Oh, Deer! Craig’s 1996 Garden Odyssey

This is my favorite article to write each year. What is unusual about this particular year is how, with both of us being so busy, late this issue is. Usually, I get an early look at my garden relative to Carolyn, since my garden is in zone 7. But, for 1996, the garden is now but a fond memory, and we have had our first snow flurries already! What I like most about writing this article is the opportunity it provides to share my experiences with the OTV readers. I really believe that the best way to get gardeners to participate in the preservation of heirlooms is to describe their value. Whether it is a unique and beautiful color, a remarkable size or shape, the flavor, or the history, there are a host of great reasons for growing heirloom tomatoes. Let me describe the highlights and challenges from this year’s garden.

Does anyone know a foolproof way to deter deer from visiting a garden? North Raleigh, where my garden is located, is undergoing a huge boom in construction. It is, or was, a rural area with lots of woods and a large lake. Regrettably, a significant area of the woods is now history, replaced with chain saws, bulldozers, and surveyors. Obviously, there was also a very healthy deer population that is now being displaced. The deer seem to love our neighborhood, and especially, heirloom tomatoes, beans, and peppers! They have made a significant negative impact upon my gardening efforts this year. The deer have an uncanny knack for knowing just what tomato I am most eager to harvest. Perhaps I should have them write this column. Certainly, they had more tasting experience with many of my varieties than I did!

The other story of 1996 was the weather. Unlike my first three years in Raleigh, there was a very appropriate assortment of hot and warm, rain and dry (at least until hurricanes Bertha and Fran hit!). And, the ripening of the varieties has been well spaced and well timed. The result of this good fortune was a healthy garden of high productivity. Yes, there were some unwanted and unexpected tragedies. For the first time, what appears to be Fusarium Wilt forced me to remove some plants before they bore any fruit. But, as a whole, the plants looked good, fruited well, and the results were both interesting and delicious! Hurricane Bertha did not damage my garden with its wind, but the significant rainfall caused a lot of splitting and rotting of fruit. Fran was another story, and pretty much put an end to my gardening season.

Now that the weather has been discussed, it is time to talk about the fruits of my labor. The tragedies of 1996 were a supposedly red Italian paste tomato called Niemeyer and a large pink named Middle Tennessee Low Acid. The first was planted in the worst part of my garden. Water tended to puddle in the area, and I was not surprised to see it struggle so badly. The second was the most vigorous plant in the garden when it suddenly lost steam. Even at 8 feet tall it had not set fruit, but was in vigorous bloom. Both plants succumbed to the wilt before ripe fruit formed. I was fortunate to pick several ripe fruits from some other plants that eventually passed on from the same problem. Amelia Rose, the first plant in my garden to show signs of trouble, is a productive variety which yields clusters of small, plum shaped pink fruit. There are lots of seeds inside, and the flavor is nice, sweet and juicy. Orange is one of my favorite tomatoes. Obtained from the Russian collection of the Seed Saver’s Exchange, it seems very susceptible to wilt. Even the plants I gave away to friends and family were short lived. Fortunately, it bore well for the short time it was alive. The fruits are very oblate (flat) and about 5 to 10 ounces in weight. The color is a bright yellow (despite the name), and the flavor is delightfully tart, almost lemony. The following also spent most of their short life borrowed time, and were pulled from the garden early. Dwarf Perfection, obtained from the USDA, is a very ordinary red that found itself in sauces and salsa due to its lack of exemplary characteristics. Old Virginia gave me one fruit, but what a fruit it was! Tipping the scales at over 2 pounds, it is the smoothest and most perfect looking huge red tomato of my experience. It is also quite delicious, having a good mild, sweet, old fashioned flavor. Mirabelle, a very small gold cherry tomato, is quite nice, but not outstanding to my taste. It is very productive despite its lack of good health.

Among the non-infected plants, the oddest must be another USDA acquisition, Peach Blow Sutton. The fruits are very round, but have a very dull surface and some suggestion of lumpiness, like an old russet apple. The ripe color is a mottled pink, with some green remaining. Despite the unique appearance, the flavor is surprisingly sweet and good, but the tomato is somewhat hollow, with rather thin walls. I have never grown any of the so-called “peach” tomatoes listed in the SSE annual, but suspect that they look at least a bit like this. My most pleasant surprise of the year is a tomato I have temporarily called Cherokee Brick Red Cross. Last year, one of my Cherokee Purple plants gave brownish, rather than purplish, tomatoes. Assuming that this was a bee-produced hybrid, I expected to get either the purplish or a red tomato with my growout this year. You will recall that this is also seed that was distributed to interested OTV readers, and I gave away several plants as well. Lo and behold, all of the plants gave the brownish fruit! My conclusion is that the plant last grew differently last year was a sport or mutation rather than a cross. I would love to hear from OTV readers who grew plants of this variety. I am hoping that it is a stable variety, because I love the tomato. The color is unique in a large tomato, and the flavor is superb. Does anyone have a good idea for a name?

