Welcome...Here
It Is...Finally!!!
Most
of you that have been reading the blurbs under my name in the address section
of the SSE Winter Yearbook have probably noticed that I always have some sort
of “project” that I am planning. Those
will all be updated in this introductory column; this newsletter is the first of my
“project wish list“ that has made it off the ground! I must thank Carolyn for helping to motivate
me in this regard, as I am quite good at procrastination...but, here we are,
and this is a good time to give a little information about what I hope for this
newsletter, why we are doing it, and some information that will tell you all a
little about how I became involved with the SSE, and, especially, heirloom
tomatoes.
First,
I suppose I should provide a little background about myself (mostly because
Carolyn asked me to!). I am 38 years
old, married with two girls (Caitlin, 8, and Sara, 12), and am constantly
having to reassure my family that I have not “lost it” when they see me
planting 97 varieties of tomatoes in my garden, or appear excited about
numerous cups of foul smelling, fermenting, fruit fly infested tomato
pulp. My roots are in
My
love for gardening was “planted” (forgive the pun...) as a young child, maybe 6
years old or so, during the hours I spent with my grandfather in his huge
garden. I recall seeing amazing dahlias,
strawberries, sweet peas, squash, and, of course, tomatoes. In fact, I hated tomatoes until I had eaten
the ones that he grew for us. My
interest in gardening became dormant for many years as school took its toll on my time and attention. It was not until graduate school and marriage
to Sue that we decided that it would be fun to grow our own vegetables, and we
had several beautiful gardens in a community plot in the early 1980’s.
Being
a scientist, I am naturally curious, and was always interested in trying lots
of varieties of everything. Trips to the local nursery were frustrating,
however, as all one finds there are plants of the “top ten” or so, and growing
Better Boy hybrid or Roma was becoming boring. Ordering seeds from catalogs and
starting everything ourselves was an improvement, but there was still a certain sameness about the experience. Then, my gardening life changed when I
learned of the Seed Saver’s Exchange in 1986 from a gardening magazine. Everything has mushroomed from there, and now
I find myself introducing many people and organizations each year to the joy of
growing heirloom vegetables. I am sure
that this story is very familiar to many of you, and you may have experienced
similar things.
So, enough background.
Oh, yes, I wanted to update you on my projects. First there is this newsletter, and here we
are with that. I may write occasional
articles for Bob Ambrose’s “Tomato Club” newsletter, which some of you may be
familiar with. I continue to grow out
new (to me) heirloom tomatoes each year, as well as some of my favorites which
have held their own against new competition in the trials. And, I was asked to
write a tomato book by a publisher, and am about to get started on that rather
daunting but exciting project (I may be asking some of you for input for the
book). There are other projects that are
on the horizon, such as examining germination enhancement procedures, sorting
out the tomato section of the SSE winter yearbook (looking for errors,
synonymous varieties, etc.). Finally, my
trip to the SSE campout this year was truly inspiring, and my efforts for genetic
preservation are newly focused, and energized.
For
my part, I will try to express my goals for this newsletter. First and foremost, I would like it to be a
forum for all tomato enthusiasts in the SSE to share information and concerns
with each other, whether it is a special growing technique, search for a lost
variety, sharing of historical information, alert for a particularly delectable
variety, or even concerns regarding the SSE in general. We will try to provide our own expertise and
experience each time, but we will require more than just the input of two
tomato gardeners. There may be some
proposed projects that many of you would like to take part in. Who knows...this is the starting line, and
it’s a race that goes on infinitely, so lets get started!
Welcome
to all of you, and thanks for your interest.
I hope that it will be informative, and fun!
Craig