Planet Veggie Garden

Those can be fighting words in the inner gardening circles.

Let’s add some history, and dare I say “flavor” to the discussion…

Perhaps we can rename it Charles Darwin versus Gregor Mendel

What’s an Heirloom

In broad terms an heirloom is an open-pollinated fruit. That simply means bees and wind carry out the pollination process. However, not all open-pollinated tomatoes are heirloom.

With heirlooms, the seed is kept “true”. What that means is: if you plant seeds from a specific heirloom variety, it will produce that variety. So if you grew Mortgage Lifters (an heirloom tomato) and replanted the seeds, you’d get another Mortgage Lifter.

Heirlooms are more Darwinian… the strongest survive. AND, they adapt to specific areas. Meaning, California Mortgage Lifters grown in California will adapt to the California climate as will Mortgage Lifters grown in Georgia adapt to the Georgia climate. This process plays out over generations of seeds/plants.

As far as I know, there’s not an absolute definition of heirloom.
Many will tie “heirloom” to pre-1940. This is when Mendelian techniques began to take over commercial tomato farming, i.e., “hybridization” (more below).
Others will argue that heirloom is a technique rather than a vintage.

Flavors of Heirloom

Going with the technique classification, Heirloom can be sub-categorized:

1. Commercial Heirloom – existed before 1940
2. Family Heirloom – a variety grown from seed and handed down through generations within a family
3. Created Heirloom – cross pollinating two varieties, collecting the seeds from the best plants and, over 5 generations, “dehybridizing” it. So basically, you create a new variety
4. Mystery Heirloom – a bit like the created heirloom, only done without human intervention

What’s Great About Heirlooms

The point of hybridizing is to make a limited few “herculean” varieties. On paper that seems brilliant. In reality, decreasing biodiversity shrinks the gene pool and makes the entire species more vulnerable to disease, infestation and weather change.

So many will (vehemently) argue heirlooms are the only way to go.

Heirlooms are more flavorful. And they vary in color, size, shape and time to maturity.
They’re also more vulnerable to pests and disease. And they tend to yield less per plant.

The Hybrid

Gregor Mendel is most noted as the “father of modern genetics”, or simply – the pea guy.

Hybrids are basically “built by design”.
Specifically, ye old “filial generation” (F1) hybrid is created by crossing two different parent varieties to produce an offspring with the most desirable characteristics of each parent.

A hybrid does not stay “true” from generation to generation. What that means is, if you regrow the seeds from one generation, you’ll not get the same kind of tomato. You’ll likely get one of the parent varieties or something close to it.

Sidebar: In fact, many of today’s hybrids use some kind of cherry tomato as one parent because cherries are pretty disease resistant and hearty. So if you’ve experienced “volunteer” tomato plants popping up and they always seem to be cherry, it could be the result of seeds germinating from a hybrid you grew the prior season.

Why Hybridize?

It’s that “best of both worlds” thing. Hybrids tend to be from a variety that has strong disease resistant characteristics and a variety with another desirable characteristic such as early maturity.

Hybrids are very uniform in color and shape. And they all mature at about the same time. So from an industrial point of view, they’re very productive, reliable, predictable and consistent. And as mentioned above, they’re often more disease resistant.
All in all, more forgiving of the grower and the growing environment.

New seeds are produced every year (mostly “off shore”, cheaper labor). They simply create the cross with the original two species through controlled hand pollination to produce a new set of seeds.

Ah, That Tomato Taste

Not all hybrids taste like cardboard. Tho heirlooms definitely offer a broader and deeper array of flavors.
Some of the hybrids today are bred for taste… for eating by people with palates. Popular varieties are Early Girl, Celebrity and Carmello.

It’s safe to say if the tomato was grown by a large commercial grower, it’s a hybrid. You can find smaller farms locally and at Farmer’s Markets that grow heirlooms, but in the big-acre tomato world is all hybrid all the time.

Acres of tomatoes – California isn’t all surf and sand

Although tomatoes will grow in all United States, 95% of the 12.7 million pounds of processed tomatoes are grown (and processed) in California.

Prior to the 1960’s – when tomato picking became a machine thing rather than a people thing – there were over 4,000 tomato farmers. Today: 225… farming 277,000 acres.

Of course they grow hybrids – generally “San Marzano”, bred to be higher in fiber to withstand, umm, rough handling.

They’re also higher in sugar and lower in lycopene and other beneficial nutrients.

Oh, and malathion is often used (to limit the damage from sugar beet leafhopper).

The average California tomato farm is over 1,000 acres. The cost to produce an acre of tomatoes is $2,700 (with costs rising). That’s for seeds, fertilizer, chemicals, water, diesel and labor. So a 1,000 acre farm is in $2.7 million before seeing that first tomato turn pink. It’s big – and risky – business.

Unlike heirlooms, processing tomatoes are commodities (quantity over quality) which currently fetch the grower about 3.5 cents a pound.

Tomato paste is the most produced product – 70-75%. Which is then sold to manufacturers and appears on your grocery store shelves as ketchup, pasta and pizza sauces and soups.

What varieties do you grow?

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