Solanum lycopersicum Seeds | Brandywine Tomato
LATIN NAME: Solanum lycopersicum
COMMON NAME: Brandywine Tomato
Plant Profile
The plant is a vigorous indeterminate vine that needs staking from the start and fruits late, often the last of the heirlooms to ripen. The fruits can reach half a kilogram, with deep ribs at the top and a soft pink skin that bruises easily, so they are a garden and table tomato rather than a shipper. The foliage is the unmistakable potato-leaf form: single, ovate, untoothed leaves instead of the usual feathery tomato leaf.
Brandywine’s lineage is usually traced to seed circles in Chester County, Pennsylvania, an area with deep Mennonite gardening tradition, and the name was carried into the modern heirloom movement through the Seed Savers Exchange. Like many old lines it is open-pollinated and variable, which is part of its charm and part of its challenge.
The potato-leaf character is a single-gene recessive trait in tomatoes that suppresses the usual leaf dissection, giving a smooth, broad blade. It is prized by heirloom growers for the look and is inherited independently of fruit colour or size, so a pink beefsteak and a potato leaf happen to coincide in Brandywine by selection rather than by rule.
A red tomato gets its colour mostly from lycopene; a pink one such as Brandywine carries lycopene too but in lower concentration, balanced by beta-carotene and a paler background pigment that together read as rose rather than scarlet. The lower lycopene load is also why the flesh looks almost translucent near the seed cavities.
Brandywine asks for commitment: a long season, a tall stake, and patience. It is not a container tomato and it dislikes cold nights at either end of the season.
Science & Biotechnology
The much-praised flavour comes from a bouquet of volatile compounds, including esters and alcohols released when the fruit is cut, layered over the savoury glutamates of the flesh. Modern red hybrids have been bred to ship and to redden uniformly, often at the cost of these aroma volatiles, which is the usual explanation for why old beefsteaks taste “more like a tomato.”
Uses & Benefits
Brandywine is notably low in acid compared with many red types, which gives it a sweet, mild character that some palates love and others find flat. The flesh is also less gelatinous, so the slices are solid rather than seedy and wet, which makes it a favourite for the plate.
This is a fresh-eating tomato above all. The fruits are too soft and too few for serious preserving, but a single specimen fills a plate and defines a summer meal.
A thick Brandywine slice barely fits a slice of bread, and its low-acid, sweet flesh needs little more than salt and a leaf of basil. Growers who want a sauce tomato typically plant a paste type alongside, because Brandywine’s water and softness make it a poor reducer.
A pinch of salt draws out the fruit’s sugars and is the traditional finish; the heirloom kitchen pairs it with fresh mozzarella, olive oil, or simply warm bread. Because the skin is thin and the flesh delicate, handle the harvested fruit gently and use it within a few days.
Growing from Seed
Start the seed in warmth and prick the seedlings into pots once they have two true leaves. Move them into the garden when the young plant stands about twenty centimetres tall with a firm stem and the night temperatures are steady, planting it deep so the buried stem makes extra roots. Space the vines fifty to sixty centimetres apart and tie them to a stout post or a string trellis.
Indeterminate types throw side shoots in every leaf axil; removing them concentrates the plant’s energy into fewer, bigger fruits and improves airflow. Feed at planting and again when the first trusses form, water at the base to keep the leaves dry, and expect the main crop only after the smaller early setters have come and gone.
Our Take
Brandywine is the tomato I grow for eating fresh, not for the pantry. If you want sauce instead, the Amish Paste Tomato Lycopersicon lycopersicum and the Roma Tomato Lycopersicon lycopersicum seed are the workers, while the Banana Leggs Tomato seed Lycopersicon lycopersicum adds a yellow curiosity to the row.
Related Reading
Gardeners who grow Brandywine Tomato often pair it with these related subjects: