Charlotte Scott

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

The Sedge Genus That Quietly Does Everything Carex is one of the largest plant genera on Earth, a group of grass-like perennials called sedges that grow in nearly every habitat from mountaintops to coastal sand dunes. Most gardeners walk past them without a second look, which is a shame, because few plants offer so much … Read more

Determinate tomatoes are the compact, bush-type plants that grow to a set size, set fruit on the ends of their shoots, and ripen most of the crop in a short stretch. They’re also called bush tomatoes, and they’re the reason a gardener with a patio, a small bed, or a canning project can grow tomatoes … Read more

Indeterminate tomato varieties are the vining tomatoes that keep growing, flowering, and ripening fruit all season until frost shuts them down. Where a determinate plant stops at a set size and delivers most of its crop in a few weeks, an indeterminate plant keeps adding new stem, new flower clusters, and new tomatoes for months. … Read more