List of tomato varieties grown at Monticello by Jefferson?

[j.t.delaney]

Hi there,

Does anybody have a handy list of tomato varieties that were grown by the household of Thomas Jefferson? I started looking through his Garden Journal, but if this list has already been compiled, this would save a lot of time.

[joseph]

I suspect that Thomas Jefferson didn't grow "varieties" as we use the term today. I believe that he would have been growing populations: unstable and of mixed heritage. Nothing like the highly inbred varieties that we grow today and call heirlooms.

[Worth1]

Thomas Jefferson grew varieties as we know them but not by the same name many times.
As for tomatoes he grew one he called the Spanish tomato but little else is known about it other than it was bigger than the common tomato.
We need to remember at that time the tomato was not being eaten that often in the US.
You can compare tomatoes then to the hot chilies everyone in the US is growing now compared to just a few years ago.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...AhQ2daN4eJM2nA

Worth

[Worth1]

The constant comparing of plants and inbreeding to animals is completely unfounded.
Many plants like tomatoes and chilies naturally inbreed they evolved to be that way.

Worth

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by j.t.delaney

Hi there,

Does anybody have a handy list of tomato varieties that were grown by the household of Thomas Jefferson? I started looking through his Garden Journal, but if this list has already been compiled, this would save a lot of time.

I just lost every darn link I fetched for you that I know would help. There were two of his Garden Journal books and I copied down all the varieties he grew there and no, not unstable at all, ones that Benjamin franklin brought back from France, ones that were alreadyin the colonies as brought there by immigrants from several places in Europe and England.

That list I made is long since gone and I'll try later to get the 4th of the 4 I was transferring to here,oh yes, and the first 3 as well.

I say JT, doing any traveling lately?

Carolyn

[j.t.delaney]

Thank you kindly. I just got back from Costa Rica (lots of pepper varieties, not as many tomatoes as I'd like.) I will be going back again in a few months.

I got a bunch more tomatoes recently from Ghana and Turkey, which I'd be eager to share.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by j.t.delaney

Thank you kindly. I just got back from Costa Rica (lots of pepper varieties, not as many tomatoes as I'd like.) I will be going back again in a few months.

I got a bunch more tomatoes recently from Ghana and Turkey, which I'd be eager to share.

Sounds good to me and perhaps something different from Ghana since Loka was not liked by many who said it was sour tasting.

And why don't you check back with me about the Turkish ones to see if they are different from what you already sent me and it was Chance the Gardner here at Tville who added info and spellings to those that you sent since he is originally from Turkey.

Maybe best that we move this subject to e-mail?

Hmm, I can't find your e-mail addy right now, and that b'c I forgot what it is, but maybe you still have mine and if not, here I am.

cmale@aol.com

Carolyn, who wonders when you will ever want something back from me as to tomatoes.

[j.t.delaney]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

Sounds good to me and perhaps something different from Ghana since Loka was not liked by many who said it was sour tasting.

The biggest lesson I learned from the last Ghanaian tomatoes is that "terroir" isn't just for grapes. The tomatoes that the seeds came from in Ghana were huge, tender, luscious things, with few seeds. They were anything but sour! Here is a picture I took of them at the market when I bought them:



(You can see my foot in the corner of the picture.) I saw at least a dozen other farmers selling similar tomatoes around Accra and Koforidua: these gently lobed, highly symmetrical, deep red tomatoes. They were very striking. When I talked with the farmers, these were all grown seed-to-seed on smallholder plots for generations, so there probability of hybrid instability is quite low.

Now, I sent dozens of seed packets all over the United States and Europe, and I don't think they grew like that for anybody. The ones from my own garden were smaller, highly oblate, deeply ribbed, and with a flavor that was slightly *bitter*. I can assure you, the ones grown in Ghana did not have these features!

I assumed that the tropical soil would be nutrient poor, and that they would inherently perform better in the organic-rich soil of Minnesota, but this was naive. The well draining soil, the consistently high humidity, consistently high temperatures, and heavy rainfall of Southern Ghana definitely suits this variety. It would be interesting to see if growers in other tropical climates have similar results (since those of us in temperate zones certainly did not!)

[Fred Hempel]

Jefferson was a "foodie".

At a time when Mendel had not yet formalized genetics, it is pretty clear that he did not grow hybrid varieties.

However, since he seemed to like to grow lots of different vegetable varieties (see linked article), I would guess that Joseph is right, and that he grew a mix of what was available and there was probably some crossing going on in his garden that he tapped into via seed saving.

He most likely did not grow the variety "Abe Lincoln".

[FigPig]

There is a book on Jefferson's garden, which talks about varieties: A Rich Spot of Earth: Thomas Jefferson's Revolutionary Garden, by Peter Hatch. It looks like Jefferson described "dwarf" and "Spanish" tomatoes, so not varieties we would recognize. The appendix has a list of all of the vegetables referenced by Jefferson.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by FigPig

There is a book on Jefferson's garden, which talks about varieties: A Rich Spot of Earth: Thomas Jefferson's Revolutionary Garden, by Peter Hatch. It looks like Jefferson described "dwarf" and "Spanish" tomatoes, so not varieties we would recognize. The appendix has a list of all of the vegetables referenced by Jefferson.

An appendix with all the ones that Jeffereson grew would be great, since if you look at my post #5 here, alas, at one time I had made that list and never got around to linking to the other 3 links I wanted to show which showed Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson meeting together.

Carolyn

[Worth1]

I had a contest/argument with two other much smarter younger guys than me as to what was on the back of a nickle and who was on the front of a nickle.
Both of them swore up and down it was the US capital and George Washington.
Of course we all know better than that.
The smarter of the two had the audacity to ask what Monticello was.

Worth