Joe Lauerer, The Reason I Became Interested In Heirloom Tomatoes

My father has been an insurance agent since shortly after I was born.  One of the first couples he insured was Joe and Marge Lauerer in Saint Paul Minnesota, near the home where I spent the first 7 years of my life before we moved out to the country in 1977.  In 1978 Joe’s mother died.  While going through her things he found an old steamer trunk his mother had brought over from Germany just prior to WWI.  Clothes from when she was a child, photos of things in Germany, and in the bottom, a sock filled with seeds.  Joe had no idea what kind of seeds they were and his mother had never, in his memory, gardened, so he brought them to my father, knowing that he gardened a lot.  My dad knew they were tomato seeds, and thousands of them at that.  Due to how old they were (being possibly from 60+ years before 1978) my dad sowed 1000 of them in a flat, and 6 germinated.  He split the plants with Joe, and from that point on, Joe Lauerer’s German Pink Egg tomatoes were a fixture in our gardens and at the table.

Not the best photo, just what we happened to have of last year's crop. Look for more beautiful Laurer photos to come as they grow in our gardens and fill our table...

Joe died about 20 years ago, and my dad continued growing the plants and sharing them with Joe’s wife, Marge.  6 years ago Marge became disabled and I would deliver tomatoes to her, packed in egg cartons in which they fit wonderfully well, being the approximate size of a small egg.  I also gave her a few dozen packs of seeds every Christmas for her to give to her relatives.   Marge died two years ago, and I was contacted by her godson requesting more seeds for the family.  I mailed them to him with basic instructions on saving seeds.

This year Knapp Seeds in Wisconsin is offering them commercially.  Yesterday I started 50 seeds in a flat, and I will start about 100 more for giving to people who expect plants every year. The plants are indeterminate, heavy producers of small thin skinned pink tomatoes which are wonderfully sweet, fairly low moisture tomatoes fantastic for fresh eating or making into red sauce.  The plants are also fairly cold tolerant and are one of the last to freeze out in the fall.  A friend who grows them found them still growing after a hard freeze, from the tips of the plants.  She cut off the still-green growing stems and potted them up and has nursed them through the winter to see if she can get a head start on the season.