"When people bite into an heirloom, they're tasting tradition, the wisdom of the farmer, the season, and the particulars of the place where the fruit was grown."
- Janet Brown
Currently we are selling at Redlands Market Night and Torrance Market every other week.
Look for our new heirloom produce sold at markets; including heirloom lettuce, carrots, broccali, radishes, beats, peas, herbs and more!
Heirloom tomatoes will be in season late June/early July!
LIMITED QUANTITY AVAILABLE!!
Heirloom tomato plants will be for sale last week of March at Redlands and Torrance (request only so reserve today!). Plants will be sold at $4 and $5 for rare plants. Tomato plants for sale include:
- Northern Lights
- Black Krim - dark-red slightly maroon, beefsteak tomatoes with deep green shoulders
- Carbon - among of the darkest of the black tomatoes with delicious, rich, complex flavors
- Wapsipinicon Peach - delicate, fuzzy-like-a-peach, pale-yellow (with a tinges of pink), juicy, tomatoes with wonderful, slightly-spicy, very fruity-sweet flavors
- Thai Pink Egg - brilliant, jade-pink fruits that look like pullet eggs. The crisp fruits burst with natural, candy-sweet flavor
- Missouri Pink Love Apple - outstanding full, complex, tomatoey flavors
- Mariannas Peace - pink beefsteak tomatoes. Dense, creamy, sweet flesh with rich complex, old tomatoey flavors
- Rose - produces deep, rose-pink, 3-inch, meaty
- Coyote - jewel-like cherry, that bears 6 to 8 on a branch. Very flavorful!
- Red Grape
- Pink Box Car Willie - smooth, bright-orange/red slicer tomatoes with distinctly delicious well-balanced, rich, sweet that have sufficient acid to push the flavors forward and guarantee this variety as a good choice for a canning tomato, sauce tomato or salad tomato or perfect for tomato juice
- Cluj Yellow Cherry - produces HUGE amounts of 1/2-3/4 inch yellow cherries. Unique, sweet but tangy flavors. tomato candies
- Kellogg's Breakfast - deep orange beefsteak, thin-skinned, meaty, have few seeds and a fantastic sweet, tangy flavor
- Jaune Peche - Very productive 1-inch, round, pale-yellow fruit, looks like a delicate peach covered with fuzz
- Riesentraube - excellent flavored cherries are borne in bunches of 20-35 small, oval, red fruits with pointed ends
- Moskovich - yields an abundance of deep red, 4-6 oz., smooth, cold-tolerant, round and slightly flattened fruits with a luscious, rich taste
- Beefsteak - produce lush, thick, indeterminate, regular-leaf, tomato plants that yield from vigorous vines, 4 to 5-inch, slightly ribbed, bright-red tomatoes that have spectacularly delicious, sweet flavors
- Blondkopfchen - grape-sized, brilliant yellow/gold, cherry tomatoes in clusters of 20-30. Deliciously sweet with a slight citrusy tart finish
- Boa (not a heirloom)
- Moon's Super Bush Beefsteak (not a heirloom)
More varaities will be available May and June!
Torrance farmers market: Thys Ranch Cocktail grapefruit
Often it's difficult even for professionals to tell whether a stand really grows the produce it sells, but Elser's Country Farm, which specializes in heirloom vegetables, is obviously the real deal: Everything comes from the Elser family's backyard in Yucaipa, and in winter, when production slows down, they sell at Torrance only every other week (they'll next show up Jan. 30). read more...
Tomatoes -- the fruit of a Yucaipa family's labor -- comes in literally dozens of varieties
Seven years ago, looking to make some extra money to pay their daughters' college tuition bills, Darrell and Maria Elser planted three varieties of heirloom tomatoes in their Yucaipa yard.
Today -- through purposeful and accidental cross-breeding, hours of online searches, travel to tomato festivals and a desire to educate people about the distinct history and flavor of each heirloom variety -- the Elsers sell 52 types at farmers markets throughout Southern California. read more...
Market Watch: Tomato growing with passion
Windshield doctor and heirloom tomato grower." It sounds like one of those joke advertisements, but Darrell Elser juggles these two vocations with aplomb.
He certainly provides the greatest diversity of tomatoes at Southern California farmers markets: more than 50 varieties, most of them heirlooms, lovingly grown on half an acre of his yard in Yucaipa, east of Redlands. Other than the fact that you have to pay for the fruit, visiting his stand is like having your own backyard tomato garden. read more...
Customers enjoying Elser's tomatoes...
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1. Stripe German
2. Brown Derby
3. Amana Orange
4. Zebras
5. Mixed Cherry Tomatoes
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• Store tomatoes at room temperature out of direct sunlight. Refrigerating them ruins their flavor.
• Ripen a tomato by putting it in a paper bag with an apple or banana (the fruits emit a gas that hastens ripening).
• Eat tomatoes with fatty foods, like avocados, to enhance nutrient absorption.
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