When I lived and gardened at about a 500 feet higher elevation, I didn't seem to have many variety choices. Ben Quisenberry was still alive and preserving his strains of heirloom tomatoes but I didn't know anything about them. We hadn't gotten to glasnost in the USSR and the introduction of so many Eastern European varieties into the west.
The Shumway catalog was darn near the only seed catalog I'd ever seen. Early Girl tomatoes were offered for the first time and showed up on the cover of Burpee's while I lived out there. I was
suspicious of them. Ha! I can still remember how happy I was to move to a lower elevation and be able to grow Earlianna.
While I was out and up there, I grew Sub-arctic tomatoes. They kind of went with my Polar-vee sweet corn
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
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After I moved, I gave Early Girl a try. Glasnost and perestroika happened. Remarkably, a University of Idaho horticulturalist came out with several determinate varieties that I grew. Sand Hill Preservation and several others still sell seed for Kootenai & Benewah. Dr. Boe went on to North Dakota State and they released Northern Delight.
The Alaskan horticulturalists no longer use Sub-arctics for comparisons for new variety releases. Prairie Fire seems to be the standard. There are short-season varieties in Canadian and US catalogs that are from the Beaverlodge Research Station in Alberta.
Steve