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Heritage with bite

Owen Pidgeon

Woofer Tanya Buehr with Owen Pidgeon?s heritage tomatoes.
Woofer Tanya Buehr with Owen Pidgeon?s heritage tomatoes.Owen Pidgeon

It is more than 400 years since Hernando Cortes returned to Spain after overrunning the Aztec Empire in Mexico, bringing with him both gold and ''golden apples''. So the Europeans were introduced to tomatoes first in their golden-yellow form. The red-skinned varieties came much later.

Our tomatoes have been healthy all summer and the weather has been critical to this. Quite a number produced their first flowers in the last week of November, but have only began to yield ripe tomatoes in February. The hot weeks of summer have, however, pushed our plants along to a better late-summer harvest.

We have been trialling close to 50 varieties. Our first ripe tomato was the gold nugget, which has been prolific. We began picking from this little bush halfway through in January, so again we missed the Christmas target. If you were around in the latter weeks of January, the weather turned so hot the tomatoes went into survival mode.

We planted our tomatoes into virgin soil this summer. Some of the ground was quite rocky so we used the stones to fill an eroded wash along our council road. We transplanted the plants when they were 30 centimetres to 40 centimetres high, in November and a second lot in December. We added compost with broken-down cow manure, the plants were staked, and we have mulched twice with organic sugar-cane mulch, which helps the soil and also breaks down quicker than some other mulches.

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By the end of January, the early plants were getting close to two metres tall. So the season has been good for growth but it has taken a long time for the first tomatoes to ripen. Now the harvest floodgates have opened after the rains of late February. Nearly all of the varieties have set some fruit and some of most are now being picked, keeping our current ''Woofer'' (Willing Worker On Organic Farms helper), Tanja Buehr, from Germany, busy with the daily harvest.

As well as the gold nugget, the best producing cherry tomatoes have been the little red whippersnapper, the lemon drop, and the red and yellow pear-shaped tomatoes.

Plum-sized tomatoes have been yielding well. The Oregon spring is bearing well and its fruit have a delicious tartness. The French heirloom jaunne flammee has a lovely orange apricot colour with wonderful flavour. The medium-round olomovic, which came from the Czech Republic ripens a rich red with a green tinge on the top. The Thai pink egg is prolific with its pink colour deepening onmaturity.

Round large tomatoes are great for slicing. The French St Pierre and the Australian varieties, burnley bounty and Aussie red have all produced excellent, good-sized sweet fruit. They are medium to large, bright red in appearance, and will continue to produce when the weather turns cooler.

And now we are harvesting rouge de marmande and other beefsteak varieties, including the Gregoris altai, the Hungarian giant and the Czech Marianna's peace.

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Among the Russian heritage tomatoes, black krim produces a fruit of 250 grams or 350 grams. The shoulders of the fruit are a mixture of dark green and dark maroon colour. It is a heavy producer, but the one drawback is that these tomatoes are prone to cracking when it rains. Black Russian is smaller in size, but is rated as one of the best black heirloom tomatoes with a rich taste. The fruit has a purple blush and the flesh is dark-chocolate red.

Tomatoes lend themselves to bottling. Try making tomato sauce, tomato chutney or salsa. Make fresh tomato juice each morning, and consider drying tomatoes, or making bruschetta.

Tomatoes are an excellent source of antioxidants, which help protect the body from the impact of free radicals and play a preventive role with cancers.

>>Owen Pidgeon runs the Loriendale Organic Orchard near Hall.

■ Plant open lettuces, rocket, pak choi and radish. Transplant silverbeet, English spinach, sugarloaf cabbage and cauliflower seedlings.

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■ Search thoroughly through the leaves of cucumbers and zucchinis to ensure they do not grow too big.

■ Allow some of your capsicums and chillies to turn red and become fully mature. They will become both hotter and sweeter than the immature green fruits.

■ Prune dead branches from fruit trees that have been harvested.

■ Keep topping up your compost with all your spent plants, provided they are not diseased.

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