7 Heirloom Tomatoes & Their Fascinating, Sometimes Funny Stories

We love heirloom tomatoes with their unusual patterns, colors, varied flavor and fascinating stories.

We have experienced that they are some of the best-tasting tomatoes in the world! I’ll share a few we have grown and enjoyed with you.

Teresa O. is a fun and interesting friend in town who, together with her husband, starts an unusual assortment of heirloom tomatoes in their garage in March/April with grow lights and heaters. It was such fun to visit with them in their greenhouse where she was acclimating her thriving mostly-heirloom inventory.

Heirloom Tomatoes: Funny Names & Their Fascinating Stories

History of the Mortgage Lifter Tomato

This tomato (lower left in the image above) was developed in the 1930s by M.C. Byles, a West Virginia radiator mechanic who went by the nickname “Radiator Charlie.” Radiator Charlie didn’t have an easy life: he started working in the cotton fields of North Carolina at the age of 4, and as a result didn’t get adequate education. Like millions of others, Byles was negatively affected by the Great Depression, yet he went on being a pilot, a wrestler, a mechanic, and then succeeding in growing one of the most popular heirloom tomatoes in the country.

He came up with a plan to create a larger, better-tasting tomato he could later sell.  He crossbred four tomatoes (a German Johnson, a beefsteak, an Italian tomato, and an English tomato) and it took over six years to create the tomato. In the 1940s he began selling his tomato plants and the profits allowed him pay off his house — hence, the name Mortgage Lifter. 

Find seeds here.

San Marzano

San Marzano is both a type of tomato and a region in Italy where it is grown in a relatively small region between Naples and Salerno. It’s a type of plum tomato and longer and thinner than the typical plum tomato you might see sold fresh in grocery stores or buy canned. They also have fewer seeds than typical plum tomatoes.  They are famed for their balanced flavor that combines sweetness, tomatoey intensity and just the right amount of acid. 

For canning, paste, or a killer spaghetti sauce, it’s hard to beat ‘San Marzano’. You can buy it in expensive imported cans, but even better, grow your own at home.

Find seeds here.

Heirloom Malakatovoya Shktulka

Malakatovoya Shktulka (aka ‘Malachite Box’) is a beautiful lime-green tomato with great flavor, consistent set, and high production. The seeds were originally sent to Tatiana Kouchnareva as part of a large seed exchange with Tamara Yaschenko of Byisk, Siberia, Russia in 2006. Find seeds here.

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Heirloom Chocolate Stripes

Chocolate Stripes is one difficult tomato to describe, and the photo below hardly does it justice. I’d love to have a slow motion camera to watch it as it changes in color from the earliest pea-sized fruit to the full, ripe handful. There are touches of olive, pink, gold and orange, mahogany/chocolate, rose, and burgundy.

There is quite a demand for Chocolate Stripes, I found. The seed suppliers say everyone wants it. It is open-pollinated and bred in Troy, Ohio.

Find seeds here.

Black From Tula

This is an heirloom from Tula, south of Moscow, Russia. Largest of the black tomatoes with 3-4″, slightly flattened, oblate, dark brown to purple fruit with deep green shoulders. Deliciously outstanding, rich, slightly salty, smoky-fruit flavor. Blacks are best known for their smoky flavor.  The plants produce all season long.

Find seeds here.

Brandywine

Brandywine, at least according to Burpee, was their introduction and first offered in their 1886 catalog. However, the early history of the Brandywine is a bit muddled; some think it to be of Amish origin. This variety was mentioned later in the 1888 Johnson and Stokes Catalog. This variety is easily the most popular heirloom tomato ever! It is disease-resistant, has potato-shaped leaves, and it bears its harvests until frosts.

Find seeds here.

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Cherokee Purple

The Cherokee Purple is reported to have been grown by the Cherokee Indians, and is dated back as far as the late 1800s. It really has an interesting history and only became available in seed catalogs in the early 1990’s. You can read more about it’s history on Wikipedia. This tomato is rich, has excellent texture, and well balanced. It is one of the best tomatoes for the new gardener.

Besides the unusual deep dusky red/deep purple hue of it’s fruit, Cherokee Purples are extremely sweet and have an unbeatable, satisfying tomato flavor. Find seeds here.

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Hybrid Sweet 100

This is the only hybrid we’re growing this year; probably developed in a lab or greenhouse 🙂 It is far better to grow an heirloom, certainly, but I wanted one cherry tomato for dehydrating, and this is what Terry had. Cherry tomatoes are thought to have originated in Peru and Northern Chile to at least the 15th century.

These make great ‘sun-dried tomatoes’ for pizzas and for eating dried as a nutritious snack!

When it was still too early to plant tomatoes outside unprotected, we planted all of these into the garden under what are called Tomato Teepees/Wall ‘O Water. They are red thermal tents and, despite cold April weather, will keep your plants protected/sheltered in place until the weather is warm enough to remove them.

Have you grown any heirloom tomatoes with funny names? Please share them with us.

Want to find a supplier with a huge selection of heirloom varieties, some with weird names? Check out Tatiana’s Tomatobase.

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