Selecting the perfect tomato for your garden can seem like an intimidating task. There exists today well over one hundred different varieties of tomato plants, many of which we label 'heirlooms' because they are believed to be original or unaltered specimens, native to particular peoples or places. Non-heirloom types have been hybridized to resist disease and environmental extremes or are bred for durability in shipping and long life on super-market shelves. Typically, the best choices for flavor,
texture and color will be found in the heirloom section, however, for the beginning gardener (or if you've ever labeled yourself a black-thumb), a trusty hybrid will always deliver!
Early Girl, Better Boy and Celebrity tomatoes have swiftly become household names in home garden culture. Each chosen for a unique combination of resistances, yield capacity, storage ability and flavor, these hybrids will most certainly bring the sunshine to your plate in the most efficient and economical way.
For example, Early Girl, quite possibly the most popular of all cross-bred tomatoes, will begin yielding unblemished four to eight ounce fruit in as little as fifty days after transplanting. These strains, depending on your growing season, may also be planted in the garden before most heirlooms, allowing ripened fruit to arrive weeks earlier. Early Girl in particular has acquired tremendous popularity in the regions surrounding the San Francisco Bay area in California where it is commonly dry farmed to produce a quality of flavor thought to rival any heirloom variety available today. Often used when growing grapes for wine, this method of farming allows light irrigation in spring followed by drought conditions in the summer which forces establishment of a deep root system and heavily concentrates flavors as the plant utilizes water stored inside the ripening tomatoes.
Celebrity is a great selection for flavor as well as storage capability. Unlike Early Girl or Better Boy, Celebrity has a determinate growth habit, meaning it will have a more controlled bush form that will be more conducive to life in a pot or in a short growing season. Determinate plants will at some point stop spending energy on new growth and dedicate all of their life force to flowering resulting in a plant full of fruit ripening around the same time, right before it dies. The opposite of this is indeterminate growth, which signifies that the plant will have unchecked, vine-like growth throughout the growing season, producing clusters of tomatoes here and there as it goes. Every tomato start or package of seeds being sold at a nursery should specify this on it's labeling, often simply with a (D) or (I) as an indicator.
Do not, however, allow yourself to shy away from experimenting with heirloom cultivation. It is a common misconception that heirlooms in general are simply harder to grow. This is only true if what you wish to plant is not native to your climate type. In Santa Barbara, CA I have found that the Green Zebra variety grows with exceptional ease and produces amazing green striped fruits with unique flavor. Japanese and Italian strains also seem to adapt well to most southern CA gardens. On the other hand, Brandywine, an extremely sought after selection, has only ever yielded me a few tomatoes per plant in my zone. They seem to do much better without coastal influence, where the growing season is hot and long. Areas that experience a severe winter may have better luck with tomatoes native to Russia or the northern regions of the United States.
Now quickly head to the nursery for some tomato starts (if you don’t have seedlings waiting in the wings) and get those babies planted up. If you’re in a temperate climate with a long growing season there will be time to lag a little, but in colder areas you’ve got to hit the ground running if you want to maximize yield. Ask your local nurseryman or the neighbor with the best green thumb which varieties do well in their yard and you’ll be off to a good start!
