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What is up everyone? Welcome back to the podcast. Hope you've been having a wonderful weekend and you're kicking off the week nicely today.

I have a special guest. I am bringing on the one the only the NC tomato man, Craig LeHoullier himself. He is probably one of the most experienced tomato growers on the planet. I would have to say having grown, I think 3,500 different varieties of tomatoes in his lifetime. Having named the purple Cherokee Tomato himself. He's got some credentials in the tomato world. So today we're going to kick it off.

Today's episode is going to be about should you grow heirloom tomatoes or should you grow hybrid tomatoes and what's the difference between those two different types of tomatoes?
Let's get into it.

A pretty basic question would be heirloom versus hybrid tomatoes, what these things are, what's the difference between the two and then wish to grow or maybe the answer is both in different circumstances.

Craig:

Sure. Well, my first answer would be yes, absolutely. Heirlooms or hybrids. Just grow tomatoes. You got some sun put a tomato in, so beyond that, what does one do? A gardener as a tomato lover and there's 10,000 different types of heirlooms and hundreds of different types of hybrids, and we'll get into some of that in future questions, but let's get to the basics.

Hybrid

So a hybrid is when someone in a greenhouse somewhere has two secret parents. They know that when they bring these characteristics of the two parents together, they're going to get a great tomato, so somebody in a greenhouse somewhere who knows what these two varieties are, is actually taking pollen from the male plant and applying it onto a deanthered flower on the female plant.

The pollen has actually applied. Now if a tomato forms, the seeds in that tomato are the hybrid and those ended up in the packet that you buy, so Sungold, Celebrity, Big Boy, Better Boy, all hybrid varieties. The thing about hybrids is they’re not “I plant them in, no diseases ever going to take them down.” They've been hybridized for different reasons. Some of them will tolerate diseases a bit longer and a bit more than some other varieties, but really what we grow tomatoes for, home gardeners who grow tomatoes as flavor, so Sungold, which to me is one of the greatest tomatoes I've ever eaten, is a hybrid.

Now you can save seeds from a hybrid and they will grow, but what you will get as a mixture of mom, dad, and the little babies and nieces and nephews in between, you'll get an incredible array of materials, so hybrid can never be an heirloom.

It can never be replicated exactly from saved seed. You buy the seed, you plant it, you grow it, you love it. Once you run out of that seed, if you'd like that tomato, you have to go back and buy the seed again.

Heirlooms

Think of an heirloom clock: valued, treasured, handed down has something really special so it has age associated with it. An heirloom also through being saved and shared through so many years, becomes genetically stable.
So if you grow a Cherokee purple, if you grow a German Johnson, Lillian’s Yellow, just to name three heirloom types of tomatoes, unless the bees get in and do some more genetics, you will get that same Cherokee, purple, German, Johnson, and Lillian's yellow.

Heirlooms can be seed saved and seed shared. No one has ever done the complete test on heirlooms to see which diseases they fight better than others. Some of them may not be able to tolerate any at all. So really what I advise gardeners is pick a color you like a size, you like a tomato. That sounds good and give it a try. And if it doesn't work for you, there's 99,999 more heirlooms you could get your hands on to try. There is never been a better time to be a tomato lover. Then now Kevin, because this, we have the biggest array of material to choose from as a gardener.

Thanks For Reading!

If this is your first time reading my writing, thank you! Please leave a comment so I can get to know you better.

My name is Kevin and I run Epic Gardening, a website, podcast, and YouTube channel. My goal is to teach 10,000,000 people how to grow their own food.

I'm a big believer in Steemit and decentralized platforms, so I'm going all in on Steemit, dtube, and dsound. Be sure to check me out there too! You'll find me writing about gardening, travel, health, and philosophy - I can't seem to stick to one topic :P

Thanks and happy Steeming,

Kevin

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