Farm Fresh Gardens

Cynthia Sandberg loves antiques. Not the kind you import from Europe or buy in a store. The kind that grow from seed and have a look and taste like nothing you'd find in a supermarket or garden center.

Simply put, Cynthia Sandberg likes a tomato with a past.

They're everywhere. On her porch in hanging baskets, where most people keep houseplants? Tomatoes. Around her pool, where friends and neighbors might spend thousands on landscaping? Tomatoes.

All told, 140 varieties grow around her home and on her acreage. Most of them are heirlooms straight out of the tomato time machine and bursting with character and flavor.

Her journey from backyard gardener to being known as California's "Tomato Lady" began with a passion she believes is built into the human condition. "Why do people have house plants?" she asks. "We have an urge to grow something—to cultivate something." She cultivated that urge with some horticulture classes at a local community college and a backyard vegetable garden at her home in Ben Lomond, Calif.

"In that first vegetable garden, the things I loved the most were the tomatoes," she says. So every year she'd stop growing something to make room for more tomatoes.

"I stopped growing corn, stopped growing pumpkins, stopped growing that stupid onion that never did anything," she says. So she bought 10 seed packets with about 30 seeds each at a local nursery and started them.

"They all germinated, and I was like, 'What am I going to do with 300 tomato plants?'" She planted what she could and gave the rest away to family and friends. "That set me on my tomato-growing path."

She discovered a book called "100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden" by renowned tomato expert Carolyn Male. Cynthia saw the beautiful colors, the unusual shapes and the descriptions of taste, and she was sold on heirloom varieties.

So now she sells them—and educates people on how to grow them and care for them. Visitors come to her Love Apple Farm (named for what tomatoes were once called in French because of supposed aphrodisiac qualities) to buy both seedlings and fruit.

And, Cynthia gives the occasional well-attended lecture; locals talk about people standing in the rain at Love Apple Farm to hear her talk about her passion.

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Thing is, there's a lot to learn about growing these living antiques. "Some people who have tried heirlooms don't grow heirlooms anymore because they realize they don't get as much fruit from them," she says.

Cynthia says most people try the popular Brandywine heirloom first since they're widely available. Then they give up because they might only get six or eight fruits from the plant—the whole season!

"And that's in perfect conditions, which most gardeners can't give," she says. So how has she overcome the finicky nature of heirlooms? "Well, I haven't," she says.

Hundreds of plants line the rows on Cynthia's acreage. The tunnel cages support the plants and help keep animals away from tender young fruit. Photos By Jamie Cole

Naturally, heirlooms aren't bred for the disease resistance many hybrids have. And they aren't bred for the perfect shape and color like store-bought tomatoes. But offering optimum growing conditions can help you get good results in spite of the limitations.

"You have to have the climate, but you get the climate eventually," Cynthia says, noting that you can grow tomatoes almost everywhere in the U.S. because it will eventually get warm enough. "It's all about the soil. Tomatoes are heavy feeders in the soil, and so it has to be replenished every year." (See "Cynthia's Tips," sidebar, for specific growing advice.)

She first found seed through her membership in Seed Savers Exchange; now she saves her own seed, trades and buys from people online, and scours the SSE catalog every year for "new" antique varieties.

Friends like to share the past with her too. "People bring me seeds, and they talk about how their grandmother brought the seed from Greece or Croatia or France," she says.

Sometimes she finds a jewel. "A friend brought some that are similar to Cherokee Purple, but smaller in fruit and darker in color," she says. "And they taste fabulous."

It's not all about taste though. "One year my favorite was the Black Zebra. But if you grow it you're going to be really disappointed," she says. "The reason it was my favorite was that it's really unusual looking. It doesn't taste that great, and the yield is horrifically low."

So why the fuss over a plant with such temperaments? "Because you don't get the color range, the taste range and the shape range from a hybrid tomato."

It's the unique varieties—the odds and ends of the tomato world—that you'll find in Cynthia's huge tomato patch in the Santa Cruz mountains . . . just like a good antique store.

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Heirloom Hall of Fame

We asked Cynthia to name her favorites; "Can't do it," she said. But she sent us some to test ourselves. We didn't pick our favorites based on taste—some of them just look cool. Find them at www.seedsavers.org or www.tomatofest.com. You can contact Cynthia through her through her web site, www.loveapplefarm.biz, or by e-mail at loveapplefarm@gmail.com.

1884 Large pink, lightly ruffled fruits weigh up to 1 pound each. High yield; blemish-free. Tasting Notes: Our editor called this "the tasteless beauty."	Basinga Thin-skinned. Likely to be about 10 to 14 ounces; up to 2 pounds. Disease resistant; moderate yield. Tasting Notes: Excellent, sweet taste that's great for sandwiches.	Beauty Lottringa Fussy but beautiful. Moderate yield. Tasting Notes: Cynthia said it's "not the best tasting tomato," but we liked it. Acidic but not overpowering.
Black Plum Small fruit is easy to grow and not as susceptible to disease as some black varieties. High yield. Tasting Notes: Good for salads, not as flavorful as most cherries.	Black Zebra Unusual look; tastes good when fully ripe. Variable but low yield. Tasting Notes: Rated second lowest among the ones we tasted, but it is neat looking.	Gogoshari Striped Rare, semi-hollow. High yields, but fruit can be small. Tasting Notes: Rated lowest in our taste-testing, but with tough skin it's really more of a stuffer.
Green Giant Moderate to large size beefsteak. Easy to grow. Yields to gentle pressure when mature. High yield. Tasting Notes: This dense, sweet fruit rated second highest.	Marmande Disease resistant. Good for cooler or shadier locations. High yield. Tasting Notes: The best red tomato we tried. A more traditional, acidic tomato taste.	Plum Lemon Disease resistant. Slight lemony taste. High yield. Tasting Notes: Probably best for salsas and as a conversation piece.
Texas Star Needs a lot of sun. Gets very large. High yield. Tasting Notes: Yum. Our absolute favorite; perfect for that midsummer tomato sandwich.	Ukrainian Heart Needs shade in hottest part of the day. Large fruit. Moderate yield. Tasting Notes: We rated it toward the middle, but the sweet and acid were nicely balanced.	Zogola Very popular. Polish variety is easy to grow. High yield. Tasting Notes: We tried it since so many heirloom lovers grow it, but it wasn't close to Texas Star.