Southern Living Heirloom Tomato Article

[BlackestKrim]

This month's Southern Living has a nice article on heirloom tomatoes. I can't find it on their website. It is overall positive and informative. However, it starts the article naming Black Cherry as an heirloom, and then later in the article says that

" 'Green Zebra' , a hybrid, is often considered an heirloom but is a result of recent breeding."

??
Black cherry, released in 2003, can be an heirloom, but Green Zebra, released in the 80's, is a hybrid?

They then follow it up with a quoted opinion that to some an 'heirloom tomato' can just mean any tomato grown for taste, quality of fruit, unique size, or colorful flesh; as opposed to tomatoes grown commercially.

I think they should have run their article by a tomato expert like Carolyn before publishing. If they understood the difference between heirloom, OP, and hybrid; that might have helped. GZ, while derived from hybridization, is NOT a hybrid.

Still, the article was meant for a general audience and other than that was very good. It lauded the taste and variety of heirlooms, explained what 'open-pollinated' meant, and had lots of glossy photos of varieties like Flamme, Cherokee Purple, Black Cherry, San Marzano, etc.
It avoided the 'heirlooms will die of disease!" cliche, instead quoted a person saying:

"heirloom types come from a time before disease resistance was crossbred into plants. Instead, most older tomato types have a natural resistance that comes from being grown continually for so many years. 'That doesn't mean an heirloom will survive the whole summer free from our Southern blight, ' she says. 'But if you feed it well and add compost and mulch, your tomato will grow just fine.' "