Heirloom Growing Tips and Glossary

(from Heirloom Tomato Choices by Anita Stone)

This information focus on heirloom tomatoes. Once you've picked your favorite to grow, follow these guidelines.

Check out the heirloom glossary, too.

Heirloom Growing Tips
Select a site that offers the following:

1. All day sun
2. Good air movement
3. Good drainage
4. A location where tomatoes and other nightshade members as peppers, eggplants and potatoes haven’t been grown for at least four years.
5. Too much moisture and humidity will create blight. Make sure there is no hangover of disease.
6. Use trellises about 8 feet long and three inches wide set 15 feet apart and sunken 16 inches into the ground.
7. Heirlooms will grow well in a large 18-30 gallon container; the dwarf varieties can be grown in 5 – 10 gallon containers.

Quick Heirloom Glossary

• Commercial heirloom – tomatoes are more than 40 years old and introduced by seed companies before 1960
• Family heirloom – Seeds have been saved and passed down from generation to generation.
• Created heirloom – Seeds crossed deliberately using two heirlooms or an heirloom and a hybrid, thru saving and replanting seeds for four or five seasons
• Mystery heirloom – Tomato arises accidentally in the yard from mutation or natural cross pollination.
• Open pollinated – you can save the seeds for the next year’s plantings.