet sauvignon or chardonnay are clones of single vines that had desired characteristcs. They don't breed true and no attempt has been made to try to get them to do so.

-Paul W.

The heirlooms are not hybrids, so they breed true.

[Robin Garr]

The heirlooms are not hybrids, so they breed true.

Yep. We save Italian Oxheart tomato seeds from year to year.

I thought that's what Heirloom meant - that you can plant their seed and get the same tomato year after year..

Even the F1 tomatoes produced very similar tomatoes when I planted their seeds. Also there was a grape sized plum tomato we got from the supermarket that Jo liked. It's name didn't appear in any seed catalogue so I planted some seeds taken from the tomato and got very similar ones. I assume it was bred for the trade as it produced large trusses all ripening at the same time - a bonus if you're supplying supermarkets, I ended up supplying neighbours!

If you plant seeds gathered from a hybrid tomato, the first year you should get tomatoes that resemble the original parent. But if you plant seeds from those offspring, then you'll get a wide variety of tomatoes.

I once let some hybrid marigolds reseed themselves. After a few years, they were rather ugly and didn't even resemble marigolds.

Yes, that's how it worked with the Burpee Big Boys. The seeds my dad purchased and planted produced Big Boys. The seeds from those tomatoes produced all sorts of different tomatoes. The big seed companies prefer to market hybrid crosses of proprietary heirloom varieties for a couple of reasons. It means that if you want a variety such as the Big Boy, you have to purchase seeds every year. It also means other companies can't copy the variety.

-Paul W.

Brandywines are my favorite out of the heirlooms I have tried. However, I find they do not produce as much on the vine as some other varieties and non-heirloom. Right now at Farmers Market, they are out of season, some have planted their second crop of them and waiting to pick. One lady told me she may have some this week at the market.
This year, I got my tomato garden in late, and could not find the varieties I wanted. Ended up with Big Boy, and a cherry called Sun Sugar, which is similar to Sungold. Big Boy produced small tomatoes, rather disappointing but Sun Sugar is giving me two handfuls every week. I am certain the smoke, ash, lack of sun here played a huge part in the poor crop. I have lots of herbs and they are not fussy, no fertilizer, too much water, lack of water, they don't care. I have to trim the basil flowers every few days and trim the rest of the herbs every month. Very fun to grow, and watch. I do much better with winter crops, kales, spinach, but then I battle aphids or some sort of thing like them. So much easier to go to Farmers Market, get a good cup of coffee, a homemade tamale for breakfast, and a basket full of beautiful produce.

A fellow wine enthusiast who's also an avid gardener told me that Brandywines fully deserve their reputation for being hard to grow. They're always the first heirloom variety to catch mildew, rot, and other disease, There are problems with even ripening. He agreed with my observation that Brandywines are the "Viognier of tomatoes".

-Paul W.

My favorite heirloom is Green Zebra: it is a dark green tomato with pale green stripes, and high acid. Among reds, Brandywines are certainly very good; also good is Italian Heart.