Putting on Heirs: On the North Fork, heirloom tomatoes are summer's juicy stars (2024)

Lucy Senesac works on tomato plants at Sang Lee Farms. (Photo credit: Jeremy Garretson)

At Sang Lee Farms in Peconic, Lucy Senesac, who co-owns the farm with her partner, Will, and his father, Fred—it is, in fact, his family’s farm—knows that tomatoes are a big part of the growing narrative. The farm has been certified organic since 2006, butbegan in Melville inthe 1940s as a supplier of Asian produce to Chinatown. Today, it grows about 50 tomato varieties each year. Approximately two-thirds of these are heirlooms, one-third of which are hybrids, and the remainder are cherry and grape varieties.

Heirloom tomatoes entered the farming and farm stand zeitgeist about 15 years ago, and consumer passion for them remains strong. And pound for pound, bushel for bushel, the patient, careful work of North Fork farmers keeps them in heavy, bountiful rotation all summer long.

HEIRLOOM APPARENT

Heirlooms are more expensive than other tomatoes because they’re more challenging to grow, notably, because they are somewhat weaker in terms of productivity and durability.

“They’re passed down for the traits: flavor and color, all the things that are amazing about the tomato when they’re good,” Senesac says. “But they’re not really selected for disease-resistance, yield, things like that. The benefit is that you’re getting all those unique flavors that were selected years ago. But I just think that it makes a little bit of a weaker plant, in that it’s more finicky.”

A plant that succumbs more easily to disease—and produces less fruit—brings less profit to farmers, making each tomato picked more valuable and more costly.

“I always say to people: For every one you see, five had to die,” Senesac quips.

BIG RED

Eve Kaplan-Walbrecht, who co-owns Garden of Eve Organic Farm, open in Riverhead since 2001, says heirloom tomatoes aren’t the only type to keep an eye on if you’re in the market for these delicious and juicy nightshades.

“We try to grow a really nice, large, red tomato, because there’s no one who doesn’t love a delicious, large, perfect red tomato,” she says.

In the beginning, Garden of Eve grew roughly 50 different varieties of heirloom and hybrid tomatoes, but they now grow closer to 30, Kaplan-Walbrecht says. “I think now we’ve simplified to the best of those, based on demand — which are the best-tasting, which look great, are reliable and do well.”

Big, juicy, red tomatoes, she notes, may not have the same cachet as heirlooms, but they do have other things going for them. Although they’ve sometimes been perceived as less flavorful, breeders have been able to hybridize varieties that look good and still deliver tons of true tomato taste.

“They’re doing a lot of really good organic seed-breeding at Rutgers, at Cornell,” Kaplan-Walbrecht says. “They’re coming up with new disease-resistant red hybrids that do really well and look great and taste great.”

VIVA LA DIFFERENCE

Different types of tomatoes can serve different purposes, notes Erin Stanton, business manager at Latham Farms in Orient. Her family established their roadside farm stand in the late 1970s, though they’ve been farming here since the late 1700s. Latham’s farms around 100 acres and rents an additional 60. From that land, they grow close to 30 tomato varieties each year.

“We do it based on what sold the year before, and also customer wishes,” Stanton says. “We have restaurants that come to us and ask us to plant certain ones that they’re looking to use in their restaurant for the year.”

A good slicing tomato, for instance, should be large and relatively low in moisture. That way, if it’s being used on a sandwich, it doesn’t get the bread too wet and soggy. In order to select the perfect slicing tomato from a farm stand, Stanton suggests checking for softness. “The softer they are, they tend to have a little more moisture in them,” she says. A firmer tomato, she says, is more likely to have reduced water content, and will be better for use in sandwiches and on burgers.

SEEDING, SAVORING AND SAVING

For those testing the waters in cultivating tomatoes, Stanton cautions that heirlooms can be more challenging. “They haven’t been messed with, genetically,” she says. “So they are just going to require a little more care.”

One way to prevent hangups with tomatoes, she suggests, is to conduct a soil-test ahead of time, and to add a fungicide to soil, particularly in years when the winter hasn’t been particularly cold or when you’re reusing soil from the year before. “If you had a disease last year, most likely you’re going to have that same disease,” she says. Tomatoes, she adds, thrive in calcium-rich soil, so nascent gardeners can also add calcium as a protective measure.

“Everyone should have a couple of cherry tomato plants in their garden,” says Kaplan-Walbrecht. “You can just throw them in a pot next to your front door. They ripen quicker. They’re just more foolproof. They have almost no pest pressure, because they ripen so quickly that nothing can really get to them.” Sungolds, Sweet 100, Matt’s Wild Cherry tomatoes and Juliet tomatoes, she says, are excellent choices for those looking to dip a toe into the wild world of tomato-growing.

And once cherry tomatoes start coming in, in addition to just slicing them fresh, Senesac says they can benefit from a quick roast in the oven, which helps evaporate excess liquid and concentrate flavors. She gives them a quick chop, roasts them in a hot oven and then adds them to a blender with garlic and oil for a fresh tomato sauce that highlights the tomato’s natural flavors.

In a bumper year, though, you don’t need canning supplies to extend the tomato season. “If you have a bunch of tomatoes that are a few days old, they’re a bit soft, so the texture’s not there for sandwiches, you can just freeze them whole in [zipper] bags,” she says. “When you thaw them, the skin comes off very easily. You don’t have to worry about blanching and peeling. And then you just core them, once you thaw them.” It’s a great way to bring a bit of the summer season into the dead of winter without too much added effort.

But no matter how you slice them, tomatoes, these farmers say, are in-season from now through October. So get them while you still can.