Brandywine is also a type of tomato. You won't see Brandywine Tomatoes in the grocery store, though, as they are what is known as a heirloom plant. Heirloom plants are those that are not only able to produce viable seeds, but are directly traced to specific types of plants that our forefathers grew.

I know of 5 different varieties of Brandywine tomatoes. The most common are the Pink Brandywinethat has dark pink large fruits, Yellow Brandywine with large yellow fruits, and Black Brandywine with duhhhh..almost black fruits. All the varieties grow on a plant that looks more like a potato plant than the typical tomato plant. The thing that sets Brandywine tomatoes apart from all other tomatoes, however, is the intense taste that comes with all the varieties of Brandywines. A Brandywine tomato gives that crisp tangy sweet taste that some of us remember. These tomatoes are NOTHING like grocery store tomatoes, which have been bred to have tough skins and thick pulp so they can be harvested and shipped easier.

Brandywine tomatoes are not huge producers. The fruits average about 1 pound in size. Brandywine plants aren't the easiest plants to grow successfully, as they have less disease and insect resistance bred into them than some of the hybrid types. They are worth the effort though.

I'll end with a couple of odd tomato growing tips I've picked up over the years. When transplanting your tomato plants, drop two Tums antacid tablets in each hole. The calcium in the tablets helps prevent bottom end rot. Another thing that I've used successfully with tomatoes is to bury a plastic milk jug with the top cut off and filled with horse manure between tomato plants. Poke holes in the bottom. When watering, the water will flow through the manure and make manure tea which will run out the holes in the bottom of the jug and reach the tomato roots directly.

The River Brandywine formed the eastern boundary of The Shire, in Middle-earth. It rose in Lake Evendim or Nenuial and flowed south. The Old Forest was on the eastern side of it, just outside the Shire. The Buckland, the area where the Brandybuck family lived, was part of the Shire on the far side of the river.

Tolkien no doubt got the name from the famous Brandywine battle in America, but he made out it was an alteration of the Elvish name Baranduin, which means "golden-brown river".

Brandy the drink is short for "brandywine", which comes from the Dutch for "burnt wine".

Family: Solanacae
Genus: lycopersicon
Species: lycopersicum
Cultivar: Brandywine

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Brandywine tomatoes have taken on an mythical aura. Yes, they are delicious. Yes, they have funny potato leaves and thin skins, and yes the fruits, ribbed and pinkish and awkwardly large, may seem butt-ugly to children raised on megagrocery store tomatoes. Still, they are just not that difficult to grow, and if you grow any tomatoes at all, adding a brandywine or two will be rewarded.

Brandywines can be traced back to 1885, back to Amish farmers, further adding to the mystique.^* While the Amish are famous for restoring land and avoiding trappings that may cause rifts in a community, they do not use anything magical in their soil. (Horse manure may do magical things, but still, it is only horse shit.)

Brandywines likely were cultivated long before 1885, under a different name (or perhaps passed on as "those big beefy pink butt-ugly tomatoes with the potato leaves"). Before hybrids became popular, "heirloom" varieties were all that your grandparents knew. Heirloom varieties are open pollinated plants that can be faithfully reproduced from seeds year after year. Buy one packet, and you are set for life.

Today seed companies market heirloom varieties of vegetables as better tasting, though less resistant to diseases. Heirloom strains tend to be less uniform, and (gasp!) less productive than some more recent hybrids. Or say so the experts.

So why do the Amish and other queer folk grow not-so-prolific, finicky plants that do not tolerate travel to market? Well, they taste good. The Amish are religious, but they are not stoics. And, maybe, the marketing of the mystique of this fine plant has twisted its reputation just a bit.

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I grow tomatoes in a little urban patch in northern New Jersey, a mile or so from Newark. I grow hybrids and heirlooms. I have two criteria--will it grow? Will I like it? I have tried all kinds of tomatoes--big ones, little ones, red, green, and purple ones. Ribbed or smooth. Pear-shaped, beefsteaks, cherries. Determinate, indeterminate, and plenty that just terminated. I never met a tomato I did not like, but some are more lovable than others.

I do everything wrong. Since I only have about a hundred square feet of soil that gets real sunlight, I plant my tomatoes year after year on the same spot. I compost with diseased plants from years before. According to the experts, I should consider myself lucky if I can coax two fruits out of an heirloom plant.

Year after year my brandies come through. If it's a dry year, well, maybe the yellow pears will peter out, but I'll get 7 to 10 pounds of tomatoes from my brandywine plant. A wet year? Well, the supersonics may wilt early, but I'll get 7 to 10 pounds from brandy. Too cold? The rutgers may rot, but, I'll still get 7 to 10 pounds from my reliable butt-ugly pink ribbed thin-skinned brandywines.

Your great grandparents picked the food they raised partly because they liked it, but mostly because they needed it to live. You are here because your great-grandparents knew how to grow stuff. They did not have time for hobby farming. Your great-grandparents were tough as buzzards. Their favorite plants had to be just as tough.

A brandywine may be finicky if sitting in a 240 acre field with rock-hard tractor-flattened hardpan soil surrounded by 10,000 other brandywine plants propped up with organophosphates, carbamates, chlorpyrifos ,malathion ,atrazine, and metolachlors. They do just fine sitting in a small garden surrounded by kale, basil, lettuce, and fertilized with clamshells, compost, and cow shit.

Tonight we had our first brandywine of the season, a 1 1/2 pound gnarled, ribbed fleshy piece of heaven. It has been a cold, wet summer after a cold, wet spring. Most of my tomato plants are struggling, though we managed a few fruits off the early girl plant before it started to wilt. Before that brandywine quits, I'll get 6 or 7 more fruits just like tonight's. Great taste, predictable production. The only extra work this plant required was plucking of a tomato hornworm who liked brandies as much as I do.

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^* Or maybe not. Brandywine may have been a commercial term given to a known cultivar to enhance its sales potential, perhaps the erstwhile "Turner's Hybrid."

Sources:

Greg LeHoullier, Brandywine and Company: What We Know and What We Don't (One Person's Opinion)http://www.victoryseeds.com/information/craig_brandywine.html

My garden

Pinetree Garden Seeds is where I get most of my heirlooms. Box 300, New Gloucester, ME 04260, superseeds.com

Bran"dy*wine` (?), n.

Brandy.

[Obs.]

Wiseman.

 

© Webster 1913.