Other tomatoes that I grew for the first time, and was pleased with, are Sandul Moldovan, Berwick’s German, Red Brandywine, Zogola, Green Zebra, Adelia, Leo Harper’s Yellow, Sojourner, Aunt Ginny’s Purple, and Page German. Sandul Moldovan was one of the more vigorous plants growing in this year’s garden. The resulting fruits were very large, oblate, fairly smooth and pink in color. The flavor was pleasantly mild, sweet and very juicy. Berwick’s German looks very much like a tomato I first grew a few years ago called Shilling Giant. It is medium to quite large, and very variable in shape. Some tomatoes were nearly frying pepper shaped, while others were nearly true heart shaped. The color was scarlet, and the tomatoes had a good balanced flavor and tender texture. There was a tendency for the tomatoes to be a bit hollow. I have had the seed for Red Brandywine for years, originally obtaining it from the Landis Valley Museum in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It is one of the absolute best red tomato I have grown. The shape was nearly globe, and they were quite large in size. Inside was found the classic tomato interior, with many irregular seed chambers. The flavor was delicious and truly rich and old-fashioned. It reminded me of the variety Nepal in many ways. Adelia was very similar, but just a bit smaller, perhaps. Those classic round red tomatoes were nothing like Zogola, however. A truly monstrous tomato, with lots of lumps, creases, folds and a tad of blossom scar, it grew quite large. Deep scarlet in color, it was very sweet, balanced and juicy, and just another great red tomato. Green Zebra was a pleasant surprise, in that it is a visually beautiful and unique tomato that just happens to taste great. Unripe fruits are light green 3 to 4 ounce globes with jagged darker green stripes. When it ripens, the pale green background turns to a warm amber color. The inside remains bright green, and the flavor is snappy and fresh. It is a wonderful tomato with which to make salsa! I have had the seed for Leo Harper’s Yellow for a long time, but finally decided to grow it this year. It is not high yielding, but produces very large, nearly round deep yellow fruit. The flavor is reminiscent of Yellow Brandywine, with a nice tartness to go along with the fruity sweetness. Aunt Ginny’s Purple is just another great potato leaf pink beefsteak type tomato, similar in appearance and flavor to Brandywine. Page German and Sojourner are large red tomatoes. The first is very oblate and smooth, the second of variable shapes leaning toward hearts. Both have well balanced, true old fashioned tomato flavor.

Repeat varieties that performed well again are Golden Queen, Black Krim (as long as it is well ripened), Price’s Purple, Coyote, Gregori’s Altai, Azoychka, Aunt Ruby’s Green, Dorothy’s Green, Cherokee Purple, Yellow Brandywine, Polish, Giant Syrian, Gallo Plum, Lillian’s Yellow Heirloom, and Brandywine. I described the performance of most of these in previous articles. It was good to reaffirm that the Golden Queen grown from the USDA seed is indeed not the same as that being offered by numerous seed companies, but rather the true Livingston introduction. Rather than being orange and medium sized on short plants, the real thing is bright yellow with a pale pink blush, grows on very vigorous tall plants, and has a delicious sweet flavor. Black Krim has always been an attention getter for its dark purplish pigmentation. The color seems to darken as the tomato ripens. I did not enjoy the flavor when I last grew it, but well ripened specimens from this year’s garden have made me change my mind about this. Now that I have grown both in my garden, clearly despite the similar sizes and coloring, Price’s Purple and Cherokee Purple are distinctly different, aside from the obvious plant characteristics (Price is potato leafed, Cherokee is regular leafed). The former is more oblate, has a more ridged shoulder, and is significantly milder in flavor. Both are fine tomatoes, however. Coyote, which is actually considered a weed in parts of Mexico, is certainly something quite different. The very vigorous and productive plants produced very small ivory colored tomatoes that had a very big flavor, nearly of beefsteak tomato intensity. When very ripe, the blossom end is a translucent ivory, and the shoulders are pale yellow. One of my longtime favorite tomatoes, and the best of the early influx of Russian varieties, is Gregori’s Altai. Growing nearly globular in shape and prone to radial cracking, the interior is very solid with the seed chambers at the periphery. The flavor is very, very sweet, almost surprisingly so. Giant Syrian is a very large red heart shaped tomato with excellent flavor and yield. Gallo Plum is a red pepper shaped sauce tomato, like Opalka. Some of the fruit were over 6 inches long and weighed a pound. Though Carolyn disputes its reputation, Brandywine again won the award as best tasting tomato in the garden. The yield this year, like all of my pink potato leaf varieties, was poor, unfortunately. I must get her to try the strain that I am growing to see if I can change her mind!

