Vinson Watts: My BFF

Can a garden gal say that her BFF is a tomato? 

This year, I trialed several new heirloom tomatoes and have been very pleased with an heirloom tomato plant called Vinson Watts, named after the man who grew it on from his own seeds for many years.

The Vinson Watts tomato plants are out-producing all the other slicing tomatoes we grew this year. The plants themselves are robust with thick vines that can support the heavy tomatoes they produce. Given our wicked-hot July and lack of rain, the Vinson Watts showed no signs of heat stress at all. There are some powerful genetics bred into the Vinson Watt and I’m impressed.

I like ‘em big and each of the Vinson Watts tomatoes are at least 1 pound.  These tomatoes are true beefsteak tomatoes and I can’t eat a whole one at one sitting.  With the average size being 1.7 pounds and 5 inches across, one might figure a few big tomatoes per plant for a season. Not with the Vinson Watts — We have had several dozen tomatoes from each plant so far.

But wait! There’s more!  The Vinson Watts was also one of the first ripe tomatoes for us this year, too.

And if that’s not enough, let me just mention the taste-factor. Yes, the Vinson Watts wins the taste contest, too. Fresh-picked from the vine and eaten right-there, in the garden, like it’s the biggest apple you ever tried to hold in just one hand, you won’t mind the juice running down the front of your shirt….

For those civilized folks who like their tomatoes on a plate, the Vinson Watts are perfect when sliced for the salad or side — but be aware, they’ll be larger than your just-grilled burger on the bun! This tomato measures almost 6-inches across and that’s an oversized plate, too.

My favorite way to eat the Vinson Watts is baked with mozzarella and oregano as a tomato-pizza — this was my lunch today. Needless to say, the Vinson Watts is keeping me well-fed and happy.  Full of sweet tomato flavor and no acidic bite, the Vinson Watts is my new BFF. Or is that BTF (Best Tomato Forever).

The seed for Vinson Watts can be traced back to a family living in Lee County, Virginia. Back in the 1950s, Wilson Evans passed some of their family’s tomato seed on to Vinson Watts of eastern Kentucky. Beginning in 1956, Vinson Watts took his seed-grown tomatoes and began selectively improving it.  Vinson Watts saved his tomato seeds for 50 years, continuing to improve the tomato through the years by selecting only his best tomatoes to collect seed from. Vinson Watts succeeded in his seed selection and helped to develop this tomato into a very large beefsteak slicer.

The Vinson Watts heirloom tomato is a winner. And a keeper. And my BFF. Vinson Watts will always have a welcome spot in our garden.

I obtained my seed from Amishland and am now in the process of saving seed from the better tomatoes off of the 2 plants we’re growing. I should have enough of this seed for several trades.

Here is an article I located on Vinson Watts:

Man Spent 50 Years Improving His Namesake Tomato
Andy Mead      McClatchy Newspapers
Sept. 13, 2006 12:00 AM

MOREHEAD, Ky. – “I’m known around here as the ‘Mater Man,” says Vinson Watts, sitting in his living room in front of a small vial of very special seeds.

Watts has grown German tomatoes and cherry tomatoes and those yellow and red Mr. Stripey tomatoes for years, and he has sold them off his back porch to friends and neighbors.

But people who know Watts don’t ask for the varieties that everyone else has.

They ask for a Vinson Watts, a large, tasty, pinkish-flesh heirloom tomato that Watts has been growing and improving for 50 years.

Yes, 50 years.

Fifty consecutive backyard gardens that centered on one kind of tomato. Half a century of starting plants from seeds and saving seeds from the most flavorful and disease-resistant tomatoes to repeat the cycle the next year.

Bill Best, a farmer who is president of the Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center, said Watts’ work with his tomato has to be some kind of record.

“I’ve been collecting seeds myself for many, many years, and I’ve never known anything comparable,” he said.

Watts, 76, a retired college administrator, is getting some attention on the golden anniversary of his tomato.

This year, in what turned out to be a surprise to Watts, Vinson Watts tomato seeds are being offered commercially for the first time, in the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog.
“I’m not making a penny on it – maybe I’ll sue,” Watts said, laughing.

Best had shared some Vinson Watts seeds a couple of years ago with Merlyn Niedens, a Southern Illinois seed saver whose passion is securing a future for family heirlooms by getting them out to the public.

“If someone’s been working on something that long, it shouldn’t be lost,” Niedens said.

This winter, Best will begin offering Vinson Watts seeds on the Internet. Watts will receive a portion of the proceeds from those sales, Best said.

And there’s academic interest in Vinson Watts, both the person and the tomato.

Watts recently was interviewed by Garrett Graddy, a University of Kentucky graduate geography student who lives in Menifee County.

Graddy is just getting started on a doctoral dissertation on agricultural diversity and the economic, ecological and theological aspects of seed-saving in Appalachian Kentucky and in Peru.

Watts grew up on Leatherwood Creek in Breathitt County during the Great Depression, when saving seeds from year to year was a necessity because no one could afford to buy new seeds.

That, coupled with his decades of work on the Vinson Watts tomato, made him a natural to be Graddy’s first interview.

“He really had some interesting stories to tell,” she said.

Watts got seeds for what would eventually become his tomato in the spring of 1956, when he was associate dean of labor at Berea College.

The seeds came from a man named Wilson Evans. Evans was from Virginia, and his family had grown the tomato there for years.

Evans told him he wanted to try other tomatoes, and he asked Watts to take over the annual regeneration of his family’s tomato, to keep them pure and true.

For years, Watts called the tomato the Wilson Evans. He gave Evans a few plants each year. When Watts moved to Morehead in 1968 to become Morehead State University’s first personnel director, he started sending Evans seeds.

The two friends argued for a while about what to call the tomato plant that was getting a little tastier and heartier every year that Watts selected only the best seeds to carry forward.

Finally, the tomato was different enough for a name change.

“I told him he had squandered the right to call it an Evans tomato, so it’s the Vinson Watts tomato,” Watts said.

For years, Watts’ backyard in Morehead wasn’t garden enough for him. He would grow all kinds of tomatoes in other yards and empty spots up and down the street.

In his own backyard, the only tomato he grew was the Vinson Watts.

Five or six years ago, because of failing health, he cut back to just growing in his backyard, which means he quit growing any tomato except for the Vinson Watts.

For the last three years, he had had to hire someone else to get his beloved plants in the ground.

“I look for a high school student who wants to do a little work, but not too much,” Watts said.

He has emphysema; a tube supplies oxygen to help with every breath. He recently was hospitalized for intestinal surgery.

It has been hard on him not being able to turn the soil and put in seedlings.

“Bless his heart, he loves to garden,” said Patricia Watts, who outranks the tomato because she has been married to Vinson for more than 53 years.

This year, 28 Vinson Watts plants grow beside sweet potatoes, corn and beans (including heirlooms called the Ida bean and the white cornfield bean).

They’re showing late-summer wear and tear but are producing well.

When visitors came by recently, Watts wasn’t up to taking them out to look at his tomatoes.

“I normally have a fall garden,” he said. “I can’t do that anymore, but I’ll have tomatoes until the frost.”

And he’s saving some of the seeds for next year.

Source:
http://www.azcentral.com/home/garden/articles/0913tomato0913…

Advertisement