Freighter View Farms | Chris Izworski

Last season I grew twenty varieties of heirloom tomatoes in the raised beds at Freighter View Farms. It was too many. I knew it was too many when I was transplanting in May — forty-two plants in beds that want thirty — and I knew it again in August when the harvest overwhelmed the counter and I was giving tomatoes to neighbors just to stay ahead of the rot. I will do it again next year. Some lessons take a long time to learn, and some you decide you do not want to learn.

Here is what twenty varieties taught me.

The Ones That Earned Permanence

Cherokee Purple is the best-tasting tomato I grow, and I have grown enough now to say that without qualification. Deep, complex, with a sweetness underneath that is almost smoky. The shoulders stay green when the rest of the fruit is ripe — purple-red and heavy — and if you do not know the variety you might think it is not ready. It is ready. The skins crack if there is uneven watering or a hard rain after a dry spell, which is the one thing I hold against it. Everything else is forgiven.

Black Krim is Cherokee Purple’s more acidic cousin. Similar depth, more bite, beautiful in a salad where the higher acid cuts through the oil and salt. It performs more reliably for me than Cherokee Purple in wet summers, which matters in a Bay City July.

Brandywine is the variety that made people fall in love with heirloom tomatoes, and it earns that reputation season after season. The fruits are large — sometimes outrageously so, a single tomato filling most of a cutting board — and the flavor is what people mean when they say tomatoes used to taste like something. The plants are late producers and the yields are modest compared to smaller varieties, but the first Brandywine of the year is the one I eat standing at the kitchen counter before it ever makes it to a plate.

Costoluto Fiorentino: ribbed, Italian, ugly, and one of my most reliable producers. It is the workhorse of the beds — not the most spectacular flavor but consistently good, high-yielding, and excellent cooked down into sauce when everything else is getting ahead of me.

The Ones That Surprised Me

The Orange Accordion strutted. That is the only word for it. Tall, extravagant, orange fruits with deep ribbing — it drew more comments from visitors than any other variety, and the flavor was lighter and sweeter than the darker tomatoes, which made it a good complement on a plate. It needs more space than I gave it. Next year it gets more space.

Mortgage Lifter lived up to its name in sheer fruit size — some fruits came in above a pound — and the flavor was milder and sweeter than I expected from something that large. It is a slower producer than the others, but the late-season fruits when everything else is winding down are genuinely beautiful.

What Michigan Teaches You About Tomatoes

Zone 6a is not an easy place to grow indeterminate heirloom tomatoes. The season is short, the humidity in summer is high, and the temperature swings can be dramatic. What this means practically: early blight is a fact of life, not an exception. I pull affected leaves and keep the plants pruned to a single stem to maximize airflow, and I accept that the lower leaves will not be there by August. That is not failure. That is Michigan gardening.

What the short season also means: early-maturing varieties earn their place. Late producers like Brandywine are worth the wait, but you need to start them early enough — mid-March under lights — and you need warm soil at transplant. Black plastic mulch on the beds for three weeks before transplanting buys you the soil temperature that makes the difference between a plant that sulks and a plant that runs.

The Permanent List

After all twenty: the ones that come back every year are Cherokee Purple, Black Krim, Brandywine, Costoluto Fiorentino, and the Orange Accordion. The others rotate in and out as curiosity demands. There is always a slot for something I have not grown before — that is how the list grows, how the garden stays interesting, how you find the next variety that earns permanence.

The first tomato sandwich of the season is always Cherokee Purple. That has not changed in years, and I do not expect it to.

If you want to grow these varieties and save seed from the best ones, the heirloom seed saving guide covers what comes after harvest.

Related reading:

For a structured comparison of trade-offs in yield, flavor, disease resistance, and seed-saving viability, see the heirloom vs. hybrid seeds guide at chrisizworski.com.

• For the five that have earned a permanent place: The Best Heirloom Tomatoes for Michigan.
• Once the season ends, the best plants from this list become seed stock — the Complete Guide to Seed Saving covers what comes next.