Plow Maker Farms

 

Large Red Cherry

This 19th century heirloom cherry tomato will delight you with its sweet flavorful fruits. Great for eating fresh, topping salads or canning whole.

Picture: Green Large Red Tomatoes (now that is an oxymoron).

One thing that tickled me about this tomato was the generic nature of the name "Large Red Cherry Tomato". It could describe half the tomatoes in most gardens.

Large Red Cherry Tomato is an open pollinated tomato from the Ben Quisenberry heirloom vegetable collection. Ben Quisenberry was a dedicated seed saver and farmer from 1910 until he died in 1986 at 99 years. He devoted his life to saving heirloom vegetables from extinction.

Mr. Quisenberry delighted in preserving and spreading heirloom seeds. He owned a small mail order seed company called Big Tomato Gardens which he operated out of an old post office building in Syracuse, Ohio. He even printed his own seed packets, which included religious mottoes, on an old printing press.

Picture: By saving and sharing seeds a farmer preserves the past for the future.

Motto from Mr. Quisenberry's seed packages:

"The kiss of the sun for pardon
The song of the birds for mirth
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth".

It is thanks to people like Mr. Quisenberry that we still have many of these delicious heirloom tomatoes to eat and enjoy.

Want to save your own tomato seeds? Here are the instructions Mr. Quisenberry used to send to his customers:

"Tomato should be dead ripe; cut in half between the stem and blossom ends. Push the seed out of the cavities, and wash on a piece of wire fly screen to remove the pulp and goo from the seeds. Spread them out on a smooth board; move them around occasionally so they won't stick together or to the board. When thoroughly dry, store in an air-tight container. Longevity of tomato seed is 5 years or longer."