Hey, thank you. Yes, they are nice tomatoes. Homegrown, right in the backyard. The variety is an unremembered beefsteak. We grew them, plucked them from the vine, and sliced one to take this photograph. It's untouched, not manipulated, it's the real deal. We still have that plate.Beefsteaks don't fly with tomato snobs, those who sniff with contempt at any tomato that isn't' some obscure heirloom variety grown only by people smarter than you are. I don't like tomato snobs. In fact, I really don't like snobbery of any kind.
If you're not into vegetable gardening, you're most likely unaware of what seems to me to be an uncountable number of tomato varieties. Seriously. What we grew there was a hybrid, more than likely a Burpee hybrid.
Among the tomato purist community, hybrids are the focus of serious disdain. Only rank amateurs grow hybrids. Tomato purists have embraced the heirloom tomato. Any hybrid= bad; any heirloom=good.
"Gawwwwddd, dahhhhhhling, don't tell me you still grow those detestable lowbrow hybrids.?"
I had to know, had to find out if there was anything to heirloom adoration. So I went for the best
tomato on the planet. I'm not kidding, some say this tomato on the right is the absolute best tomato in the world, bar none. This tomato is the Brandywine. More specifically, the Sudduth strain of the Brandywine, an even more snobby sub-variety of an already snobby enough fruit. I just had to bring up that fruit versus vegetable argument.Here it is, in simplest form; botanically, the tomato is a fruit - horticulturally, the tomato is a vegetable. In 1893, SCOTUS ruled that the tomato was a vegetable. The reason? Declaring it a vegetable made it subject to import taxes. Who says it's all about money?
So, I fell for the hype, stuck my nose in the air, bought Sudduth Brandywine seeds from a very reputable but small supplier, which adds another layer of snobbery. You can't just buy those seeds from one of the big outfits, that would never do. They must come with bragging rights. For your tomatoes to have bragging rights, the seeds must come with a pedigree.
You might think I'm kidding here. I'm not, not at all.
No later than March, I started the seeds in small peat pots in the basement. Once they grew a set of what most call "real" leaves, they were moved up to a bit bigger pot. That upward progression, surprisingly called "potting up," continues until you have what now looks like a real tomato plant that you'd buy, only you didn't buy, you grew it yourself from seed.
By late May, you're ready to set out the plants. What you should do is "harden off" your tender young plants before actually transplanting them. Hardening involves placing the plants outdoors in their pots during the day, then bringing them in at night. A week's worth of hardening and you should be good to go. Being impatient, I often skipped the hardening off process. The result was...no big difference, really. Hardened or not, most tomato plants, most plants of any kind, suffer transplant shock right after transplant; they look really, really droopy, kind of pathetic. Given care, water, sun, they bounce back quickly.
Enough gardening advice for now. Let's fly through much of Summer, get to August, get to that greatest tomato on the planet. Let's have at the Sudduth Brandywine, or Brandywine Sudduth...whatever.
It ain't the greatest tomato on the planet. Plain, simple, straightforward, it's just not. Most who'd have this tomato put in front of them and ready to eat would be unable to distinguish it from any plain, old, tried and true pedestrian and common hybrid.
Were they good? Sure. Were they sensational? Absolutely not.
What they are is unpredictable; you never know how many or when you'll harvest these tomatoes, or if you'll harvest them at all. I had several enormous Brandywine plants that bore no more two or three tomatoes. That is not a judicious use of time, energy, and space. Being an heirloom, they are susceptible to most diseases connected to tomatoes.
They're slow-growing, malformed, at times very pithy, and no more than acceptable. That, of course, is my opinion. Many agree with me, while many would roll their eyes and snicker. Just for comparison, I did try another highly regarded heirloom one year. That variety is the Mortgage Lifter, allegedly an Amish heirloom whose genome has been unaltered for at least a hundred and fifty years. Same result; a good, but in no way great, tomato.
Tomatoes are relatively easy to grow. As someone who's grown his share of them, I'll gladly admit that. Also testament to their ease of growing is the fact that most everyone with a garden,
however tiny and neglected it might be, either grows or has grown tomatoes.If you stick with a dependable hybrid, say a Big Boy, Big Girl, Early Girl, etc., you can almost shove the plant in the ground and all but ignore it until it bears fruit(or vegetable). If we get ample rain, watering might not even be necessary, although tomatoes do like water.
Oh, and if you're going to give tomatoes a try, do like the "old-timers" did; don't plant until Memorial Day, the traditional day itself. Frost will take young and tender tomato plants out in a blink.
For us, vegetable gardening is blog material and little else. Sweet-cheeks there on the left put us out of business several years ago. That yearling buck and his cousins, male and female, mowed us down, turned our vegetable garden(and we once grew lots of things)into an all-you-can-eat salad bar. I like to grow vegetables. I like deer. I give. The deer won.
