In her garden in Rhinebeck, N.Y., Amy Goldman grows some 250 vintage varieties of tomatoes collected from around the world, including one from the Galápagos Islands that is as sweet as candy. In her book, The Heirloom Tomato, published last August by Bloomsbury USA, she revels in the stories behind each kind, like that of Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter tomato, which helped Marshall Cletis Byles pay off his $6,000 home loan in the 1940s.

Slide Show: Vintage Tomatoes

3 Comments

1. 1. Agoldthum 07:29 PM 4/1/09

   Greetings, Brendan. I'm happy to see The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table in Scientific American. I'd like to correct one error: The last image in the slide show, "Deep Purple," is incorrectly labeled. The image you've got is "Big Rainbow" which is a bicolor beefsteak named by seedsaver extraordinaire, Dorothy Beiswenger, of Crookston, Minnesota, in 1983.
   
   Amy Goldman (author of The Heirloom Tomato)

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2. 2. thoswagner in reply to Agoldthum 01:24 AM 4/5/09

   Hello,Brendan. I am glad you put this slide show up to contrast your previous "case" against the Heirloom tomatoes! I know you must really, down deep, like Heirloom tomatoes, otherwise you would not have included the photo # 2 of the presentation showing the three tomato out of my breeding work: Schimmeig Stoo, Green Zebra, and Casady's Folly!
   
   Thanks for doing this feature, and thanks, Amy, for your lovely book on tomatoes!
   
   Tom Wagner

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3. 3. Paul B 10:33 PM 4/5/09

   The diversity argument is made even more interesting by the fact that a book on heirlooms shows lines that really aren't heirlooms.

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