Rare Tomatoes

[lycoperleprechaun]

Timcunningham asked for rare toms. I remembered the Amishland site, as I said, "proclaiming" that they had rare seeds. I don't know if anyone sensed my own skepticism in my initial post, but I figured I’d throw it out there anyway.

However, as I suspected, my suggestion to check out Amishland sparked some dialogue and opinions on the matter, which should help me and anyone else reading this thread build a better opinion of our own, based on a decent sample-size of opinions rather than just on what the website owner may purport to be true. Unfortunately, much info on the web needs to be taken with a grain of salt. That’s the beauty of forums such as this one, isn’t it! Where things can be sorted out a bit. Unless, of course, you’re all full of cr@p! HA HA LOL. Which I seriously doubt.

I’ve never bought from Amishland and at least I learned something here, since Tim seems to already have a clue.

[timcunningham]

lycoperleprechaun, I appreciate you trying to help me out.

The way I see it now, there are two ways to find rare varieties.

1. "Re-Discover" a once popular variety, by talking to old farmers and gardeners. Easy enough to do here in S. Georgia.

2. Cross your own

[lycoperleprechaun]

timcunningham:
I concur with that statement. I'd say that crossing your own sounds most feasible. I plan to try it this year.

Good luck with anything endeavored in that arena.

[carolyn137]

Tim,

My # 1 way of finding rare tomato varieties is to let everyone I know and those I don't that I'm looking for family heirlooms.

When I was teaching I gave A
s to all the students who brought me their family heirlooms.

How do you think I first got Heidi and Gogosha and Ilse's Yellow and many more.

And then I sent out flyers to all the faculty and that's how I got Opalka and Soldacki and and Crnkovic Yugoslavian and more.

And then I let the maintenance worker who was fixing something in the Women's bathroom use my phone to call for supplies and got talking with him and that's how I got Chris Ukrainian.

And I polled the group who were taking my adult ed class on heirloom tomatoes and that's how I got Neves Azorean Red.

So many times earlier commercial OP
s lose their names and then get renamed so it's dicey when asking farmers in the US for what they have.

And crossing varieties to get rare ones. Well yes, one could, but then while a genetically stabilized selection may be OP it sure as heck isn't an heirloom.

If there are communities near you that have a high population of Germans or Italians or Russians or Slavs, or other European nationalities, then go there and ask around.

There is nothing I love more than growing out a variety I got from someone that has not been grown outside of the family....ever. And I always ask if I can list a variety at SSE and/or share with others. And always the answer is yes, since many of my varieties came from older folks where the younger ones in the family just weren't into gardening, or from families newly immigrated to the US where they brought along their own family tomato and other heirlooms.

They're out there, but you've got to go looking and speak up to others and make contacts.

[timcunningham]

Thanks Carolyn. Sounds to me like the journey will be just as enjoyable as the destination.

[cdntomato]

And crossing varieties to get rare ones. Well yes, one could, but then while a genetically stabilized selection may be OP it sure as heck isn't an heirloom.

Carolyn, this is why I have always wondered why you identified a class of OP in your book as 'Created Heirlooms' (and 'Mystery Heirloom' too). Aren't Tom Wagner's recent creations simply OPs per the above? In particular, how do they warrant being classified as heirloom, given that they were breed with the intent of being commercial, not amateur/non-profit? So why would his stuff and others of the same ilk be labelled heirloom but not the fun home garden breeding undertaken by, for example, the Dwarf Tomato Project participants?

I've really had trouble with this whole concept of classification as I work through the Canadian heritage stuff, especially when working with material that probably wouldn't qualify as true or commercial heirloom yet but is OP with historical significance.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts on this.
Jennifer

[lycoperleprechaun]

Carolyn-
I found your info above interesting. There is a BIG pop. of Russian people living in the neighborhood I just left 11/2 years ago; before I found tomatoes. I used to give them salmon that I caught in our local river. They used to try to force money on me, but I wouldn’t have it. Only the children could speak English; they translated. I might go back and inquire about toms.
Thanks Babe.

[carolyn137]

Jennifer,

It was Craig who first suggested the categories of Family, Commercial and Created Heirlooms in Off the Vine and I added the Mystery group when I wrote the book.

I have no problem with the Family and Commercial ones as long as one accepts the dating for same that others have suggested and I agree with, which is that a variety should have been in existance before about 1940 when hybrids starting becoming more available.

Created heirlooms? I think Craig was thinking of all the verbiage Tom Wagner has used to justify calling his varieties heirlooms b'c he insists that an heirloom is something that is treasured, and not necessarily a function of using a time element.

And I'm not going to argue with that either.

Perhaps I should not have listed four categories as heirlooms.

But my main objective was to indicate to others that there WERE varieties that weren't authentic heirlooms as I had defined them and that there were some that arose via cross pollination, as in the mystery Group.

At least with regard to the varieties I presented in my book I was hoping that folks would realize that the origins of varieties presented as heirlooms in many venues are NOT all heirlooms as in pre-1940.

Does that help at all?

[cdntomato]

Thanks for responding, Carolyn.

Yes, I know Craig is the one who put forward the classifications under discussion. I also know that you would never have included them in your book if you were not in agreement with the concept.

I'm still thinking about this subject. Creating a classification to accommodate Tom's verbiage... Treasuring or treasury? :wink: Sadly, not to be the latter for Tom, although he has tried very hard and deserves to have been financially rewarded for all his work. But his intent was commercial, yes?? This is what doesn't jive for me when calling his stuff and other modern OP creations 'heirloom'.

