Episode Details

For years (decades, really), I’ve been promoting April 28 as Official Tomato Planting Day* for our area here in Northern California (Southern Sacramento and Northern San Joaquin Valleys, low foothills, and East Bay). And this time around in 2023, the weather has been very cooperative to make this year’s April 28th celebration an excellent time to start planting tomatoes.

Wherever you are in the country, you have your own Official Tomato Planting Day. And it may change from year to year. The factors you are looking for include that the warmth of spring has settled in. Daytime highs will be in the 80’s (and above) for the foreseeable future. Early morning low air temperatures are steadily above 50 degrees. Soil temperatures are near 60 degrees. With those conditions, newly planted tomatoes will get off to a quick start. Just add water and fertilizer.

Now, the question is…which tomato varieties to plant?

We’ve talked in the past about the tried-and-true performers for our area, tomato varieties that will be in stock at area nurseries and garden centers now. If you are new to tomato gardening, start with three winners: The Sungold cherry tomato, the Early Girl tomato as your main season crop, and Big Beef for a large, slicing tomato. Other sure bets include Whopper, Champion, Ace, and Sweet 100.

All the ones mentioned so far are hybrid tomatoes. Hybrid varieties are bred for desirable traits such as early productivity, adaptability to the local climate, vigor, and disease resistance, helping to guarantee success for the new tomato gardener. According to the UC Davis Vegetable Research and Information Center, Fusarium and Verticillium wilt are common diseases that can destroy a whole tomato crop. Many hybrid tomato varieties are resistant to these two diseases. Look for the letters, “VF”, after the cultivar name, indicating resistance to the wilts. “VFN” means the plants are resistant to verticillium, fusarium, and nematodes; “VFNT” adds tobacco mosaic virus to the resistance list.

However, perhaps you want to stretch your tomato growing horizons this year by planting heirloom tomato varieties, which are noted for their flavor, aroma, and beauty. The downside to heirloom tomatoes? Production variability and a lack of disease resistance. Sacramento County Master Gardener Cathy Coulter explains the traits of an heirloom tomato. “An heirloom tomato is an open-pollinated variety that has been passed down at least 50 years through several generations in a family, ethnic, religious, or tribal group, or was commercially introduced before 1940,” says Coulter. “Some tomatoes now marketed as ‘heirloom’ are actually a cross between two different heirlooms (crossed on purpose or by nature) or are a cross between an heirloom and a hybrid tomato. The cross is then stabilized over several generations, so they become open-pollinated.”

In other words, there is no agreed-upon standard for what makes a tomato variety an “heirloom.”

One Northern California tomato plant breeder, Brad Gates of Wild Boar Farms, specializes in developing those modern heirlooms. “The most common definition of an heirloom tomato that I can come up with is that it's 50 years or older,” says Gates. “That seems to be the loose definition of an heirloom, because the definition of a heirloom is something that's been passed down from generation to generation. So somewhere along the line, somebody threw out the 50-year mark, and it seems to be the most popular. So some of my varieties are maybe working on 20 years old now. So they'll just have a little bit of a wait. But I think when most people think they want an heirloom, they want a tomato that's something other than round, red and tasteless.” Listen to the podcast (above) to find out more about Brad Gates’ tips and techniques for starting tomatoes from seed, as well as what it takes to breed a “modern heirloom” tomato. Originally aired in

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