Three years ago I ordered seeds for some heirloom tomatoes. One was my standard Cherokee purple a couple that I hadn’t grown before, Rutgers and a dark variety of a Brandywine. Each year I like to try an heirloom I haven’t tried before seeing if I would like them better than the Cherokee purple. So far, none have beaten it on my taste tests.
I started my seeds that February, so by the middle of April, they were ready to be put out in the garden. I pulled all of the leaves off except the top set, dug a deep hole and put some Epsom salt, a time released fertilizer and some of those moisture retention crystals from a plant source in the bottom of the hole. I put the plant in the hole so that only about an inch was above ground. I back filled around the hole to about an inch below the surface, so that I had a little pond around the plant to hold water. Next I put newspaper down and a thick layer of sawdust and wood chips mulch down around and on paths. Before I could get hooligan cages around them, Levi laid down in one of my little pond containing a plant. After straightening up the plant, a heavy duty hooligan cage made of concrete wire was placed around each plant.
As the summer progressed, the tomatoes grew and started fruiting, except one, the Brandywine one. It just kept growing and growing 
and grew out and over the top of the cage. Finally it started putting on fruit, only these were oval shaped. A description not matching the packet they came in. As they got to the size of a large egg, they started changing color to red, again not a description on the package. All that trouble and it wasn’t the tomato I ordered. Apparently the germination rate of the seeds was great, as 70% of my plants were this non-heirloom variety. Well they are a good salad size tomato I thought. After the first ones ripened, I pulled several off of the vine and took them to the house. I washed one and bit into it, nasty, no flavor, and a lumpy texture like a very over ripe watermelon.
The rest of them went into my compost box, and the vines yanked out of the ground and composted. I threw the fallees on the ground out into the pasture much to the delight of the Hooligans. They kept dragging them back to the garden.
The next year, I only started Cherokee Purple’s. They were a few inches tall, when Mom came to the house telling me about this very nice tomato plant growing out of the vents in the compost box. I have plenty of plants Mom and I know what kind they are; but this is a very nice large one she protested. Finally I relented and pulled it out of the composter and moved it to the garden. It was the first one to fruit, and it was one of those tasteless oval tomatoes again! So out of the ground and to the composter it goes.
That fall, Mom came over one day asking if I had seen the two nice tomato plants in the composter. A little late in the year to be 
planting out in the garden I told her, but I pulled them out of the compost and put them in a pot and moved them into the garage to overwinter along with my flowers. I moved them into larger containers two or three times that winter, thinking I’ll have the first tomatoes next year.
As soon as the threat of frost was over, I moved them out into the garden. As they fruited, both were those danged tasteless ones. Again up they came and were thrown out into the field to be mowed over and over again over the course of the summer.
