Mortgage Lifter

The original strain is prized for a mild, sweet flavor, with fruit reported to reach as much as two pounds. Other growers call it an abundant producer of one- to two-pound fruit — not the tidiest tomato, but meaty and full of heirloom character. Larger accounts describe fruit ranging from two-and-a-half to four pounds, with reddish-pink skin, the deep lobing typical of many heirlooms, and a tangy bite. Elsewhere the fruit is described as a darker pink beefsteak closer to a pound each, produced reliably and in abundance, with slices cut large enough to cover a salad plate from rich, velvety flesh; it is also called flavorful and heavy-yielding, well-shaped and meaty with notably few seeds, and sized comparably to Giant Belgium though a bit smaller.

The fruit's large slices are sized to cover an entire piece of bread, making the variety a natural choice for tomato sandwiches.

Growers have noted its ability to keep producing attractive fruit even under a range of challenging growing conditions.

Mortgage Lifter traces to two separate breeding efforts carried out under the same name. William Estler of Barboursville, West Virginia, developed a tomato by this name in 1922 and registered it in 1932, years before the version most associated with the name today. That more widely known strain came from Marshall Cletis Byles, known as 'Radiator Charlie,' of Logan, West Virginia, who during the Depression spent six years crossing heirloom tomatoes to produce a beefsteak type. He reportedly sold the resulting plants for a dollar each and eventually paid off a $6,000 mortgage, a story credited in some accounts with giving the tomato its name.