If Shakespeare's Juliet had asked Craig LeHoullier "What's in a name?," LeHoullier would have pushed back on her contention that names are meaningless conventions. That's because LeHoullier knows the importance of genealogy in regards to heirloom tomatoes.
To LeHoullier, what's in the name of an heirloom tomato is a fascinating history of the conscientious gardeners who passed seeds through succeeding generations. He compares this to six degrees of separation: If any link in the chain had been broken, these tomatoes, cherished relics of the gardening world, would have been lost for all time.
"Heirlooms are living things, and unless they are grown and saved and shared and relished, they'll go extinct," he said. This is a central message in his book, "Epic Tomatoes: How to Select & Grow the Best Varieties of All Time," which won the Garden Writers Association Gold Award in 2016. It includes information about selecting and growing heirloom tomatoes as well as some of his favorite heirloom tomato stories.
Read more here, at Treehugger.
