It’s generally been a bad summer for heirloom tomatoes in this part of the world. Very wet which can lead to cracking skins. Cool temperatures don’t help. One of the main suppliers of heirlooms at the local farmers’ market lost his entire crop to blight. This is really unfortunate because one of the best things about August in Ontario is eating tomatoes — lots of them.

For example:

buttered, toasted bread, generous slices of tomato, a little sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, some old Canadian cheddar.

Awesome.

Despite the bad luck in the heirloom tomato fields this year I managed to grow four different kinds in large pots. The yield isn’t phenomenal but the tomatoes have all been very flavourful and with none of the blemishes normally seen when I buy them.

This first one pictured is the red pear tomato, which is a cherry tomato (wait for it…) shaped like a pear. The flavour is good and it makes an eye-catching addition to a salad.

Here’s a cluster of ‘Blondkopfchen’ (little blonde girl) tomatoes. Small and more orange than blonde, and sweet. Because it wasn’t a great season for tomatoes, the yield wasn’t as good as expected and most of them ripened quite late. However, the ones that made it were wonderful.

The Zapotec Pink is a rare heirloom from Mexico with ridged sides. These tomatoes don’t generally appear until late in the season and the yield isn’t high. That said, the tomatoes have few seeds and therefore lots of flesh. Perfect in a caprese salad.

Finally here’s the Black Krim tomato from the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea. Green shoulders, mahogany flesh. Really rich and delicious, and producing quite well.