What's the deal with "heirloom tomatoes"?

What's the deal with "heirloom tomatoes"?

They taste terrible. If you have some just throw them out in the lawn for the swamp creatures

They're basically just cultivated in a way which is pressing the "random" button on the gene roulette.

Untrue. Often very good when fresh and firm, worth cutting and sprinkling salt on them and eating plain.

Newest meme indredient

Those are the tomatoes that my grandmother grew in her home garten her entire life with seeds that she had just kept over from the previous years.

like 15 years ago I tried to grow them with some of her seeds... they were voracious and basically unkillable plants, they'd re-flower multiple times a season and basically give tomatoes all summer and into the fall till frost.

I always just knew of them as a "German Tomato".

Now ignorant Hispters are finding things and are ruining them with "meme-ness".

The red ones in that pic are pretty good. Purple ones I tried were not.

The main thing is that modern tomatoes were bred to be perfectly round, and they should have bred them for flavor instead.

memeloom

Why is this shitposting allowed?

Fuck them. I worked on a farm for a bit and the people would eat this shit every fucking day

A hundred years ago they were just tomatoes. It's just that tomatoes came in a whole bunch of different varieties back then. You could order all kinds of crazy seeds for all kinds of crazy varieties of many vegetables.

The different varieties were used for different purposes. One might have been ugly, but they tasted great just sliced up on their own. Another might have looked a little funny, but it tolerated damp conditions well. Those really acidic ones were great for canning. The giant green ones were great for making fried tomatoes, the funny shaped red ones were great for making sauce. The striped ones tasted fine, but looked super cool.

In the 20th Century, especially the second half of it, the wide variety of available seeds narrowed. A handful of varieties bred for high yields, disease resistance, uniformity of fruit and shelf stability pretty much took over.

Problem was these new varieties didn't taste as good as the old varieties in many cases. They just looked good and were easier to grow, so they took over the commercial market.

Some home gardeners stuck with what they could find in terms of the old varieties, because if they were going to grow their own they wanted something different and better than what they could find in the supermarket. That's why home gardeners enthuse about their Cherokee Purples, Brandywines, German Pinks and the like.

Small farmers also learned they could command a premium at farmers' markets if they had something that was both good and hard to get. These "heirloom tomatoes" were the perfect fit: hard to find, extremely seasonal and tastier than what the average customer was used to. That could command $4, $5 or even $6 a pound, so it was worth it to a small farmer if he had the right customers.

That led to a resurgence in interest in many of these almost lost varieties now referred to as heirlooms.

OMG they're good. Worth whatever price you pay. Tomatoes with flavor. Thank you God.

nice blog

What's the deal with heirloom food?

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"I just found out about it so it must be a new meme ingredient" - you

kill yourself, autist

They are attractive, and they are tomatoes. I like to slice them thick and put them on some good toast with mayo and black pepper. When they're in season they've got good texture and flavor.

When I'm picking out seeds and seedlings for my garden I always go for heirlooms just because they're more interesting to look at. They're usually too expensive to buy in the store.

>The main thing is that modern tomatoes were bred to be perfectly round, and they should have bred them for flavor instead.

This. Modern supermarket tomatoes sure look pretty (and they can survive rough shipping very well) but they have poor flavor.

Maybe I've just been unlucky but I've been buying them pretty regularly because they supposedly have so much better flavor than the normal round bullet proof ones. I've been to 3 different grocery stores now and the only difference I can tell is that they are way more expensive

I would not buy heirloom tomatoes at a grocery store. They're the kind of thing best picked up at farmers' markets, farm stands or grown yourself.

The problem with getting them at the grocery store is that they have to be sturdy to last on the shelves. Which means any heirloom tomatoes you see there were picked way before they were ripe just so they'd survive.

They are varieties classically cultivated for taste and appearance rather than factors like uniform-ripening and durability for transporting by the ton.

Many of them are very tasty. Please boycott modern cultivars that are bred solely for simple mass yeilds rather than quality.

I agree, but the more hipster-y grocery stores may have a small stand dedicated to local farms (such as Whole Foods) which cuts out a few middlemen. That being said, farmer's markets are great and have competitive prices.

If they're from the grocery store then they still won't be ripe, lol. Ripe tomatoes will crush if you stack 4 of them on top of each other.

Grocery stores stack tens of thousands on top of each other.

>hipster-y grocery stores may have a small stand dedicated to local farms (such as Whole Foods)
I try to avoid those places because in my experience that's more for show than actually the produce itself. It's so they can crow about how they support local farms while small, sad piles of "local" produce sits there at some ridiculous price per pound not looking all that good. Because it flies in the face of the supermarket model, which is to offer you the same products year round regardless of the season. That means local and seasonal is not going to be their strength, regardless of what lipservice they give to the idea.

I wouldn't buy something in a situation where it's a token novelty. I'd go to the place where it's the thing they sell. So if I want an heirloom vegetable that's not in my garden I'll be heading to the farmer's market.