Winter is barely here and I'm already thinking about a fresh, juicy tomato from the garden.
Last year's tomato plants did well in my garden. I didn't have any problems with late blight or wilt disease and my plants probably would have gone well into late September if they hadn't been neglected after I had hand surgery at the end of August.
Even so, we were able to get plenty of whole tomatoes stored in the freezer before they rotted on the vines and although I prefer to have the sauce made before the snow falls, we can still use those tomatoes to make sauce anytime over the winter.
You wouldn't think I'd be ready to plan next year's crop, especially since I haven't totally finished with last year's, but that's not the case. I find myself perusing seed catalogs for new and interesting varieties, as well as some of the old stand-bys. And the key word that seems to shout at me when I think of tomatoes for 2011 is ''heirloom.''
Last year I was introduced to a few unnamed heirloom tomatoes that were given to me by people who had saved the seeds for a number of years. The identification of those varieties were long lost. One of the growers, for lack of a better name, called his tomatoes Giant Italian Plum.
''It is the biggest plum tomato I've ever seen,'' he said.
I grew some of the plants and saved what seeds I could when the fruit was ripe. The tomato was quite large, more than a pound each, and meaty to the point of being somewhat dry with very few seeds for its size. I grew a few heirloom varieties in the past such as Mortgage Lifter, Hillbilly and Rutgers, but this one was different. And then while browsing a seed catalog that specializes in heirloom varieties, I came across what I believe is the unnamed Italian plum. If it's what I think, it isn't a plum tomato at all, but a variety called Oxheart. Our tomato resembled the shape, texture and coloring, not to mention the online photo of a variety called Pink Oxheart.
Oxheart tomatoes are heart- or strawberry-shaped and are large and meaty and great for processing. They are old-fashioned, fragrant heirlooms with fern-like foliage. When we grew our plants last year, my husband commented on the difference in the foliage from the heirlooms versus the hybrid varieties we usually grow.
Oxheart tomato vines are indeterminate, continuing to grow all summer and reaching as long as 10 feet, although they most often only get to about six feet before summer ends. The fruit is large, almost to the point of being too heavy for the vines. We use tomato stakes in our garden, but had to tie up the vines just above the fruit so it didn't pull the stems down and snap them off.
Some of the Oxheart tomatoes we grew were said to tolerate drought conditions. Another source stated too little water and the plants will stop growing and producing flowers or fruit. We didn't do a lot of excess watering last season and our plants thrived quite well on what nature provided.
Not all Oxheart tomatoes are pink. Some are orange, yellow and deep red. Nor is Pink Oxheart the only pink tomato out there. There are several heirloom pinks, such as Missouri Pink Love Apple, Ozark Pink, Pearly Pink and Caspian just to name a few. The more well-known heirloom, Brandywine, is a pink tomato.
There are thousands of heirloom tomatoes and they come in all sorts of varieties, including orange, yellow, green and even black and striped tomatoes. We grew a variety last year that was deep red and so wrinkled and folded upon itself that it was difficult to slice and could only be cut into large chunks. But it was very sweet and juicy and went well in our summer salads.
This only shows that we don't have to settle for growing the same beefsteak, plum and cherry tomatoes season after season. When you're browsing the seed catalogs this winter, look for heirlooms and make it a point to try something different.