The Pittsburgh Preservation Project: Saving Heirloom Tomatoes One Variety at a Time

‘Limbaugh Legacy Potato Top’ tomato

I've received hundreds of thousands of 'Limbaugh Legacy Potato Top' tomato seeds since 2000.

Since 2000 I’ve been offering free ‘Limbaugh Legacy Potato Top’ tomato seeds. It was the first Pittsburgh tomato that I wanted to preserve. You can read the whole story here.

Fred Limbaugh called me that year at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette where I worked at a photo editor and garden columnist. He told me of this family heirloom was “the best tasting tomato ever.” I went to his home in Robinson, got some plants and at the end of the season I agreed with him.

LLPT is one of the last you’ll harvest. It’s large (1-2 lbs), pink, meaty and has that old fashioned tomato flavor.

I knew it needed to be preserved, so I put a little announcement in the paper asking readers to send me an SASE, which I would fill with a seed packet and information about how to grow and save the seed. Readers then would send me some seeds at the end of the season. The tomato now grows in every state of the union and in Europe too.

‘3945’

Dan Cummings was a dear garden friend who has since passed away. He introduced me to ‘3945,’ a tomato found on a battlefield during WWII. Here’s the entire story. It was his friend Joe Roberts told him the story of a tasty tomato Dan had tried at Joe’s house. “He was in World War II and was going across a battlefield. There was this whole field of tomatoes,” Cummings said.

Roberts and couple of other guys from his unit started picking the fresh fruit.

“They were eating them like they were going out of style,” Cummings says. Roberts was so impressed with the size and flavor of the tomato, he saved a few seeds to bring back to the States when he was discharged from the service.

The tomato’s name has changed several times. First, because one slice of the tomato was enough to cover an entire slice of bread, Roberts named it ‘Sandwich.’ He then settled on ‘Sweetheart’ for a few years.

“In the ’90s I said to him, ‘World War II started in 1939, and it was over in ’45. Why don’t you just change the name to 3945?’ That’s how we came up with the name,” Cummings said.

‘Dr. Jim Snow’

'Dr. Jim Snow' is big and tasty.

Kim Snow Gibson and I have been working together for two decades at a charity event called Recipe for Hope. In 2024 she brought me the ‘Dr. Jim Snow’ tomato to try with a little note about the fruit being and award winner. Here’s the story she told me about the tomato.

Jim Snow, a New Castle dentist, was driving and found this tomato plant growing by a mailbox at an abandoned house. He Dug up the heirloom tomato plant and enjoyed the beefy, taste beautiful tomato.
Dr. Jim Snow was awarded 1st prize for his tomato in a New Castle competition run by garden writer Gary Church.

She remembers being at a family picnic and seeing it's great height. It grew beyond the roof peak of his garage. The tomatoes, as large as as 2 fists, have a beefy taste. As a dentist, he shared seeds with many of his patients. One of his friends, a distant cousin, also from New Castle, had a farm. When Jim Snow gave Bill Sickafuse the Jim Snow tomato seeds, Bill planted a field full of those seeds.

His daughter, Marianne Sickafuse, my roommate in 1977 at Grove City College. and I realized both of our families had those precious Jim Snow seeds. To this day we share our best Jim Snow seeds with each other!

How to get some seeds

Send a self-addressed envelope with a request for which variety(s) you would like to grow to:
Doug Oster
P.O. Box 11013
Pittsburgh, Pa
15237
Please send me seeds back from your harvest to keep these tomato varieties alive.
Thanks for being part of the project.