A much-prized golden-orange
tomato is the living legacy of a woman named Djena Lee, who cultivated the
sweet, tangy fruit when she lived in Minnesota
during the 1920s. The plant is growing in the Regenstein Fruit &
Vegetable Garden today
and will be one of the varieties featured during HeirloomTomato Weekend. The event will take place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on
Saturday and Sunday, August 24 and 25.
According to the rich lore
surrounding heirloom tomatoes, Lee gave some of her treasured plants to a
15-year-old boy called Frank Morrow. He would maintain the variety for decades
and it’s said that ‘Djena Lee’s Golden Girl’ (Solanum lycopersicum ‘Djena
Lee’s Golden Girl’) took first place at the Chicago Fair for ten consecutive
years. Morrow, who became a reverend living in St. Paul, MN,
passed the seeds along to the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in the late
1980s, and the seeds are commercially available today.
“I love the stories of seeds
being passed down between generations of gardeners,” said Lisa Hilgenberg,
horticulturist in the Regenstein Fruit & Vegetable Garden.
“They tell us who grew the plants, how the seeds got here. They speak to the
nostalgia surrounding heirlooms and give us an emotional connection to our food.”
Most people think of an
heirloom as a hand-made quilt, brooch, antique desk or other treasured
possession passed down within a family. The items help family members remember
where they came from and remind them of what life was like back in the days of their
great-grandparents and earlier generations. The glorious and ever-increasing
diversity of today’s selection heirloom tomatoes speaks to the tradition of
passing down precious tomato varieties in a similar fashion.
Visitors can learn more
about these traditions during Heirloom Tomato Weekend, a two-day event
including guided tours, cooking classes, grafting trial, family drop-in
activities, tomato-related items from special vendors, and a plant give-away
while supplies last. Special seed-saving demonstrations will show visitors how
to pass down their own heirloom tomatoes. A detailed schedule of activities is
included below.
New generations of heirloom
tomatoes remain true to their parents because the plants are open-pollinating
and rarely cross breed with other types of tomatoes. Most heirlooms have a
vining or indeterminate growth habit, producing a succession of tomatoes over
the growing season. Fruit colors range from bright yellow to deep purple. The
tomatoes can also be striped or bicolored and grow in a wide variety of shapes
and sizes, from small pear shapes to large globes. Heirlooms are prized for
their taste, which people describe with such terms as deep, robust, rich,
sweet, salty, smoky and winey. Several taste-test winners are growing in the Regenstein Fruit & Vegetable Garden,
including ‘Gold Medal’ (Solanum lycopersicum ‘Gold Medal’), a big
slicing tomato that took first prize in the 2008 Seed Saver Exchange
competition.
Visitors attending Heirloom
Tomato Weekend will be able to see many of the Garden’s vintage varieties at
their peak fruiting period. Growing among the dozens of tomato varieties
planted in the Regenstein Fruit & Vegetable Garden this
year is the Abraham Lincoln tomato (Solanum lycopersicum ‘Abraham
Lincoln’), introduced by Rockford, IL, seed producer H.W. Buckbee and now
growing in the White House vegetable garden. Our living collection also
includes the Italian heirloom ‘Costoluto Genovese’ (Solanum
lycopersicum ‘Costoluto Genovese’), a deeply ribbed, rich red
tomato–one of the first to be introduced in Europe in
the 1500s. Other heirloom tomato varieties trace back to Russia, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia and the Ukraine.
“This year the collection
includes a tomato for every taste and garden space. We even have an ongoing trial
of grafted heirlooms,” Hilgenberg said. The ‘Czech’s Bush’ (Solanum
lycopersicum ‘Czech Bush’) is one of few determinate, or bushy,
heirlooms and does not require staking as do the indeterminate varieties. The
popular ‘Paul Robeson’ (Solanum lycopersicum ‘Paul Robeson’) is one
of three heirlooms that have been grafted onto a more robust root stock to
explore the possibility of increasing disease resistance and extending the
harvest window of the varieties.
Seed-saving demonstrations
will be offered throughout the event to show gardeners how to create their own
heirloom traditions. “Gardeners can become preservationists of their own seed
heritage,” Hilgenberg said. “By saving seeds from the best fruits from the best
plants in their garden, gardeners can develop varieties well suited to that
particular growing area. Seed saving also helps restore genetic diversity to
plant life over the long run.” For tips on saving your heirloom tomato seeds,
click here.
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your information. GRIT does not recommend, approve or endorse the products
and/or services offered. You should use your own judgment and evaluate products
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