AMERICAN GARDENER

Beefsteak Tomato: What the Name Really Means and How to Grow One Beefsteak is the name gardeners give to the biggest slicing tomatoes, the thick-fleshed, sandwich-covering fruits that can weigh a pound or more. It describes a type rather than a single variety, and the type includes everything from hybrids like Big Beef to heirlooms … Read more

Big Boy Tomato: The Hybrid That Started the Modern Tomato Era Big Boy is a large, smooth, red slicing tomato that Burpee introduced in 1949, and it changed how Americans grew tomatoes. It was a hybrid that outgrew and outproduced the open-pollinated varieties gardeners had been planting for generations, and its popularity hasn’t faded in … Read more

Early Girl Tomato: The Short-Season Hybrid That Became a Dry-Farming Star Early Girl is a medium-sized, red, globe-type hybrid tomato that has been one of America’s most dependable early tomatoes since the 1970s. It ripens in roughly 50 to 63 days from transplanting, sets fruit in cool weather, and carries resistance to two major wilt … Read more

Brandywine Tomato: The Heirloom Everyone Grows for Flavor and Forgives for Everything Else Brandywine is the heirloom tomato that taught a generation of gardeners to care about flavor, a large pink beefsteak with potato-leaf foliage and a reputation for tasting like what a tomato is supposed to taste like. It’s also one of the slowest, … Read more

Big Beef Tomato: The Hybrid That Set the Standard for Home Gardens Big Beef is a red beefsteak hybrid that has been a fixture in home gardens since it won an All-America Selections award in 1994. Its fruits are large, globe-shaped, and meaty, with the rich, slightly acidic flavor gardeners associate with old-fashioned tomatoes. What … Read more

Mortgage Lifter Tomato: The Heirloom That Paid Off a House Mortgage Lifter is one of the most famous heirloom tomatoes in America, a huge, meaty pink beefsteak with a story as big as its fruit. According to legend, a self-taught West Virginia gardener bred it in the 1930s, sold the seedlings to eager neighbors, and … Read more

Sweet 100 Tomato: The Cherry Tomato That Changed Home Gardens Sweet 100 is a red cherry tomato hybrid famous for long, heavy clusters of sweet, bite-size fruit that ripen from midsummer until frost. It’s one of the best-known cherry tomatoes ever sold, a staple of patio pots, children’s gardens, and backyard snacking for more than … Read more

San Marzano Tomato: The Sauce Tomato Everyone Tries to Imitate San Marzano is the most famous sauce tomato in the world, an elongated, thin-skinned plum tomato prized for sweet, meaty flesh, low acidity, and few seeds. Chefs build pizza sauce around it, home cooks pay a premium for the canned version, and gardeners plant it … Read more

Sungold Tomato: The Orange Cherry Tomato Gardeners Plant First Sungold is a golden-orange cherry tomato that has become the benchmark for sweetness in the home garden. Its bite-size fruits ripen early, hang in long clusters, and taste so sweet and tropical that many gardeners eat them straight off the vine before they ever reach the … Read more

Cuphea: The Hummingbird Plant That Doubles as an Oil Crop Cuphea is a genus of tropical and warm-temperate plants best known to gardeners as cigar plants, firecracker plants, and Mexican heather, and to hummingbirds as an all-season nectar bar. Its small, tubular flowers bloom nonstop from late spring until frost, and the plants ask for … Read more