A trip to your local nursery may find you overwhelmed and bewildered by the array of tomato plants offered for sale. If you're putting out your vegetable garden and have only a certain amount of room reserved for tomatoes, it's nice to know what to look for as you read various plant labels and review assorted descriptions.

Tomatoes are always popular but their popularity seems to have increased as more and more folks plan on growing and harvesting their own vegetables. Tomatoes will always earn prime real estate in the context of vegetable gardening.

So what do all of these terms mean and how do I chose the right tomato plants for my garden? Lets look at what this tomato talk is all about.

Determinate and indeterminate

Tomato plants grow and mature in 2 different ways. Determinate tomatoes are often referred to as bush tomatoes. They grow smaller and produce flowers on terminal stalks. The fruit often ripens all at once. New flowers will not continue to develop after the initial production of flowering stems. Naturally this begs the question "Why buy determinate tomatoes?" The answer is simple, these are often the first to ripen and produce fruit as indeterminate vines will provide tomatoes later in the season.

Indeterminate types are sometimes referred to as vining tomatoes. Their stalks will continue to expand and new flowers will become fruit from mid to late season. Single plants can become very tall and wide as the flowering stalks elongate and continue to produce fruit.

Days to harvest

Tomatoes mature at various dates, anywhere from 52 days to 100 days. These days to harvest refer to days after the plants were set out. Many of the larger types, like Brandywine, mature much later than smaller fruiting types.

Heirloom

Without a doubt, this is the buzz word when it comes to selecting tomato plants. Interestingly enough there are many classes of heirlooms. Some have simply been saved by family members and passed down from generation to generation. The flavor is maintained with these, the seed comes true to type even when open pollinated rather than planned cross pollination. Commercial heirlooms describes another form of heirloom tomatoes. Introduced by seed companies, they may be orphans or natural hybrids sometimes named by an individual and picked up by a seed company. There is often an overlap between the commercial heirlooms and family heirlooms since this is often how the seed companies came to know a certain variety.

As with many heirloom tomatoes, it is hard to track their origins. It is fortunate that seed companies did preserve some of these older types since a family may have lost the ability to preserve one type for hundreds of years. Lastly there are the commercial heirlooms, bred for the best traits using good parents. It is generally accepted that heirlooms should have been cultivated prior to 1940 as many seed companies were hybridizing freely after that year.

Many contend that a created heirloom isn't a true heirloom. Arguments will continue as we find so many heirlooms sold and often little information available as to their origins.

OTV

During the 1990's there was a newsletter published by Craig LeHoullier and Carolyn J. Male. This newsletter was titled "Off the Vine", shortened to OTV. A particular type of Brandywine tomato arose from some selective breeding of Yellow Brandywine and was eventually named OTV Brandywine after the newsletter. It has nothing to do with taste after picking or flavor with age as some have suggested.

Disease resistance

The biggest problems for those of us gardening in zones 7 and 8 is the summer's heat. Fusarium wilt and Verticillium wilt are two common problems. Many heirlooms are not tolerant of wilt diseases but choosing medium sized fruiting varieties will help. Rotation of crops is also helpful as wilts can stay in the soil for up to 3 years. A thorough cleaning of vines and leaves will also help rid a garden of wilt diseases. Plants that suffer from this will suddenly wilt, having looked healthy up to that point. Sprays cannot prevent or cure these diseases, it is best to remove a wilted plant and rid the garden of ripening spores.

I encourage everyone to keep track of what varieties of tomatoes they plant year to year, especially noting those that do well, producing large yields of tasty fruit. It has always been said that it's better to err on the side of late planting than early planting. As the soil has warmed the later plantings catch up with earlier ones.

One of the most popular heirloom tomatoes is Mortgage Lifter which comes with a wonderful history. This particular variety as bred by M.C. Byles using German Johnson, Beefsteak, an Italian variety and an English variety. He planted one in the middle and surrounded it with the others. The first year he hand pollinated each surrounding tomato to the one in the center. The next year, he planted the best seedling in the middle, surrounding it with 3 other seedlings. After selecting the best plants for 6 years, he had a stable variety. This then became Mortgage Lifter and was sold for $1 in the 1940's. After 6 years he had sold enough plants to pay his mortgage of $6,000.

To read more about heirloom tomatoes consider the book "100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden" by Carolyn J. Male.

A good local source for heirloom tomatoes is DeBaggio's Herb Farm and Nursery. Open 7 days a week, call (703) 327-6976 for hours and varieties.