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Grow Tomatoes Review: Old German Heirloom Beefsteak Tomato

August 10th, 2009 | Author: Dot

Old German Tomato Plant with Heirloom Beefsteak Tomatoes That Look Like Pumpkins On The Vine

DoT’s Thot: However silly it may seem, sometimes I grow a tomato plant because of how it looks, even if the flavor is not top-ranked…just part of curiosity, I suppose.

Old German Tomato Heirloom Beefsteak Green Vines

Old German Tomato Characteristics: Heirloom Beefsteak Tomato

This is one of those tomato plants that I first got and put in the ground out of sheer curiosity. It was listed as an indeterminate (I) heirloom beefsteak toomato.

Old German tomato apparently is Mennonite in heritage and hails from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Just the thought of its history made me want to help this heirloom beefsteak tomato to “go West”.

Days to maturity was listed as 75 days. It was reputed to produce 1 to 2 pound tomatoes.and was rated as outstanding. I bought a plant and put it in the ground.

Old German Tomato Has Distinctive Curlicues and Large Blossoms

One of the very first things we noticed about our Old German tomato plant was that as the plant grew, the vinces were unusually thick and curly. The look evoked a feeling of old Germany, the black forest, and fairy tale pumpkin patches with curling vines.

Old German Heirloom Beefsteak Tomato Flowers

The blossoms on this heirloom beefsteak tomato plant are large with very curly sepals. If you look closely at the picture you can see the curlicues that charmed me so much.

The Old German tomato itself is a very pretty yellow-gold with a pink-rose center which gives lateral slices of this tomato a very distinctive appearance.

Grow Tomatoes Review Summary

My particular experience this year was that while the plant was productive, it did not yield tomatoes as large as reputed. Perhaps our Southern California growing season has some differences not quite suited to this Virginia heirloom beefsteak tomato.

Slices of Old German Tomato Golden Yellow with Pink-Rose Centers

Slices of Old German Tomato Golden Yellow with Distinctive Pink-Rose Centers

Perhaps I needed to pay more attention to pruning the vines, although other plants equally left to grow without pruning did produce fruit as reputed. My Old German tomatoes were about half a pound, not 1-2 pounds.

The tomatoes were pretty to behold. and the charm of seeing the flowers and vining habit made growing this tomato satisfying. Generally reviewed as a very tasty and sweet tomato, I was surprised to find mine were somewhat bland. I hesitate to eliminate this heirloom beefsteak tomato from my to buy list, because I think it deserves another season. I will continue to harvest and eat these and see if some of the later tomatoes are tastier.

Bottom Line: I’ll give this another chance before deciding that my micro-climate is unsuitable for me to grow this highly regarded heirloom beefsteak tomato. I really like looking at this particular plant and the tomatoes are good, just not as tasty as I was expecting.

Aloha, DoT

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