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market-farming - [Market-farming] Re: Heirloom Tomatoes and now Peppers

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  • From: Lucy Goodman <goodows AT infinet.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Re: Heirloom Tomatoes and now Peppers
  • Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2004 09:30:52 -0400

I have two heirlooms in a hoophouse for early production. they are moscovich and GL-18 (AKA Glick's pride) The moscovich i know is cold tolerant and the GL-18 is an experiment (that is going well so far). i also have the hybrid Buffalo in the same hoophouse and it is not doing as well as the heirlooms. probably because the heirlooms are all from our own seed.

I also have several heirlooms for our main crop. pink Brandywine because it produces well and sells well. Yellow Taxi because it is a nice incredibly early (52 day) lemon yellow tomato and it is also the first heirloom we saved seed from. This is the first year we have not used it in the hoophouse as an early crop. They are very cold tolerant but small to medium yellow 'maters do not sell well in my market especially in June/July when people want big red tomatoes. Opalka, which can be tricky, to grow but has the best sauce tomatoes. they look like italian peppers-very long. Persimmon, huge orange fruits (2 LB often). Low yield, lots of cracking and BER with these but for me, a taste to die for. They make the best tomato juice. I grew Dr Wyche's last year and they are also big orange tomatoes but several weeks earlier and with much better yield and far less cracking. And I may well be growing these and not persimmon as I planted the two together not realizing they would look alike (Dr Wyche's was listed as a yellow and the picture made it look a lot yellower than it is-good tomato no the less). Finally i am growing marizol purple. I found an old seed packet of these seeds and since I had no other purple tomato seeds other than cherokee purple which has consistently failed here for the past 4 out of 5 years, I planted a bunch of them. I grew marizol gold last year. It was an okay yellow 'mater but yellow taxi I find to be better.

I am also growing moscovich and GL-18 along with several hybrid beef-steak reds as the big reds are what sell. I also have sunsugar and some sort of hybrid red grape started.

In the past I grew more heirlooms but this year we are not doing a CSA and I have found around here there is not much market for heirlooms-though if you can get your customers to try them they often become addicted.

I also do a couple of heirloom peppers-red ruffled and marconi, either red or yellow. Both are excellent, the best tasting we have but because they are not bell peppers they do not sell well. The Marconi can take up to 110 days (average is around 95 days) to get a ripe pepper and we often don't have the growing season to get ripe peppers from them. but man is it great when everything goes well. These can get as long as 13" and are way sweet. The red ruffled are early, about 75 days to ripe. They have thick, deeply ribbed dark red walls that are the sweetest pepper I have ever eaten, but they look weird so customer are slow to try them.

FYI to anyone saving seeds from your heirloom tomatoes, make sure they have at least 20' of isolation if you are growing organically and a minimum of 8 seed plants (more is better) for the best genetics and purity.

Lucy Goodman
Boulder Belt Organics
New Paris, OH
http://www.boulderbelt.com





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