Hierloom Tomatoes

Black Krim, garden peach, orange strawberry and Roma tomato (not exactly heirloom)


Golden sweet--super sweet cherry tomatoes, almost like candies



orange strawberry, also featured in one of Myshree's watercolor paintings.

Have you ever wondered why tomatoes are always red? Honestly, I had never wondered so until I saw my first heirloom tomatoes. Most types of tomatoes you see at supermarkets are not chosen because of their taste or nutritional value, but of their maximum yield, disease resistance, suitability for mechanized picking and shipping, as well as their ability to be picked before fully ripening. Mind you, supermarket tomatoes are almost always picked unripe. They become red as they are being sorted, packed and shipped before they appear before you eyes in supermarkets. That’s why supermarket tomatoes are too often tasteless, thick-skinned, and devoid of nutrition that tomatoes should rightfully process.

An Heirloom tomato, on the other hand, are so packed full of flavours and juice! It can be orange, yellow, green, purple, pink, brown, or even white in colour. The shape and size may be unfamiliar to your perception of a tomatoe; the surface may not be smooth but shows ribbing or fuzz; it may even be multi-coloured or striped! Heirloom tomatoes are almost always grown by smaller-scale farmers so it means that heirloom tomatoes not only taste more flavourful and juicer, but they are also fresher, more nutritious and mostly vine-ripen.

We are one of the very few heirloom tomato growers in our farmer’s market, and to be honest our heirloom tomatoes aren’t selling as well as we anticipated. When I went to Vancouver last time I stumbled upon a Wednesday farmer’s market in front of Main street station. I was flabbergasted by the varieties of heirloom tomatoes that were being sold there. One organic farm from the Okanogan claimed they grow more than 100 different varieties of heirloom tomatoes and they brought at least 30 kinds to the market. And oh boy you should see the long line-up of shoppers that were waiting to get the tomatoes! That’s the difference between City shoppers and country shoppers: City folks are more open to novelty stuff and are willing to pay a little more for it. Well, we just have to try harder to convince Comox folks that our green tomatoes have all the characteristics of a ripe tomato, although they are green!