Food and Cooking Tips

Heirloom tomatoes are some of the many older varieties from which seeds have been saved over the years and passed down from one generation to the next. Most tomatoes purchased today in supermarkets are hybrids which have been bred to produce higher yields, uniformity of shape and color, shipping durability and longer shelf life, rather than flavor.

Heirloom tomatoes have become increasingly popular and seeds have become more readily available in recent years. Heritage tomatoes just cannot be beaten for their outstanding flavor and the beauty they add to recipes and dishes with their many shapes, sizes, and colors. Heirloom tomatoes have become very popular with gardeners due to their excellent flavor and wide diversity of color range.

Heirloom tomatoes often were bred for flavor, rather than resistance to disease, pests, weather extremes or the rigors of transport. Heirloom tomatoes are much tastier than hybrid tomatoes and can be easily reproduced true to type by collecting seeds each year.

The popularity of farmers markets has contributed significantly to the retail revival of heirloom tomatoes, for practical reasons. Discover why heirloom tomatoes have the fabulous old-time tomato taste you remember … or may never have experienced. And if you grow a bumper crop you can learn how to can tomatoes and enjoy that wonderful tomato taste all year round.