Ancient Landrace paste tomato from El Salvador. The 3 ft tall plants are loaded with small (30 g) ‘strawberry’ shaped fruit. Nauha Strawberry comes highly recommended by some of our favourite seed savers, such as Good Mind Seeds, whose description (see below) convinced us to grow this tomato:
“The fruitiness of tomato is often underplayed in the flavors of ancient heirlooms from south of the Rio Grande. Such is not the case in these heirloom paste/saladette tomatoes from El Salvador. The flavor is similar to Grungy in the Sky Bicolor [a tomato variety], an incredible infusion of intense sweet and sour, with floral undertones and perfect levels of umami. When the flesh has been cooked down into paste, the condensed sugars and tomato essence make you understand how a tomato like this can be saved for so many centuries…With a strawberry shape to win your heart, and a gigantic flavor packed into such a small package, who could resist this feat of indigenous tomato breeding?”
We will point out that ‘Nahua Strawberry’ is our working name for this tomato. It’s a name we humbly suggest could be used going forward (we’ll explain).
When the seeds for Nahua Strawberry were initially collected in 1958 in El Salvador by a German seed collector, it was given the designation ‘LYC 859 El Salvador’.
But we don’t think that designation does this tomato justice.
The designation indicates this tomato is an accession of the IPK Seed Bank in Germany (‘LYC’ indicates it is a tomato and ‘859’ its accession number). The IPK Seed Bank’s records indicate that this tomato was collected in the Nahua village of Nahuizalco, El Salvador. The Nahua are Indigenous people in Mesoamerica who speak the Nahuatl language. You can read an interesting article about the history of the village of Nahuizalco HERE (‘Nahuizalco an Indigenous Town with a Rich History’).
About our working name Nahua Strawberry: ‘Nahua’= honours the Nahua and Nahuizalco connection. ‘Strawberry’ = the description on the Good Mind Seeds website.
We are not suggesting this is the original name or that this is the name for all time. Ideally, we should ask the people of Nahuizalco. We just suggest that ‘Nahua Strawberry’ is a more appropriate name than the designation ‘LYC 859 El Salvador’.
Our original seedstock came from a Seeds of Diversity Canada member.
How to Plant: Start seeds indoors 6 weeks before the last frost. Plant seed 5mm (¼ inch) deep. Transplant after the danger of frost has passed/later spring.
