The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table: Recipes, Portraits, and History of the World's Most Beautiful Fruit

The Heirloom Tomato is one of the best books on this subject to date! Amy tells you the size, weight, shape, exterior color, flesh color, texture, and most importantly the flavor and best uses of a particular heirloom. Who wants to bother with growing a tomato that has only poor to fair flavor? I also want to know the tomato's best uses so that I can have a good mix in my garden. She includes the origin, synonyms, seed sources, and her own critique. The pictures are glorious, and she includes numerous recipes in the back. The Cream of Tomato Soup is to die for! I gave this book to my daughter-in-law for Christmas, as she grows all of our tomatoes from seed. I get to pick out the ten types we will grow this year; Amy's book takes all of the challenge out of that daunting task! I probably will buy one for my own home.

Great coffee table book if, like me, you love tomatoes. Superior illustrations.

Author Amy Goldman has put together one of the most beautiful books available on heirloom tomatoes. Once you discover heirloom gardening, you will never buy a hybrid or genetically altered seed or plant again, no matter how they hype it up. Heirlooms will adapt to your soil and climate, and be much stronger, needing limited amounts of pesticides, if any, making them perfect for the organic gardener. Most will have those "old timey" exquisite flavors that you have been missing, but may not have realized it until you start eating them. Who knew that there were so many types of heirloom tomatoes that have withstood the test of time? Until reading this book, I didn't even know that white tomatoes existed before hybridization became popular, and was pretty much ignored because the red tomato was preferred by the public. The white tomato, Great White, is said to have an "Excellent; divinely sweet" flavor, while White Beauty's flavor is described modestly as "Excellent". Miss Goldman's chapters include tips on how to grow tomatoes and how to save the seeds for planting next years crop. She then goes on to describe the differet types of tomatoes: cherry, globe, ribbed, beefsteak, pear, and oxheart; and then various color groups are discussed, such as: white, yellow, orange, striped, black, and green. The full color photos are all very tastfully done by Victor Schrager, many of them masterpieces of art, which make it so easy to enjoy this book. The last chapter is full of tomato recipes: Gazpacho, stuffed tomatoes, tomato sauces, butter, tomato bread, salsa, fried green tomatoes, tomato chips, chutney, pickles, ketchup, tomato cocktail, and many more. I bought my heirloom seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, [...], but there are also additional seed sources available in the back of the book. You will not be disappointed with this book. It will be difficult to find another book on heirloom tomatoes with so much information. Amazon also sells it cheaper than I could find anywhere else.

Needless to say that the photography is stunning enough to make any gardener long to grow heirloom tomatoes themselves; but the instructions and seed sources are what I found particularly helpful. Also, the synopsis of some of the most well known heirloom tomato varieties was interesting and particularly helpful for choosing varieties which I would like to grow. How so you may ask? The varieties are ranked according to taste (all tomatoes do NOT taste alike and therefor I can choose the tastiest varieties) and how best to use them (fresh,canned, sauce) along with some very tasty recipes. I highly recommend this book,it was a pleasure to read and an informative garden to table guide.

I am an heirloom tomato addict. Small gardener gone wild! I grew 60 + varieties last year and am expanding to grow 100 this year. I am not quite done with this book yet but have thoroughly enjoyed reading some of Amy's methods of starting seeds, transplanting, pruning, mulching, harvesting, seeds saving etc. I was blown away by her 5 foot between each plant method, and that she doesnt experience any problems with blight and such. Blight is a tomato growers worst nightmare and I experience it every year due to over crowding! Changes are going to be made this year - TY Amy. Many of her methods I have not followed and have opened my eyes a bit. Being that she lives only 30 minutes from me in the Hudson Valley also helps relate to her as she talks about climate in our area. The pictures are amazing and better yet are Amy's detailed descriptions, orgins and other facts that one would not know. I especially enjoy the synonyms and other names for these tomatoes that I did not know. I find it funny how one tomato could have so many names. Amy - Thank you, maybe one day our paths will cross. My wife and I love the farmers market in Rhinebeck and the little Thai restuarant in town. Will look for you at the farmers market this year! Happy planting this year! - Jay -

I am a tomato lover and female and I like to experiment with different varieties of heirloom tomatoes. This book was so informative and unbiased. Seed catalogs give great descriptions of everything so you cannot go by them. I have wasted time and money trusting them and internet reviewers. I believe what has been written here. Based on this book's great descriptions of varieties, I am trying Goldman's Italian American, Jaune Flamme and Speckled Roman. I am in South Central Texas and it gets hot and humid here so they may not turn out as good as hers would but that's what makes experimenting fun and interesting. My quest is to find a few great stand out varieties for where I live. So far my Goldman's Italian American plants have grown bigger and faster than any other variety this year. My Speckled Roman was the first to put on tomatoes even though poorest looking plant out of 10 varieties. So I am impressed so far and would not have heard of or chosen these varieties without this book. There is nothing else to compare it to! BTW, I also purchased her new melon book and its outstanding!

Greetings, We are just north of Brisbane in Australia with warm to hot summer and cool winters. On the down side the author seems to spend an excessive amount of time on how to grow the seedlings which, by the way are the easiest things to germinate anyhow, (normally 1 week in our climate without any care) and nothing much on pest and disease control on tomatoes in general. We have been growing some 'Mortgage Lifter' tomatoes and wanted to know how big they grow. We put in 6ft then 8ft tomato stakes and they grew to the top of these and then back down to the ground again and they are still growing. Massive plants, plenty of flowers with a mediocre amount of fruit establishing. For pests we're using Neem Oil and for diseases Chlorothalonil generally fixes things up. The tomato descriptions are quite good. We didn't know there were so many and this is just touching on the surface. We will welcome any advice that is forthcoming. Thanks.

Thank you . Great condition. Great price

Thanks for Amy sharing the beauty of diversed tomato varieties

This is a great book for anyone seriously interested in tomato varieties. It has lots of information (more than you will find elsewhere) about the huge number of varieties it describes and evaluates. Although American based, some of the varieties are available in the UK from specialist seed suppliers.

We love this book. A good overall view of some of the more popular heirloom tomatoes with scientific facts. The author gives her honest opinion on flavours, which we appreciate to help us decide what to grow in future years.

A lovely well written and beautifully illustrated book. Normally when a book has lots of photographs they tend to be there to fill out the pages when you would prefer details and text, but this book is not just about the details but the beauty of heritage varieties of tomato. Well worth owning and inspirational.

After getting this book from the library multiple times, I had to get this book for myself. The photographs are stunning and the information on each variety is quite detailed. I can't wait to grow more of the varieties talked about in this book.