School of Sustainability

Twenty-two tomato varieties, three winners, and a crowd in Decorah

At Heritage Farm in Decorah, Iowa, Seed Savers Exchange put 22 tomato varieties in front of the public and let tasters decide which deserved to be remembered. Visitors of all ages sampled across three categories - slicers, cooking tomatoes, and snacking types - and then voted for their favourites. The event was free, made possible by three sponsors: Decorah Bank & Trust Co., Mountain Rose Herbs, and Streamworks. It ran on nothing more complicated than ripe fruit and opinions.

The slicer category went to 'Bookie'. Best cooking tomato was 'Rizzi Softball Plum', a name that tells you roughly what it looks like. The snacking vote went to 'Chocolate Cherry', which Seed Savers sells as seed through its shop. The two other winners, the organisation notes, can be found on the Exchange, its listing service for members - so each winner sits somewhere a person can actually get hold of it.

This is the part of seed saving that rarely gets described: not the vault, but the tasting. A variety survives because someone wants to eat it again, and an afternoon like this is one of the few places that wanting gets counted. All three winners now have a fresh cohort of people who have eaten them and can ask for them by name. A tomato nobody tastes is a catalogue entry; a tomato twenty people argue about has a future.

Seed Savers Exchange · Read the source