From the Santa
Cruz Sentinel
April 21, 2005
Heirloom
tomato varieties inspire passionate gardeners
Cynthia Geske, owner of Love Apple Farm in Ben Lomond, has become the local, "go to" expert when it comes to the world of heirloom tomatoes. For the better part of a decade, Geske has been preserving the legacy of heirloom tomatoes by sending out thousands of seedlings with extensive cultivation advice.
The story of how Geske, gardening, the tomato and the creation of Love Apple Farm all came together is the stuff of novels.
In the early 1990s, Geske, tired of being an unsuccessful gardener, enrolled in a few horticulture classes at Cabrillo College. The enthusiasm of students and teachers was contagious, and she ended up taking more classes. Armed with her new knowledge, Geske planted a vegetable garden at her home, including heirloom tomatoes.
Remembering back, Geske recalls of all the vegetables "the tomatoes gave me the biggest kick." About five years later, the family moved to Ben Lomond to a larger piece of land. The new garden plan called for 10 heirloom varieties, 30 seeds of each variety were sowed and every seed germinated.
Faced with the dilemma of what to do with the excess 290 seedlings, Geske remembers wanting them to "fulfill their tomato destiny." She decided to try and sell the seedlings.
A sign advertising the seedlings was placed in the driveway. The seedlings, along with a self-service payment jar, were placed on a garden table. The seedlings were sold within the first weekend, launching the self-serve tomato seedling business.
No one could have imagined how that one weekend’s success would send both the seedlings and Geske, a former lawyer, off in search of their tomato destiny.
The new enterprise now needed a name. Geske remembered that tomatoes had once been called love apples in French, because it was thought that they had some aphrodisiac qualities. Coincidentally, the Geskes had been told that their new home had been built with the reward Harry Love, a Texas Ranger, received for killing the bandit Joaquin Murietta in the early 1850s.
Combining the history of the two led to the creation of the name Love Apple Farm.
The
legacy
Geske’s goal is to introduce people to the wide diversity of the heirloom
tomato and preserve its rich gene pool.
In general, heirloom varieties come from open pollinated plants and are strains that have been grown for at least 50 years.
They were originally selected for some unique trait or set of traits that sets them apart from the ordinary. Since the seeds were saved year to year and passed down to following generations, they became known as heirlooms.
The rigors of the supermarket supply chain have narrowed our food choices. Offering people the diversity of heirlooms is Geske’s contribution to giving people back a choice of what they eat.
One of the first things you notice about an heirloom tomato is its appearance. They come in a rainbow of colors including black, green, pink, white, orange, yellow, red and a variety of bicolors.
Heirlooms grow in a variety of shapes including ox heart, elongated and ruffled. These varieties are a delight to the eye and taste marvelous.
The taste depends on variety: Black and purple fruit often has a smoky barbecue flavor; bicolors can be very sweet; whites tend to be mild; and fruit with green tones are usually spicy.
Getting past the nonconformity of heirlooms can be difficult for some people.
"Heirlooms are just like people. They look different and have blemishes, just like people," says Geske. It has been her experience that with a little education and taste, preconceived ideas change easily.
Tomato
love
People seem to be having a love affair with tomatoes. We consume them fresh,
dried, canned, diced in salsa, made into soups, sauces and ketchup. It’s not
surprising that the passion for tomatoes has spread, infiltrating most of the
world’s cuisines and establishing itself as the number one garden plant,
according to the University of Illinois Extension Service.
Geske laughs as she describes the farm as basically a "nonprofit resource center." Knowing that really exciting varieties are getting out to the public and helping people succeed at growing this beloved vegetable in the home garden is what fuels Geske in maintaining the farm.
Over the years, the farm has attracted hundreds of loyal customers. The reason people get involved with heirloom tomatoes is as varied as they are.
Some people are attracted by the extensive variety list. Other customers come seeking to improve their growing skills and others are looking for a particular tomato for their cuisine requirements.
Being a self-service business, customer feedback usually comes in the form of messages in the guestbook or e-mails. Most sing praises for the farm or for the help provided in growing or for a particular variety. The common thread that runs through most comments is that, once the customer becomes aware of the heirloom difference, tomatoes just aren’t tomatoes anymore.
If it’s summer, you will find Terry Whettam of Ben Lomond growing the farm’s tomatoes and eating bruschetta, an Italian appetizer that calls for ripe tomatoes.
"Homegrown tomatoes are better than what you buy in the store, but heirlooms are two to three times better than that," says Whettam, who has been growing tomatoes for years.
Whettam enjoys the options heirlooms offer in the way of different tastes textures and colors. Hawaiian pineapple, Mary Robinson and green zebra are a few of his favorites.
Randy Fedak of Boulder Creek purchases about 20 plants each year for his home garden. Every year he looks forward to seeing what the farm has to offer.
"You can’t compare the taste to anything else. They are so good you can eat them by themselves with just a little balsamic vinegar and sugar," he says.
At the peak of his harvest, there are usually enough tomatoes to give away to friends and even a few to feed to his exotic tortoises.
