Last year I did a garden no-no and set out a few tomato plants on March 9.  By then it was obvious it was just not going to freeze again. 

Being one who usually pokes fun at super early planters who often become re-planters after a freeze, I just wanted to do something different for a change. So I spiced up life in the garden and planted tomatoes way too early. They lived, remained a nice green and made a normal crop at a normal time. The truth is I could have planted a whole month later and still had the same results.   Why? Because the South American native tomato is a warm weather plant. 

In its home range the tomato’s wild ancestors are perennials, not even dying off in the mild winters there. But once domesticated, crossbred and eventually sent to us and to Europe, modern tomatoes became annuals. But they still want it warm. So planting outdoors here when we know there’s some cool days and nights ahead means plants just won’t make the progress growing like when the temperature suits them later on. As long as they don’t freeze, they will patiently await weather more to their liking. Then they will take off growing. So will the ones planted about then.

There’s been increased interest in recent years in growing heirloom tomato varieties in home gardens. To grasp the difference between heirloom and modern tomato varieties we need to deal with the more technically correct terms open-pollinated and hybrid. 

The first group, the open-pollinated aka heirlooms, produce seeds by pollination brought about by insects or wind. And a plant can pollinate itself, with pollen falling within a bloom. This is how nature does it.

Now, mankind first learned to impact this by intentionally planting different open-pollinated varieties close to one another, planting the resulting seeds next year and evaluating the results. Heirloom cross-pollination varies by variety with some refusing cross pollination and staying pure or nearly so on its own. Commercially, the open-pollinated varieties are kept pure by distance; only one variety is grown in an immediate area. 

On the other hand, hybrid varieties were and still are created by humans placing pollen of one known variety on the female stigma in the blooms of another variety. 

To keep a hybrid variety available every year, the cross-pollination has to be done every year. For some garden tomato hybrids, it took several generations of cross pollination to come up with the two parents now used to create the final, named hybrid. 

The term “heirloom” implies aged and, true enough, most open-pollinated tomato varieties are old. Three of the most popular heirlooms today were developed in the late 1800s; Brandywine, Cherokee Purple and Arkansas Traveler. And some hybrid varieties have been around for a quite a while. Though there are newer ones, popular hybrids include Big Boy (1949), Early Girl (1975) and Celebrity (1984).

Good Friday has come and gone.  There’s absolutely no freeze ahead. It’s time for me to plant my few tomato plants.

Terry Rector is spokesman for the Warren County Soil and Water Conservation District.