Solanum lycopersicum Seeds | Amish Paste Tomato
LATIN NAME: Solanum lycopersicum
COMMON NAME: Amish Paste Tomato
Plant Profile
Amish Paste is an heirloom plum tomato with a history that begins in Wisconsin and, before that, in the Amish communities of Pennsylvania and Ohio. The fruit is large for a paste type, 150-250 g, elongated with a pointed tip, and it carries more juice and sweetness than a Roma.
Plants are indeterminate, so they keep growing and setting until frost, and in a long season they reach 1.8-2 m and need a tall stake or a strong frame. Fruit ripens over eight to ten weeks from late July, with the heaviest set in the middle of the truss rather than at the ends.
The variety is a dual-purpose tomato: firm and dry enough for sauce, sweet enough to slice. That combination is why it has survived in seed catalogues for more than a century while more specialised paste types have come and gone.
Science & Biotechnology
Tomato flavour rests on the balance of sugars, acids and volatile compounds, and paste types usually fail on the last two. Amish Paste carries a higher glutamate level than most plum tomatoes, which is the compound behind the savoury, mouth-filling quality that makes a sauce taste of more than tomatoes.
The elongated fruit shape is controlled by genes that affect cell division along the fruit axis, and the pointed tip in this variety reflects a particular combination of those alleles rather than a defect. Paste types also have a higher proportion of pericarp to seed jelly, which is why they cook down faster and need less reduction.
Indeterminate habit is a flowering pattern rather than a size: the plant keeps producing new leaves and trusses from the growing tip instead of ending in a flower cluster. That is why the variety needs height, and why it can be grown on a string in a greenhouse for a crop that runs into October.
Uses & Benefits
Amish Paste is a sauce tomato first. Halved and simmered, it breaks down into a thick sauce in half the time a slicing tomato needs, and its sweetness means less sugar at the end. It also dries well, and it is good roasted in halves with olive oil and salt.
Sliced fresh, it holds its shape on bread and has enough acidity to carry a salad. The fruit is large enough to stuff, which is unusual in a paste type. Commercially the variety is a farmers-market favourite rather than a shipping tomato, because the skin is thin and the ripe fruit bruises.
Growing from Seed
Sow at 20-24°C, 5 mm deep, six to eight weeks before the last frost. Germination takes seven to ten days. Pot on twice, burying the stem deeper each time, since tomato stems root along their length.
Plant out at 60 cm apart in full sun, in soil enriched with compost, and set a stake at planting rather than later. Water deeply twice a week rather than shallowly every day; irregular watering causes blossom end rot and splitting. Pinch out sideshoots weekly for a single-stem cordon, or let the plant bush and support it with a cage. Feed with a potassium-rich tomato fertiliser once the first truss sets. Save seed from a fully ripe fruit, fermenting the gel for three days before drying.
Our Take
The best all-round paste tomato in the catalogue, and one that still tastes of a garden rather than a tin.
Related Reading
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