Introducing “The Tomato Whisperers”

Peter Doliska my partner and I are both now in our fifties. We met 25 years ago when we both lived in Toronto. We are not (yet) married. I have an undergraduate degree in cell and molecular biology from the University of Waterloo and a diploma in Laboratory Sciences from the Michener Institute. I am a practicing Medical Laboratory Technologist in charge of a lab at the Juravinski hospital performing hematology, immunology and cancer testing. Peter has an undergraduate degree in English from Lakehead and a masters in Library Information Sciences from Western. He is a Librarian at the Brantford Public Library.

My passion for tomatoes started when I was my grandfather’s shadow in his garden. He grew a variety of vegetables and had a row of raspberries and a small number of apple and pear trees. My grandmother made apple sauce from the apples and pickled pears from the pears every year. At least the ones we didn’t eat while picking them. In my teens, we lived near the Pioneer Village in Kitchener. On one visit, I learned that there was such a thing as heirloom vegetables and I left with some heirloom tomato seeds; a fairly common heirloom, Red Brandywine and a fairly uncommon one, Mennonite Orange. I grew them in my parent’s backyard that summer and every year after that, never looking back. At around the same time, in the late eighties, a British garden show aired on TVO called The Victorian Kitchen Garden. It took viewers through one year at a Victorian walled garden, highlighting all of the innovations, technology and techniques they used to provide a wide variety of fruit and vegetables to the ‘big house’ year round. I was hooked. I knew I would garden for the rest of my life. I still re-watch this series every winter on DVD. It may even be on YouTube.

Interestingly, the two varieties that I started with from the Pioneer Village are the ones that I make sure to grow every year although every year I try new varieties. I’ve tried hundreds of other varieties by now but few of them make the cut for a second year. Any variety that I keep has to excel at something; mainly strong and interesting flavours when eaten fresh or appropriate for cooking or canning. Amish Paste is an extremely productive variety that produces very large plum-like tomatoes with little pulp and seed making them perfect for soups and canning Black Cherry is great for walking through the garden and popping a few in your mouth while they are still warm from the summer sun. Green heirloom tomatoes have wonderful, unique flavours as well but are tricky to know when to pick since they are green when ripe. Meme de Beauce is another wonderful red tomato for eating fresh that we picked up on a trip to the Botanical Garden in Montreal at their gift shop. The number of varieties is almost endless and so is the fun to be had from trying a new variety that we’ve never grown.

Ten years ago we moved to a 6-acre rural property in Brant County with the idea of using the property to become as self-sufficient as possible for fruit and vegetables, grown organically using as many permaculture principles as possible. Our orchard of nearly 80 fruit trees is still young but becomes more productive each year. I love to espalier fruit trees. I’m terrible at it but I love the attention to detail required to force them in to growing in specific shapes and patterns. We have a number of beehives that provide us with all the honey we need for a year as well as enough for gifts for friends and family at Christmas. Our vegetable gardens expand just about every year and provide more food that we can possibly eat or process. We share the excess. We’re becoming more interested in perennial vegetables and doing more growing vertically on bent in cattle panels (a type of livestock fencing) to an arbour that we can walk under and look up to see all the beans, squash and flowers dangling from overhead. It’s thrilling to walk underneath the growing vines and enjoy the dappled light underneath the vines. In addition to growing food, it is extremely important to make the garden a destination you actually can’t wait to visit everyday. Otherwise, it can become a chore. It must be productive and beautiful.

We are not a commercial nursery. This is just our home. We start all of our flower and vegetables in a tiny room in the basement of our small farmhouse each winter. The ceiling height is very low and I’m always banging my head on the ductwork. It is definitely a struggle to find adequate space but always worth it. Even more difficult is when it comes time in May to harden off the seedlings to acclimate them to the sun and wind. Taking dozens of flats in and out of the house every day for weeks is a thankless task but the excitement and beauty of spring in Ontario in May and June helps us quickly forget all the work it takes to get the garden off to a good start. We start over 1000 seedlings each spring including growing our own perennials from seed: when they grown to a reasonable size, we transplant some in the greenhouse and give the rest away to the Kerr Street Mission, our friends and neighbours, and the St. Jude’s Garden Guild for their annual plant sale.

This year’s plant sale is on May 9, and doors open at 8:30. Come early for the best selection of plants and of course, heirloom tomatoes!