Heirlooms and hybrids: Dozens of tomato varieties available in Oxford

Locally grown tomatoes are plentiful in MOON Co-op Grocery, Oxford Farmers Market and many home gardens. It seems that everyone in small-town mid-America grows their own backyard tomatoes. So why buy tomatoes at the Farmers Market or co-op?

For me, one appeal is the wide variety of unfamiliar tomatoes that our local growers offer. A few years ago, I tried to count the number of varieties of locally grown tomatoes at Oxford’s Farmers Market and MOON Co-op. The answer was 74. I tried keeping track this year, but I got distracted talking with growers and other shoppers.

A mix of heirloom and hybrid tomatoes can be found locally. Heirloom tomatoes have colorful stories and names, but the term “heirloom” itself is modern. Kent Whealy, the co-founder of Seed Savers Exchange, popularized its use in the 1980s, though Whealy credits others with inventing the term.

Hybridization of tomatoes is a local story. Alexander Livingston of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, is recognized as the first person to successfully hybridize a tomato for commercial use, which he named Paragon, in 1879. Tomatoes at the time were typically squat, ribbed and rough-skinned. Livingston set out to create round, smooth-skinned and more flavorful varieties.

Livingston founded a seed company in 1850, now named for him. The varieties that Livingston hybridized in the nineteenth century have disappeared, but Livingston Seed Company is trying to revive some of them.

Growers tell me that shoppers are interested in heirloom varieties in principle, but they actually buy hybrids. The regular shape and color of hybrids are evidently considered more attractive than the irregularity of heirlooms.

In general, smaller, darker tomatoes have more lycopene, the powerful cancer-fighting antioxidant. Yellow and large tomatoes have relatively little lycopene. Small, dark red tomatoes tend to be the sweetest and most nutritious. However, that is not always the case. For example, Queen of the Night is a small, very dark heirloom tomato at Oxford’s Farmers Market that is relatively acidic.

More important than variety or heirloom vs. hybrid is care of tomatoes once they are home. Try not to put the tomatoes in the refrigerator. Keep them in a bowl on the counter, and cover with a cloth if you need to keep away flies.

When a tomato is stored below 50 degrees, its flavor fades away quickly—within two days of refrigeration. Cold storage during the long journey from California is one of the main reasons that supermarket tomatoes are flavorless.

This time of year, it is inevitable to end up with too many tomatoes, including some very soft ones. If you are accomplished at canning, you don’t need my advice. For the rest of us, I recommend simply cooking them down into an intense tomato sauce. Chop up the tomatoes and simmer them in a pan until thick. Mince some local onion and garlic and add them to the pan.

Here's a bonus: the longer you cook tomatoes, the healthier they are. Heating makes the nutrients more available and easier to absorb, and the lycopene more than doubles after 30 minutes of cooking.

Most recipes call for removing the pulp, seeds, and skin. I don’t know why. Most of the flavor and nutrition are in these bits.

James Rubenstein is president of the Board of Directors for the Oxford Free Press and professor emeritus of geography at Miami University.