Craig LeHoullier - Epic Tomatoes

To my wife and best friend, Susan for her unwavering love, support, and encouragement. To my dear daughters, Sara and Caitlin now growing their own tomatoes and on their own life adventures. I am so proud of you all.

This book has been a long time coming. Tomatoes, or at least gardens, have played a significant role in my life for many years. One of my first recollections is of carrying a watering can around in a neighbors driveway at the tender age of two. I spent many weekend days at a local park riding on my fathers shoulders as he lifted me up to smell the tree blossoms. At other times, he walked me through the flower beds, pointing out the vividly blooming dahlias, zinnias, and marigolds.

My grandfather Walter, an avid and creative gardener, delighted me with tours of his backyard plot, which was full of sweet peas, strawberries, and, of course, tomatoes. In fact, the first I sampled were the succulent, red fruits of his garden, bursting with flavor. Little did I know it at the time, but that revelation would set me on a lifelong journey, one that will last as long as I can plant a seedling.

Life intervened between those very early years in the gardens of my loved ones and the first of my own creation. Yet, once again, the association of gardening with family, love, and wonder arose. The spring following our marriage, Susan and I rented a nearby community plot set aside for graduate students and embarked on creating our first garden. Filled with flowers, herbs, and vegetables, tended to as our young daughter Sara slept in her stroller, it was a great success. Most of the plants we grew were from starts purchased at the local garden center. Hence our vegetables were not at all uncommon Bell Boy peppers and Better Boy tomatoes, for example. But we grew them ourselves, they tasted wonderful, and we learned a lot through the experience.

Through the years, we gardened in New Hampshire, Seattle, and suburban Philadelphia, in addition to our current location in Raleigh. We perused the varieties in local gardening centers and learned each year a few things that helped and other things that didnt. However, pretty quickly I started to grow bored with the fruits of our labors. It was clear, even early on, that people garden for many reasons. Some aim for the biggest vegetables, some the earliest, and others for the highest yielding or the tastiest, no matter what the specific type of crop. I realized within the first few years of gardening that uniqueness, variety, historical relevance, and flavor are the most important criteria for me. Perhaps it was my tendency to take a scientific approach to my hobbies, treating them as projects, but, clearly, purchasing a six-pack of Better Boy tomatoes or a packet of green Blue Lake bush beans just wouldnt suffice.

Little did I know that gardening was already becoming something of an obsession. After deciding that the nursery center offerings left me wanting, my attention turned to seed catalogs, which meant learning how to successfully start all sorts of seeds. At that time, I was also a subscriber to a few good gardening magazines, and they pointed to a wonderfully diverse selection of seed companies to try to greatly expand my gardening experience. It turned out that the mid-1980s was a perfect time to catch the serious gardening bug. Along with the standby companies such as Burpee and Parks, smaller, more experimental companies were popping into view, such as Johnnys, Seeds Blum, and Gleckler. The range of colors, sizes, shapes, and flavors grew exponentially if you were willing and able to start your own seedlings. But even when considering seeds from seed companies, constraints remained in terms of variety. Most companies focused on hybrid varieties, and all companies had a need to be profitable and therefore ensure that their selections were commercially viable.

At about the same time that I was making the switch from nursery-purchased transplants to self-started seedlings, I read a magazine article about the Seed Savers Exchange (SSE), which enticed me to join. That significant decision revolutionized my gardening efforts. Each of my major criteria historical significance, uniqueness, variety, and flavor could be satisfied through my involvement with the SSE. I joined in 1986, and today the relevance of the organization and the impact on what we grow has never been clearer.

Switching from mostly hybrids to mostly heirlooms felt a bit risky. If one were to take the words of many of the catalogs as written, anyone who didnt grow mostly or exclusively hybrid varieties was doomed to gardens of diseased or dead plants with disappointing yields. I sensed an interesting challenge and opportunity for some research, so I set about growing some of the most highly regarded hybrid tomatoes alongside an even larger selection of non-hybrid and heirloom varieties that sounded attractive to me.

Running over three gardening seasons, the results I obtained clearly showed that the must grow the hybrid contention was just not true. (See .) The non-hybrids/heirlooms I grew equaled or out-yielded the hybrids in general, with far superior flavors and variety. And that came with the benefit of being able to save seed for next years garden.

Old American seed catalogs provide a valuable glimpse into the early days of tomato development. This page demonstrates the tendency to exaggerate that we still see today.

It was my good fortune to have joined SSE in 1986, just as it was getting its feet firmly planted into the soil. My early focus on tomatoes meant that among the 1,000-plus varieties Ive grown throughout the years, the vast majority were shared by other, similarly enthusiastic tomato growers in transactions made through the SSE member network. I read the annual yearbook, picked out those varieties that particularly caught my interest, obtained the seeds, grew them (often in several locations as we moved about), and then saved and, in turn, shared my own seeds. I retained each and every letter that accompanied the seeds, and some of those original letters are excerpted in this book (), my immersion in the world of tomatoes has only deepened with time.