Jennifer, off to do more seeding up, 80+ dwarfies today

[carolyn137]

Jennifer,

A few additional thoughts.

i don't think anyone has created a class called created heirlooms just for Tom Wagner, as you wrote, since there are others who also believe that something treasured is an heirloom. I personlly have some problems with that as in transferring treasured to tomatoes from other things, but how can I argue with others who happen tofeel differently?

And I forgot one important fact, and that's that I have no problem calling a created heirloom an heirloom when the two parents, or at least one of them, is a known heirloom b'c the lineage is there.

And that's true for almost all of the ones I know of except for Tom Wagner's where he uses commercial breeding lines for some, not all, of his creations. In his recent thread at GW you saw him discussing this quite openly.

Also, I'm not willing to say that all of his efforts have been directed towards commercialism of his own varieties as you suggested in your above post.

For many years he had positions with other companies doing standard breeding of pretty much round red hybrids, and did his own breeding as a sideline. And all those early ones such as Green Grape and Green Zebra and Schimmeig Creg and the others he shared with others freely.

it was only when he no longer was employed full time in the commercial breeding industry that I think he started paying more attention to the fact that he felt he hadn't received enough attention for his efforts and no monetary reward to go along with that.

And Tom, if you're reading here b'c I don't know what user name you might be using if you are here, that's just my own take on the situation as it has developed.

So, as long as there's a way to distinguish between authentic family and commercial heirlooms, by date, and as long as parents of created heirlooms are heirlooms themselves and as long as mystery types have parents or at least one known to be an heirloom, then I don't have much of a problem with such groupings.

Again, the whole effort is to try and let folks know that not all "heirlooms" are created equal and I do think it serves a purpose to try and make those distinctions.

[travis]

"And I forgot one important fact, and that's that I have no problem calling a created heirloom an heirloom when the two parents, or at least one of them, is a known heirloom b'c the lineage is there." [Carolyn]

Fair enough if we are dealing in non-scientific warm and fuzzies. But if that, then many more recently commercially developed OPs will qualify as "created heirlooms" by virtue of their parental lines falling into the "pre-1940 heirloom" category.

And for that matter, any stable cultivar purposely dehybridized from Big Boy or Better Boy is now a "created heirloom" since "at least one (of its parents) is a known heirloom."

Another issue is the categorization of recent "unknown bee pollinations" of so-called heirlooms suddenly becoming what I would characterize as "arbitrary heirlooms" And yes, I'm suggesting another category of definition since who knows what the other parent was.

Besides, in some bee pollination cases the known parent's heirloomity is questionable. "Oh, so and so got this one from so and so out in the Heartland back in '96, blah, blah, blah." So, who really knows if that yellow "family heirloom" that in truth cannot be traced back even 50 years in fact was just the dehybridized spawn of Lemon Boy, Golden Girl, or whatever?

The whole "heirloom" definitions deal is rife with slippery slopedness. But then I guess whatever twists one's crank or fills one's till ... :wink:

PV

[nctomatoman]

It's a good thing that the main purpose of all of this is to grow delicious tomatoes...they are for eating, first and foremost!

By the way - a few quick responses to answer the original question....what is a rare tomato?

A rare tomato is whatever tomato a very few people are raving about, but you don't yet have.

Or, a rare tomato is a known older variety that only a few have, but barely germinate....hence are on the verge of extinction.

There are a few phases of this tomato journey - the discovery (when you convince yourself that it is exciting/worth growing non-hybrids), the obsession (scanning for people's views, fitting in as many of various people's recommendations as you can, overextending yourself, perhaps joining the SSE and reoffering hundreds of varieties), retrenchment (realization that you are being treated like a seed company, injuring yourself by gardening beyond your capability, growing weary of it all)....then the best phase of all, balance (realizing that you have the varieties you love so no longer have to seek more....focusing on refining your list.....pulling back from reoffering seeds - doing a few research experiments, and enjoying what you grow). I am somewhere in balance, moving away from retrenchment...though the return to obsession is a slippery slope!

[timcunningham]

Hmm kind of like the 5 stages of Tomato Obsession?

I like it.

1.Discovery.
2.Obsession.
3.Overextension.
4.Retrenchment
5.Balance.

I think I am somewhere between 1 and 2.

[carolyn137]

PV,

Of course there are all sorts of squiggles as regards definitions and situations and issues.

I've shared what I think and anyone else can form their own opinions about what they think might apply.

To discuss it in depth is just not something that I personally am interested in doing at this point in time.

I'm mostly interested in getting the plants Martha is sending me on May 22nd so Freda can plant and care for them for me so I have some lucious tomatoes over the summer to keep me relatively happy.

[Sorellina]

Ciao Craig,

As always, thank you for your wisdom, it truly brought a smile to my face. I like to avoid putting my hand on the stove if someone has paved the way through experience and I can now see exactly where I'm headed. It's clear that I'm smack dab in the middle of obsession, still trying to shoe-horn more varieties into the yard as the amount of lawn dwindles each successive year, not yet over-extending myself and I haven't joined SSE yet, but plan on it eventually. The good news for me this year is that I didn't over-sow anywhere near the extent that I did last year so have less extras to thrust upon parishners, neighbours, colleagues, community gardeners, and plant swap-ees. As a bonus, so far everyone still fits underneath the lights.

We've got one of those "accidental bee-pollination crosses" going on as a teaching tool for our 6 year old. He's keen to create his very own heirloom so last year when we discovered an F1 cross between Yellow Pear and San Marzano Gigante, we encouraged him to save the seed for it and grow out the F2s this year. We'll see if he's got the patience to grow out 8 generations before he names it (most likely after himself) and distributes it.