In the gardening world, tomatoes are the barometer of a good harvest. If you produce a bountiful crop of sweet tomatoes, nothing else matters. And, every gardener loves showing off his or her prize maters like a piece of artwork.

Heirloom tomatoes are certainly nothing new, but they’re taking on a whole new level of popularity among purists. Since they’re not genetically altered for perfect round appearance, uniform color or any other set of traits like the hybrid varieties, they aren’t necessarily the most beautiful or normal-looking fruits. But heirloom tomatoes have a wide range of flavors, textures and skin variations, and their uniqueness is only matched by their unrivaled flavors.

Caspian Pink Heirloom Tomato plants produce fruit in 75-80 days. The plants are semi-determinate and are in the beefsteak family. The name comes from the discovery of this tomato along the shores of the Caspian Sea in southern Russia. The fruits ripen from the bottom of the plant first, and they weigh in at a hearty 11 ounces and up. Some growers report fruits heavier than two pounds!

Caspian Pink Heirlooms are fleshy and meaty, with plenty of juice and sweet flavor coming from squat-shaped fruits. Not coincidentally, the dense flesh is pink-red in color. Caspian Pink Heirloom tomatoes often beat Brandywine in flavor contests.

This heirloom tomato is a semi-determinate variety, meaning it will grow from 3 to 5 feet in height and produce fruit throughout the growing season, as opposed to determinates, which are short and bushy and provide all their ripe fruit at once—or indeterminates, which vine and produce tomatoes throughout the growing season. Caspian Pink is a mid-season producer, bearing ripe fruit around 75 or 80 days. Determinate tomato growers usually prefer a harvest all at once, if they can or preserve tomatoes. Indeterminate and semi-determinate growers usually want to pick ripe fruit for the longest possible growing season. Some gardeners like a mix of both.

Like all tomato plants, Caspian Pink Heirlooms like lots of full sun and heat. They do best in a well-drained soil that’s slightly acidic with plenty of good organic matter worked in. Caspian Pink Heirloom tomatoes are ripe and ready to pick when their shoulders’ take on a deep pink color. Don’t pick fruit from the stem. Use a sharp knife or shears and cut fruit to avoid bruising the plant or the fruit.

When considering tomato varieties to plant, things to consider include your garden or container growing space, your ideal harvest time(s), your soil and water, and the recipes and preparations you’ll use. Some tomatoes excel when sliced raw for salads, others when cooked in pasta sauces or baked into casseroles. Each tomato has qualities that set it apart from all the others. So, why not plant a few varieties and see which ones work best for your garden, climate and table? Enjoy the sweet rewards of tomato gardening, and make sure to include Caspian Pink Heirloom plants in your mix.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 24th, 2008 at 3:46 am and is filed under Growing Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.