Meet Peg Davis, a Virginia schoolteacher handed just 4 tomato seeds by a ninth-grader; nearly 50 years later, the heirloom tomato she saved lives on

In Staunton, Virginia, a gardener known as the "Tomato Lady" has become a local fixture. Her name is Peg Davis, and for nearly 50 years, she has kept up a single, quiet commitment: saving a tomato variety that would otherwise have disappeared. In the mid-1970s, a ninth-grader in her agriculture class handed her a small packet containing only four tomato seeds. The seeds had belonged to the student's grandparents, who had grown the variety throughout their lives in Pennsylvania before they died; the student's own parents weren't interested in gardening, so rather than let the variety vanish with no one left to grow it, she gave the seeds to her teacher instead.

That one seemingly innocuous gesture by a teen in not letting a plant fade away reveals much larger, much more threatening issues. Decades of scientific evidence indicate that crop diversity around the world is being lost in real time, and some varieties are actively held and conserved by just this type of grassroots-saving practice. A 2021 paper by Colin Khoury and 14 co-authors, "Crop genetic erosion: understanding and responding to loss of crop diversity," published in the journal New Phytologist, documents this trend in detail. This isn't just a story about an "old family tomato." It's a story about the fact that once genetic material is gone, it's gone.

Four seeds, one classroom, and a promise to keep


Enabling all four seeds to germinate is a gardening miracle even, so far as Davis is concerned. She then did what most of us would lack the patience to do: year after year for nearly 50 years, she selected and saved seeds from the most tasteful and productive fruit for the subsequent seasons, breeding for flavor and texture. It was only a woman with a passion for tomatoes. Now she sells the tomato, known as "Peg O' My Heart," at Staunton Farmers' Market, where patrons say they go out of their way to purchase her beefsteaks. Not bad for a plant that began out of four seeds in an envelope.

Why one backyard tomato is actually a biodiversity story

One might be tempted to just put it under the "wholesome local news" heading and proceed. However, zoom out and the odds get tough. FAO's Third Report on the State of the World's Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, a global assessment based on data from 128 countries, published in February 2025, found that more than 40 percent of the plant varieties surveyed are no longer present in at least one of the sites where they were once cultivated or found growing naturally.

The food system is slowly shrinking, crop by crop, region by region, with the majority of us arguing about the merits of oat milk versus almond milk. But home gardeners and other small seed savers, such as Davis, are part of that story. Backyard varieties can serve as a kind of insurance if a mainstream variety is lost to blight or drought.

The tomato finally gets its spotlight

In Fall 2025, Seed Savers Exchange, the nonprofit known for its heirloom seed collection, introduced "Peg O' My Heart" as a new "From the Collection" offering in its catalog. That same year, Seed Savers Exchange grew 88 "Peg O' My Heart" plants in high tunnels at its Heritage Farm in Decorah, Iowa, both for seed production and for a tomato-tasting event marking the organization's 50th anniversary. Davis, a workshop presenter at the event, personally walked the rows. Farm director Corbin Scholz said, "It was an honor to see Peg walk through the rows of all the 'Peg O' My Heart' tomatoes growing at the farm. She said they tasted just as good in Iowa as they do in Virginia."

Why should this matter

In Fall 2025, Seed Savers Exchange, the nonprofit known for its heirloom seed collection, introduced "Peg O' My Heart" as a new "From the Collection" offering in its catalog. That same year, Seed Savers Exchange grew 88 "Peg O' My Heart" plants in high tunnels at its Heritage Farm in Decorah, Iowa, both for seed production and for a tomato-tasting event marking the organization's 50th anniversary. Davis, a workshop presenter at the event, personally walked the rows. Farm director Corbin Scholz said, "It was an honor to see Peg walk through the rows of all the 'Peg O' My Heart' tomatoes growing at the farm. She said they tasted just as good in Iowa as they do in Virginia."

Davis's tomatoes are a reminder that the trend is only meaningful when it lasts longer than the algorithm. It's great to have a pretty plant to grow for a couple of years. What you really need to do is to pick and preserve the seeds from it and leave it to live for the next generation, year after year. It took the determination of one teenager who refused to let a tomato disappear, and the tenacity of one teacher to get "Peg O' My Heart" this far. Not a bad return considering that this was never meant as an investment in her eyes anyway.