History of the Earliana Tomato

[jennifer28]

I recently bought some old seed catalogs... anyway there was one from around 1915 or so and there is a picture of an "earliana" tomato.

I was reading some of the older threads here about earliana -

anyone grow it recently? I also noticed that Victory Seeds has it, does anyone know which strain they have? I suppose I could just email them and ask them

but I am just interested in the tomato since I came across it today when I was cleaning and found the old catalogs.

any info anyone wants to share would be appreciated

[dustdevil]

A lot of the really old tomato varieties such as Earliana were obtained from GRIN before they tightened up their procurement policies.

[carolyn137]

http://t.tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Earliana

Jennifer, there were many versions of Earliana and Tania lists a few but there are more. After it was first introduced it became very popular and different seed companies changed the name and offered it under another name. That was done back then to suggest that a company had an exclusive.

I grew it years ago and never since and in the 2012 SSE YEarbook there is only one listing for it. And I should add that Tania indicated that the variety Alice Roosevelt was also probably Ealiana and to that one I'll add King George as well, and I got both of those from the USGRIN when it was still possible to do so. And no real difference between either of them and Earliana that I could detect.

I can give you more history if you want me to from some research/data paers I still have. But I'm not sure what it is you really want to know.

I just looked at Mike's Victory Seed site and he doesn't indicate any specific version of Earliana, but the same question could be asked of the other seed sources that Tania lists as well. If he got it from the USDA there would be an acession number. but I don't see one.

I love old seed catalogs but am not an e-bay buyer of same and never will be. But Craig shows several at his blog, I think, as does Mike himself, I think, and in the Legacy Forum I think, getting repetitive here, that there were several links to sites which displayed old seed catalogs.

Actually Craig L sent me 4 or 5 old ones for a birthday gift one year and I also had some old Burpee ones that I got from an elderly neigbor many years ago when I was still in HS, so you know how long ago that was..

[barbamWY]

I noticed that Sandhill Preservation has both Earliana and North Dakota Earliana. North Dakota described as: early, Det, RL, flattened globe, large salad, heavy yields. A selection made by Dr. Yeager at NDSU many years ago. and Earliana described as: early, SD, oblate, 6 to 8 oz. fruits. This is one of the first tomatoes I tried growing in Idaho as a child. It never got ripe on the vine in Salmon, ID, but it ripens fine in most places.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by barbamWY

I noticed that Sandhill Preservation has both Earliana and North Dakota Earliana. North Dakota described as: early, Det, RL, flattened globe, large salad, heavy yields. A selection made by Dr. Yeager at NDSU many years ago. and Earliana described as: early, SD, oblate, 6 to 8 oz. fruits. This is one of the first tomatoes I tried growing in Idaho as a child. It never got ripe on the vine in Salmon, ID, but it ripens fine in most places.

Here's the history of Earliana and at the bottom of the page click on the ND one.

http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Earliana

And Tania lists several other Earliana versions as well.

Hope that helps.

Carolyn, and I should mention that Glenn Drowns of Sandhill is originally from Idaho and grew crops there, some with great difficulty b'c of the weather and ended up breeding a fantastic watermelon called Blacktail Mountain which thrived there and is grown everywhere else and folks love it, me included.

[snugglekitten]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

Here's the history of Earliana and at the bottom of the page click on the ND one.

http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Earliana

And Tania lists several other Earliana versions as well.

Hope that helps.

Carolyn, and I should mention that Glenn Drowns of Sandhill is originally from Idaho and grew crops there, some with great difficulty b'c of the weather and ended up breeding a fantastic watermelon called Blacktail Mountain which thrived there and is grown everywhere else and folks love it, me included.

Thats pretty cool, the history, and I read about the blacktail mountain watermelon as the inspiring first story from an inspiring book I read awhile ago about breeding vegetables. Never tried it but I would if I saw it in a market.


Sometimes I think a lot of the background for our favorite cultivars are apocryphal, like finding them growing wild in sidewalk cracks, in one tiny village in Ukraine, etc., but who knows.