Having the tomato expert in your back yard can prove an asset. One year Fedak just couldn’t figure out way the tips of one particular variety kept rotting. Geske was able to easily diagnose that it was most likely a calcium deficiency that is easily corrected.
You can
do it, too
Interested in knowing more about growing tomatoes? Then give yourself a
treat this Saturday. Spend the afternoon in the lovely garden of Love Apple
Farm, where Cynthia Geske will be presenting a seminar on growing tomatoes. This
year, she will have 12,000 plants for sale in 120 varieties.
At the seminar, you will learn all you need to know about heirlooms and their culture. Afterward, you may purchase some plants to start on your own tomato growing adventure. No advanced reservations are required and admission is free.
If You Go
WHAT: How to Grow Backyard Tomatoes. WHEN: Noon-2 p.m. Saturday WHERE: Love Apple Farm, 9299 Glen Arbor Drive, Ben Lomond. DETAILS: 336, 2679 or loveapplefarm22@yahoo.com.
Top 10 do’s
1. CHOOSE THE RIGHT TYPE of tomato for your growing conditions. Tomatoes, particularly heirlooms, come in all sizes: cherry, small, medium and large. If you have six or more hours of sunlight directly on the plant, you should be able to grow a big tomato. With less than six hours (or in coastal areas) choose medium to smaller-fruited tomato varieties.
2. TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT. There are thousands of varieties of hybrid and heirloom tomato varieties, in "normal" colors like red, yellow and orange. Then there are "kooky" colors such as black, purple, pink, bi-color, green and white.
There are also different shapes than the standard round tomato. Also available are pear, plum, heart-shaped (called "ox-hearts"), ruffled and elongated.
3. CHOOSE THE SUNNIEST SPOT. Tomatoes thrive on sun. It will be almost impossible to grow your tomatoes in the shade, or with less than three hours of direct sunlight. Some people put them up against a solid fence, which serves the nefarious purpose of blocking out several hours of precious sunlight in the morning or afternoon.
4. GIVE THEM SPACE. I see a lot of people planting their tomato plants too close together, or too close to other plants. They see this tiny seedling and don’t realize it will grow to 6 feet or taller, and just as wide if happy and well-cared for. Crowding in your tomato plants will backfire and give you less fruit, not more.
Tomato plants need a free flow of air around them to keep down foliar diseases, and crowding them will inhibit airflow. You will also find it much easier to harvest the tomatoes if they are not locked together in an impenetrable thicket. Plant tomatoes three feet apart, but if you just don’t have that much space, and you can’t control yourself, you might be able to get away with putting them two feet apart.
5. PLANT THEM DEEP. Tomato plants want to be planted with only a few sets of leaves sticking up out of the ground. If you can get a good deal of that stem underground, you will find your tomatoes to eventually be healthier and happier. If you look closely at a tomato stem, there are minute fuzzy hairs sticking out. Once contacted with soil, these "hairs" turn into roots, making the plant stronger and able to uptake more nutrients.
You can either dig a deep hole, or use the "trench" method, which works particularly well with long seedlings. Dig a narrow trench, about four or five inches deep, then lay the plant in sideways, bending the top up and sticking out the trench at the end. Make sure you water all along the length of the trench for awhile, in order to get the root ball wet.
6. STAKE THEM. We like to call tomato plants "vines," although technically they are not. They don’t cling naturally to a stake or other structure. It’s important, however, to keep the branches and fruit up off the ground. If you allow the tomato plants to sprawl all over willy nilly, then they are more susceptible to soil-borne diseases, and the fruits that are touching the ground will often end up ruined by either crawling insects or rot.
A preferred method among many experience gardeners is to build their own cages out of concrete reinforcing wire. You can buy it in rolls of 5 feet tall by 50 feet long. Simply cut 6-foot lengths, attach them into a cylinder using either narrow gauge wire, or bend back and twist the cut ends together to secure. These cylindrical cages can then be placed over your plant (one per cage). Drive a 6-foot length of rebar or bamboo two feet into the ground next to the cage, then tie the cage to the rebar at several intervals.
As the tomato plant starts to grow out of the cage, gently push back inside the cylinder, any branches that are poking out, training the plant to grow up inside the cage.
7. FERTILIZE. I like to grow organically, and I find the use of fish emulsion (also called fish fertilizer) to be an excellent, albeit stinky, method of organic feeding. Tomatoes benefit from fertilizing at the beginning of their growth cycle, and again when they are blossoming.
Other good fertilizers that you can add to the soil at the time of planting and throughout the season are worm castings and well-aged compost. Some people think that with tomatoes, the more fertilizer you give them, the more tomatoes you get. Not true. Over fertilizing will result in a lot of green growth, but not a lot of fruit.
8. DISEASE CONTROL. Tomato plants are susceptible to a host of different blights, wilts and other aggravating diseases. It’s best to start off pro-actively, rather than waiting for your plant to show signs of disease. Start a regimen of spraying with a copper fungicide a week or so after you first plant. Any nursery should have copper-based sprays complete with specific instructions on how much and how often. Also try an application of a sulphur-based spray at the beginning of June to control russet mites, which are not visible to the naked eye, but can cause many problems with your plants.
