Tomato (Hurricane Helene Tomato)

Hurricane Helene Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) This new tomato is very special to us because it's the first tomato that we bred! Here's the story: About ten years ago a friend of ours who farms in the Sandy Mush community of Buncombe County, way out in the mountains, gave us a nameless tomato variety that her family has grown for over 100 years. The tomato had amazing flavor and the plants were very productive. While we loved almost everything about the variety, the fruits tended to be small. We are big fans of heart-shaped tomatoes so we decided to cross the variety with one of our favorite heirlooms, the Hungarian Heart Tomato. The result of our cross was a larger heart-shaped tomato that had similar flavor to the Sandy Mush tomato and the plants remained very productive. We grew the variety for several summers to be sure that the cross was stable and were pleased that the attributes of the cross remained year after year. In the late summer of 2024, we were preparing to name and rele