Tomatoes in my garden?

Marianna's Peace

If you'd asked me two weeks ago, the answer would be "never in a million years" would I be growing tomatoes in my garden. You see, no one in my immediate family likes tomatoes, including me.  Maybe it's because we've never really had a good one (that's what I keep telling myself).  

Now don't get me wrong, I've tried to eat them, and just have never developed a taste for them other than on pizza, or on a burger.  I eat them because I know that they're good for me - but I really think it's more about taste and texture.

I do enjoy tomato sauce, and sun dried tomatoes in pasta salads, pizza, and other dishes.

I've been wanting to can my "own tomato sauce" and my "own tomato paste"...but, that would mean I would need to grown "my own tomatoes".

I began to look at a seed company website that I have been purchasing from, trying to figure out what kinds of tomatoes that I would need to plant for canning sauce and paste.  

I was so confused, so I decided to ask a new friend (AKA Tomato Genius).  

After a few minutes of discussing tomato seeds, she said "just come by after work today"

Unbeknownst to me she had been germinating over 100 different types of heirloom tomatoes for several years, and had eventually narrowed it down to about 16 types that she really liked and grew well in our area.  She had several seedlings that were in desperate need of being transplanted.  She told me about each of them, as if they were her own children she had birthed.  She knew so many details about each and every one.  I was a little overwhelmed and felt a sense of immense responsibility when I left an hour later with about 30 tomato plants in the back of my car.   

One week later - They have ALL been planted in raised beds in my front and back yards.  Two foot high welded wire protects the little plants from my hens, and hopefully the dogs!   I am so excited to watch them grow - and curious to see how they all taste!  I really want to like them :)

Here are a few of the varieties along with their descriptions that I'm growing here at Torok Farm & Gardens:

"Marianna's Peace" "The World's Best Tasting Tomato"

Marianna's Peace Heirloom Tomato

The seeds were sent to me by one of Marianna's children. They came to me with the following story. Marianna's family were farmers from Bohemia, Czechoslovakia. During World War II, on a day in May of 1945, the Russians came to her school and loaded Marianna and all her schoolmates into a truck to be taken to Siberia. Marianna was 17 years old. During the journey, Marianna and a few others escaped by jumping from the moving truck. As she crossed the Czech border she was shot in the leg but with the help of her friends was able to continue on to the town of Weiden in Bavaria. She lost all contact with her parents and brothers for the next ten years but through years of diligent searching and the aid of The Red Cross she found them in 1955. The name, Marianna's Peace, and some tomato seeds, were gifts from her father before he died. She married, and in 1957 moved to Washington with her husband where they raised four children.

The family wasn't able to provide any history of the tomato's breeding or origin, only that the seeds from this heirloom reached back to the early 1900's and, year after year, the tomatoes borne from these seeds were treasured for their outstanding taste and beauty.

Marianna's Peace is a late season, indeterminate, potato-leaf variety (80-85 days) that produces relatively lower yields of 1-2 lb., pink/red, beefsteak-styled fruit. It's plant and fruit structure and the taste of it's fruit remind me of an old favorite, Brandywine. The sugary nectar of it's creamy, dense, flesh also reminds me of Sandul Moldovan, another great tasting variety originally from Moldova. Overall, it's flavors are exceptionally rich, with good sweet/acid balance and luscious complex flavors reminiscent of the finest of those "old-fashioned" tomato flavors, the memories of which is the stuff-of-dreams for all tomato lovers. In my taste trials with friends and chefs in 1999, "Marianna's Peace" was judged the "best tasting" tomato.

Gary Isben's Gold

Tomato seeds for this tall, leafy variety were sent to me in 1990 from a gardener in Boone County, WV who shared that he had been growing these, and a favorite red variety for 40 years. He was given the tomato seeds from his Uncle who had grown them in Tennessee. For the past several years I included them in my seed trials under the name "No Name #4", and harvested the seeds each year from a few preferred fruits.  In 2006 while eating some of this fruit just off the vine, I found myself so pleased with the flavor that I said to my wife, "Now this (slurp) is my kind of gold!" She suggested I call it "Gary Ibsen's Gold," harvest more tomato seeds, and share it with our friends. Potato leaf plant produces lots of very juicy, 14 oz. , brilliant orange-gold globes with tropical fruit flavors with enough acid balance to guarantee a burst of tomato delight.

Some others are:

• Paul Robeson
• Green Zebra
• Sophie's Choice
• Sisters
• Ildi
• Hawaiian Currant
• Black Cherry
• Lollipop

...and the list goes on!

They are all available online at Tomato Fest.

  

I'm hopeful that our crop will be plentiful and we'll be able to sell them this summer along with our juicy apricots and Babcock White Peaches!