Customer Reviews

Livingston and the Tomato

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Andrew Smith deserves great credit for making Alexander Livingston's book on tomatoes available for all to read. The varieties described in this book - Paragon, Acme, Beauty, Stone, Golden Queen, Buckeye State and a few others - are very likely to be varieties that your grandparents and great grandparents grew in their garden. Some diligent searching led to the location of quite a few, thus even today's gardeners can grow and enjoy these varieties. Alexander Livingston made the critical observation in creating improved tomato varieties - plant a field of a particular variety and look for PLANTS that produce superior fruit, rather than saving seed from a particular tomato on a plant as a basis for improvement. This technique - single plant selection - led to all of the improvements in tomatoes right up until the advent of hybrid varieties in the 1940's. This is a great read, and is a centerpiece item for the current popularity in growing heirloom vegetables.

If you love tomatoes, I mean not just eating, but raising collecting, and learning about them, this is THE book to own. A.W. Livingston was an instrumental force in the breeding and popularizing of tomatoes in the late-19th and early 20th Century. His varieties were perfect, copied and some are still available today.

If you love tomatoes, I mean not just eating, but raising collecting, and learning about them, this is THE book to own. A.W. Livingston was an instrumental force in the breeding and popularizing of tomatoes in the late-19th and early 20th Century. His varieties were perfect, copied and some are still available today. We hope to have at least two of his varieties listed in our catalog next year.