"Anne Middleton/Harold Walker" wrote in message . net...
I respectfully disagree with Harold Walker.????????? No problem at all
with disagreements...we are all entitled to our opinions...and another
comment to follow.......have you ever tried to grow heirlooms in the same
spot year after year after year due to space limitations?.....HW

While the Brandywines I have grown here have tasted fantastic, they
are very low in production, maybe 10-15 tomatoes per plant per season.
So, I wouldn't recommend them if you don't have much room. There are
several varieties of heirloom tomatoes that produce well and have a
good taste. Mortgage Lifter is very prolific and mine averaged around
24 ounces. The taste beats any hybrid I have found. Delicious also
is prolific and tasty and seems to have some disease resistance.

I think the heirloom versus hybrid question can be solved by
considering what you want out of your tomato plants. If you want
uniformity and disease resistance, by all means grow hybrids. If you
want variety and taste, go with the heirlooms. I usually plant
between 15 and 20 tomato plants each year in a very limited space.
Out of these, only 1 or 2 are hybrids. The only reason I grow hybrids
at all is in case I have a very disease prone year (like last year).
Then, at least, I still have a good number of tomatoes. Despite the
unexpected 50 degree cold snap in June (almost unheard of in TN) and
the excessive rain which made the blights worse than usual (both early
and septoria), I still would have had tomatoes to give away even
without the hybrids.

To avoid planting in the same space year after year, I have two small
patches. I grow cucumbers and melons in one, tomatoes, carrots and
mesclun mix in the other. I rotate the crops back and forth each
year. It would be better to have three patches to have an extra year
but it is usually no problem. I also heavily amend the soil with
homemade compost, greensand, gypsum and rock phosphate and have had
pretty good luck as well growing in compost with no soil at all. If
you try this yourself, be sure to check the pH of your compost as it
can be highly variable depending on what went into it.

Lee Hall
South end of Zone 6B in Tennessee