9. PROTECT THEM FROM VARMINTS. If you have pesky gophers, use traps you can get at most good nurseries. They always have directions on the label. You can also create an underground half-sphere cage out of small-holed chicken wire (called aviary wire) which will protect a large portion of the root ball. You can also grow in containers (at least 15-gallon size) if your gopher problem is particularly bad.
Only use premium organic potting soil for containers, yes it does make a difference. You may also need to keep deer away. There is inexpensive deer netting or sprays that can be used to keep them at bay.
10. SAVE SEEDS. If you are particularly fond of one or more of your tomato varieties for the season, try saving the seed from one of your most luscious fruits. This only works, though, with heirloom varieties. Hybrids have two genetic parents; when you save the seed from a hybrid tomato, you are most likely to get a plant showing the characteristics of one of its two parents, not necessarily bearing any resemblance to the plant you may have loved the season before.
Seeds saved from heirloom varieties, however, usually grow true to type the next season and the next. If you continually save seeds from heirloom varieties that grow really well in your garden, you may eventually, by localized adaptation to your specific environment, create your own strain of a particular variety.
Top five
don’ts
1. PLANTING TOO EARLY. It seems to me that the more inexperienced the gardener, the sooner they want to put in their summer crops. Tomatoes need warm soil and warm weather to thrive and ward off diseases.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, there are many micro-climates, and the closer you get to sea level, the earlier you can get away with planting, but I still would not recommend planting in these coastal areas before April 1.
For higher elevations (like anything above 800 feet or so), it would be best to wait until May 1.
Just because you see tomato plants in the local nursery or your gung-ho neighbor has his plants in the ground, doesn’t mean you are procrastinating. More experienced gardeners (we’ve learned this the hard way) wait to plant tomatoes until the days are warm and the nights are consistently above 45 degrees.
2. OVERWATERING. Most people water their tomatoes too much. It makes for watery tasting tomatoes, more diseases and less fruit. The only time that a tomato needs to be watered every day is if it’s in a pot and the weather is consistently warm every day.
One of the most frequently asked questions I get is how often to water. There is never a set schedule. It depends on whether you have sandy or clay soil (more water with sandy soil), what the weather is like (cloudy days and mild temperatures mean you should back off on watering, maybe altogether) and how old your plants are (just-planted seedlings need more often watering).
You should observe your plants every day and see how they are doing with moisture.
3. TRYING TO GROW IN THE SHADE. Many people’s biggest mistake is attempting to ripen a tomato with only a few hours of sun. It just doesn’t work. If you are desperate, try cherry tomatoes. Three or less hours of sun is usually fruitless (no pun intended). Perhaps you can score a community garden plot, or ask a neighbor or family member to let you grow some tomato plants in their sunnier backyards.
4. USING TOO SMALL CONTAINERS. Some people like to grow in containers, whether because of gopher problems, soil problems, or sun issues. I find too many people trying to grow tomatoes in five-gallon containers or less. Tomatoes need a lot of root space. I recommend 15 gallon containers, which are the biggest you’ll find at a good nursery.
5. DON’T GIVE UP. If you are unhappy with your tomato crop your first or second time out, don’t give up! Try to figure out where you went wrong. Find resources online to ask specific questions. Master gardener programs often have telephone help lines. Love Apple Farm, online at www.loveapplefarm.biz, always welcomes questions on tomato growing. It’s worth it to troubleshoot your gardening problems and try again next year. Remember, there are two things money can’t buy: true love and homegrown tomatoes.
Provided courtesy of Love Apple Farm. Copyright: Cynthia Geske, Love Apple Farm 2005.
Terry Whettam of Ben Lomond offers this recipe for showcasing ripe tomatoes:
Grill,
barbecue or toast country Italian bread. Sprinkle it with olive oil, a little
garlic, use fresh cilantro or basil and top it with fetta or goat cheese
(optional) and slices of ripe tomato.
"The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen: Recipes for the Passionate Cook," by
Paula Wolfert, offers this more detailed version of bruschetta.
Marinated Summer Tomato Bruschetta
½ -pound
red ripe tomatoes
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
2 pinches of dried Italian oregano or marjoram
Pinch of crushed hot red pepper
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper
8 slices of day-old, dense bread or baguette, cut ½ inch
thick and lightly grilled
1. Peel, seed, and finely dice the tomatoes. Mix with the garlic, oregano, hot pepper and olive oil. Allow to stand at room temperature for 3 to 4 hours.
2. Just before serving, smear about 2 tablespoons of the tomato mixture on each slice of grilled bread, season with salt and pepper and dribble with a little olive oil.
Note: When tomatoes are firm but ripe, peel by piercing the core with a long-handled knife, then placing the tomato over a gas flame until the skin blisters on all sides. Then peel, seed and dice as directed. Serves two.