Livingston was da man!

[Lee]

So, I've got 4 Livingston varieites growing in 3 different
parts of the garden this year.
Stone, Marvelous, Beauty, and Gold Ball

Marvelous and Gold Ball are in pots on the side of the
house, Stone is in the main garden, and Beauty is in the
side garden.

Santorini and Lime Green Salad have more fruit set than either of these, but Santorini has fusarium bad, and I've had to remove a few from LGS for BER.

Arkansas Traveler is catching up, but Beauty still has it
beat even though it's in a worse location!

And Stone is just awesome. 3 plants in a row (litearlly) died to TSWV. The next one in line is Stone, but it has
kept growing and setting fruit like mad. It's neighbor Cuostralee (my favorite) is the same size and vigor but only 1/2 the fruit set.

Overall, all of them are either the best or second best plants in their respective area based on health, vigor, and fruit set.
This is out of 8-10 other plants in their category.

So I just wanted to give props to the man who developed
these fine varieties so many years ago! I'm definitely
looking forward to tasting them all soon.

[bully]

I have Favorite in my garden and Golden Queen and Beauty in a surrogate garden.

I can't wait to try them, the fav is fighting Early blight..
I hope it makes it.

[kimpossible]

I have some Livingston varieties as well:

Eros
Rosy Morn
Gold Ball
Gulf State Mrket
Stone
Honor Bright/Lutescent
Perfection
Paragon
Main Crop Pink
Golden Queen

All are new to me. All have set baby fruit or are in flower (I didn't plant out until June 7th). The most vigorous plants are Honor Bright & Perfection. (about 24" to 30" in height - not the largest in the garden, but they went in later).

I really like his book - what an accomplishment to help change people's perception of tomatoes being poisonous, and developing varieties from being wild & partially edible to what they are today!

[Grub]

I hope Favorite works for you, Bully. T'was a bona fide contender for Red Brandywine (real deal) in my garden last year. Loaded with medium fruits that were great for a bit of everything. And a really good tomato taste.

Golden Queen wasn't bad either, lasting quite a while on the bench, but Paragon had a funky kind of taste to me.

Lee,
Is Stone hard or something? A medium keeper-type early commercial tomato? How does it taste?

One thing I will say, from my limited experience, the Livingston varieities I have grown are extemely vigorous and huge leafy plants. But I do say limited experience, as I've only grown three or four.

Gold Ball interests me from the Carolyn's book. Looks like a good oen for salsa

[kimpossible]

I know I read that "Stone" was named for it's weight relative to it's size ...

[kimpossible]

Here's a previous thread with good info from Craig

http://www.tomatoville.com/viewtopic...t=white+beauty

[Lee]

I grew stone last year.
It's well named as it is a very firm moderately dense tomato.
However, don't let that fool you into thinking it has a
taste to match. I was pleasantly surprised at how good
it was. Not too tart, not too sweet. Just a nice flavored
tomato that seems to be quite vigorous and healthy
amongst the TSWV and Fusarium infested plants.....

Lee

[Grub]

Sounds interesting. I trust those nasty viruses are killed by seed fermentation and not transferable when you share seeds Down Under? :wink:

[PNW_D]

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[feldon30]

Great scan, PNW_D!

A quick Google search provides hours worth of Livingston searches.

Livingston varieties offered at VictorySeeds.com
Coreless
Manyfold

and of course Craig's fantastic historical website with scans from old seed catalogs.

1931 Livingston catalog

I know something about trying to preserve history although not this far back. I am a fanatic of Tangerine Dream, a german experimental rock band who from 1971-1977 produced dozens of concerts of almost entirely improvised music. Very little of this live material has been released and only by the efforts of determined people have so many concert recordings surfaced. It seems that a new one is unearthed every year or so that everyone had assumed would never be found.

[carolyn137]

There are really four people who should be recognized as being instrumental in Livingston history and varieties.

One is Jim Huber, who most of you don't know, who lives in Ohio near the Livingston site of original activity. Jim has a huge collection of Livingston catalogs and other memorabilia and posted some of that at GW when he used to post there. he also posted a lot of it at Victory Seeds, initially, and then asked for it to be removed and right now I don't remember why.

Another is Craig, who from early on was somewhat obsessed with finding Livingston varieties that were buried in the USDA Grin system and for many of the earliest that he found I was a willing accomplice in growing them out bc zt that time we were both requesting lots from the USDA. These varieties were initially described in Off the Vine, the newslatter on heirlooms that Craig and I used to publish. My personal story about saving the variety Magnus,which was on the cover of the 1900 Livingston catalog is a good one to tell if some of you don't know about it already.

Another is Mike at Victory Seeds who has a similar strong interest in Livingston history and varieties and Craig has sent him seed for many of the varieties and Mike does his own research as well.

The fourth is Andy Smith who was instrumental in getting Livingston's book reproduced as a paperback so that it could be enjoyed by everyone rather than having to try and find the very expensive original copies still extant.

[Mantis]

I have Favourite and Giant Oxheart in and up. Can't wait to see how they turn out. Of course they will get prime positions in the greenhouse.

[lumierefrere]

Golden Queen is the 2nd tallest plant in my garden, close to 5' tall and let's just say her waistline is expanding at the same rate so might be considered larger than the Grandfather Ashlock which is about 3 weeks older. Magnus is doing better since the rain stopped, filling out instead of being so weedy. I'm looking forward to them both because of their background.

[nctomatoman]

Finding the Livingstons was quite a lot of fun! Golden Queen, Magnus, Favorite, Marvelous, Main Crop Pink, Giant Oxheart, Gold Ball, Dwarf Stone, Paragon, Perfection, Beauty and Rosy Morn were all sitting in the USDA seed collection. Honor Bright is not known by that name, but fits the description of Lutescent, which was known in the SSE collection. Yellow Oxheart as sold by Southern Exposure Seed Exch. could be the same as Livingston's release - it fits the description.

Acme is in the USDA collection, but it is crossed, and those I've tried from SSE members don't match the old catalog descriptions. Stone and Globe really never went out of circulation. Potato Leaf appears to be extinct, or was renamed and released as Magnus. Buckeye State appears to be extinct. Dwarf Artistocrat and Dwarf yellow Prince appear to be extint. Ideal and Ohio Red are in the USDA collection but appear crossed (Ohio State) or dead (Ideal). Coreless, Hummer and Manyfold appear to be extinct.

Livingston released a few others that were really obscure, and not around for very long.

Of those i've tried, my favorites are Favorite, Golden Queen, Marvelous and Magnus. I have GQ and Magnus in my garden this year.

[lumierefrere]

Craig, what about that Rose Peach that's shown in that scan? Have you ever had a glimmer of being able to track that down?