Smith & Hawken: 100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden

Preserved by families, collected by seed savers, passed around among farmers, heirloom tomatoes are now being sought out by more and more home gardeners as an alternative to the bland sameness of commercial hybrids. And happily, these growers are discovering that heirlooms are not only vastly more flavorful, but are just as hardy and easy to cultivate as the hybrids.

Dr. Carolyn J. Male, who has raised more than a thousand heirloom tomatoes, here presents 100 consistently top-performing varieties for North American gardeners. There are red tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, green, orange, purple, and even black tomatoes--like Black from Tula, with green shoulders and a dusky rose-black coloring. There are cherry tomatoes, too--try Martino's Roma, a paste with spectacular yield and built-in tolerance of blossom end rot. For every gardener, no matter how experienced, here's everything you need to know to grow and harvest tomatoes with real taste.

This is a book for the true tomato snob who is not content with the ordinary red beefsteak weighing heavily on the vine at the end of summer. Yellow, pink, green, and orange tomatoes are all part of this guide to heirloom varieties, many of which are only available through catalogs or through an organization called the Seed Savers Exchange.

Author Carolyn Male favors heirlooms that have been passed down through families, not commercially created hybrids. She does not hesitate to be critical, calling some varieties mealy or bland, while others send her into epiphanies. Although she makes gestures toward guiding the novice, this is a book for either food fanatics or experts who move in the subculture of truly obsessed gardeners catering to gourmet cooks and specialty markets. Throughout the book, enticing photographs of freshly picked heirlooms remind the reader that grocery store tomatoes aren't really tomatoes at all, sitting sadly under fluorescent lights, losing their flavor and color. If only they had been born in a tomato snob's garden; then they would have been treated like royalty. -–Emily White