By Vanessa Richins

As anyone who visits Tomato Casual on a regular basis knows, we are very fond of the heirloom tomatoes.

These old-time beauties bring amazing colors and tastes that you simply won’t find in hybrid tomatoes.

Planting them also helps preserve tomato variety diversity and heritage.

However, one of the problems inherent in heirloom tomatoes is that they can be very susceptible to tomato diseases such as Verticillium wilt and tobacco mosaic virus. This is one of the main reasons that people choose to grow hybrid tomatoes.

However, did you know you can have the best of both worlds? All you have to do is graft your tomatoes. Use a hybrid rootstock to give heirloom tomatoes disease resistance.

A recent study confirmed that Read the rest of this entry »

By Kira Hamman

Where I live, in the Catoctin mountains of western Maryland, tomatoes are a given in the summer.

Gardens teem with them, farm stands overflow with them, and farmers’ markets sell them by the bushel.

But except in a few gardens, they’re exclusively hybrids – Early Girl, Better Boy, and the like – and they’re rarely organically grown, even in spirit.

If you are bold enough to broach the subject of heirlooms and compost with the elderly women who sell these tomatoes they are likely to snort in derision.

Customers around here aren’t looking for organically grown heirloom vegetables and are not willing to pay more for them, and therefore Read the rest of this entry »