Disappointments included Plum Lemon, Whittemore, Snowball, Elfie, German, and Eckert Polish (the last two obviously crossed, being very small red tomatoes instead of large fruited). Despite a beautiful color and remarkable resemblance to a lemon in shape, I found Plum Lemon to be virtually flavorless, and not at all solid and meaty. Whittemore was remarkable for its large, pink, oblate fruit, but it had an odd cooked flavor that I occasionally find in some of the large pink tomatoes (Sabre, Dinner Plate, Una Hartsock’s Beefsteak, and Magellan Burgess Purple come to mind) and do not much care for. Snowball was beautiful to look at, being over a pound and very oblate - nearly flat - with some catfacing on the bottom. The color was the truest white that I have yet seen. Alas, it suffered from blandness, not rare for white tomatoes. Elfie is a pretty tomato, nearly round and a pale apricot color (the orange side of yellow), but the flavor simply does not excite. The bees are obviously responsible for creating chaos with German and Eckert Polish. I picked red golf balls instead of softballs! By the way, another USDA acquisition, Chartreuse Mutant, gave me small red tomatoes!

Many tomatoes that I grew came on late, did not yield very well, or were not memorable in quality. Among these are Manyel, Brown’s Large Red (actually a large pink), Honey, Arlene’s Poland, Early Annie, Olena, Abraham Lincoln, Yellow Beauty (a bright yellow USDA variety with bland flavor), Robinson’s, Indian Reservation, Soldacki, Bisignano #2 potato leaf, German Pink, Anna Russian (the worst it has ever performed for me), and Mennonite. Two red/yellow bicolors, Selwin Yellow and Regina’s Yellow, were planted very late; the seed was very old and took extensive potassium nitrate treatment before germination occurred. The varieties look promising, and will be regrown next year. A few tomatoes grown for the first time were quite good and were probably underrated by me because they all came ripe at once. These were Deep Yellow German, Taps, Curry, Plumsteak, German Heirloom, Druzba, Rasp Large Red, Hungarian Heirloom, Kellogg’s Breakfast, Bridge Mike’s, Russian 117, Aker’s West Virginia, Penny, Russian, and Guiseppe’s Big Boy. Several were large pink potato leaf types (Taps, German Heirloom, and Guiseppe’s Big Boy) of excellent flavor but low yields. Among the red tomatoes were two of globe shape (Druzba, medium sized, and Rasp Large Red, very large), a huge oblate (Aker’s West Virginia), and a monstrous heart shape (Russian 117). Penny and Plumsteak were very large, pink and heart shaped. Curry, Hungarian Heirloom, Bridge Mike’s, and Russian were all very large and regular leafed. Of the two gold tomatoes, Deep Yellow German was medium and globe shaped, and Kellogg’s Breakfast very large and oblate.

Finally, here is report on a few other experiments conducted my garden in 1996. The growout of Sun Gold F4 potato leaf selection resulted in all potato leaf plants. The cherry tomatoes on the plant were red orange in color and very good tasting, though not as sweet as the gold colored hybrid from which it originated. My experience with Madara potato leaf selection is also positive. Again, all seedlings were potato leaf. The vigorous plant produced slightly oval shaped bright yellow cherry tomatoes that were quite solid, and with a good sweet flavor. It reminded me of Galina in texture and flavor, but was not quite as round as that tomato. Both of these tomatoes look to be stabilized potato leaf varieties, which is unusual in cherry tomatoes. To those of you who tried the Sun Gold seeds, please let me know of your experiences with them this year. My growout of an F2 plant from the Price’s Purple X Purple Perfect cross was also successful. All seedlings were potato leaf, which was expected (both parents are potato leaf). What was amazing was the number of blossoms on each cluster, and the number of blossoms on each cluster that actually set fruit! The tomatoes were about 8 ounce, slightly oblate and purplish in color. They were intermediate in size and shape between the two parents. The flavor was excellent.

Another gardening experience has come and gone. As you see from my results, it was an interesting year, one in which I returned to heirlooms and left for the most part the old commercial varieties. Now I am wondering what next year will bring?