(KRT) - When horticulturist Dave Devine was growing up in Wilmington, Del., tomato sandwiches were a rite of summer, like going to the New Jersey Shore.

"For me," he says, "eating a tomato sandwich is like walking down memory lane."

But it has to be done right to spark the memory. For Devine, that means white bread, mayonnaise, and the right tomato.

"When I was a child, white bread was predominant, but choose the bread you were brought up with - making a tomato sandwich is the art of walking back in time," he says. "Choose your favorite mayonnaise, whether it's Hellmann's ... or Miracle Whip. Then add one big slice of a fresh eating tomato, a half- to three-quarters-of-an-inch thick, and customize it with salt and pepper.

"Part of the art was getting all the condiments out and putting the slices of bread on the counter, like an assembly line, and then walking out to the garden to pick the tomato."

The idea was to get it fresh and juicy and warm from the vine. He didn't notice what varieties of tomatoes he enjoyed back then, but it doesn't matter. This summer, he made tomato sandwiches with Brandy Boy, a new hybrid from Warminster, Pa.-based W. Atlee Burpee & Co., whose Web site describes the tomato as an heirloom type that's an improvement on the classic Brandywine, with the same flavor but a more manageable growth habit and lots more fruit.

"It's phenomenal," says Devine, who's in charge of product development for Burpee and unstinting in his praise of Brandy Boy, which he began picking from plants in his Delaware garden in mid-July. "It has heirloom appeal. The fruits all have separate personalities, they're not all uniform. They don't look as though they have been produced from a machine.

"It's a breakthrough product. ... Beats Brandywine. Beats everything. It is the best-tasting tomato, without a doubt."

That's quite a statement, considering that Brandywine has been around since the 1880s, and that many gardeners still regard this heirloom, introduced in Philadelphia, as the best table tomato available.

But Burpee is big on Brandy Boy. It will be featured on the cover of the 2003 catalog that will be mailed to home gardeners in early January.

It's not the first tomato to win that coveted spot, of course. Tomatoes have been on the covers of the last two catalogs - the paste tomato Big Mama this year, which promptly became a top seller, and Burpee Burger in 2001. Americans love their tomatoes. If home gardeners grow just one vegetable, it's likely to be a tomato, so it makes sense to appeal to them.

Brandy Boy was named by Burpee owner George Ball Jr., to incorporate its Brandywine heritage and the appellation given to many Burpee varieties, such as Big Boy, Better Boy, and Best Boy.

"He's good at names," says director of research Grace Romero, noting that Ball also came up with the monikers for Big Mama and Burpee Burger. "He knows his vegetables - he's a connoisseur. He's a vegetable judge for the All-America Selections trials."

And he thinks Brandy Boy is quite a tomato, too, she says.

"It has improved vigor, (disease) resistance, and yield, but the same texture, color and flavor as Brandywine," Romero says as she shows me around the tomato trials at Fordhook Farm in Doylestown, Pa., the historic testing grounds for many of the flowers and vegetables marketed by Burpee over the last century or so. Although Brandywine's plants are large and its yield often rather sparse, "(it) has lasted this long because people kept producing it and making it available to the home gardener, because of the flavor."

On this late summer day, the vines and bushes in the trial garden are heavy with tomatoes in shades of red, pink, yellow, even stripes. Row after long row, they offer their bounty: salad tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, cherry and paste tomatoes, heirlooms, and hybrids. There are vines that start bearing fruit early in the season, others that kick in mid-season, and still others that produce tomatoes into fall for winter storage.

More than 100 varieties of tomatoes are growing here, not just Burpee's but the competition's, all being tested for flavor, earliness of harvest, and yield, among other things. They include Burpee's other new introduction for next spring, a cherry tomato called Sweet Baby Girl.

"There are a lot of tomatoes in the market," Romero says, adding that Burpee's current catalog has six pages of them, and supplies for growing them. "Before we can sell a variety, we have to know how it performs. For instance, we grew Big Mama next to other paste tomatoes so we could say it is the largest, has fewer seeds, etc., than other paste tomatoes. You have the control and the experimental variety."

The great thing about trial gardens is that they are intended for trying out new things - even new ways to garden.

At Fordhook, they've been experimenting for the last couple of years with various versions of lawn recapturing, the process of turning grass into garden beds without any digging.

It involves covering the section of lawn you want to turn into a garden with a thick layer of ordinary newspaper (no slick color supplements) opened out, wetting it thoroughly with the hose, then adding a couple inches of hardwood mulch on top. Time and nature should do the rest, smothering the grass and eventually breaking it and the newspapers down into a good organic layer that becomes the garden bed.

Burpee calls its version of this environmentally friendly and back-saving approach Lawnbuster.

In tests, these gardens broke down and were ready to plant in less than two months. For a few gardeners, however, the paper didn't disintegrate, probably because it wasn't moist enough because of the drought. I should have emphasized the watering aspect.

If you decide to try the Lawnbuster approach, Romero says, wet the paper layer thoroughly with a hose, not a bucket or a watering can. Then add the layer of hardwood mulch.

Burpee will be putting on its Web site _

http://www.burpee.com

_ instructions for turning lawn into Lawnbuster gardens, says Devine. Ideally, he says, gardeners will put down the paper and mulch this fall and let it sit all winter for spring planting. But for those in a hurry, there's also a fast-track variation that should be ready in seven weeks.

Online, Burpee will offer collections of perennials designed especially for these beds, plants that are not only tough but will look good together.

"This is really an easy way to establish a perennial bed," says Devine. "The collection of plants is to get you started. And thereafter you can add plants or take them out as you like."

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For more information:

To learn more about W. Atlee Burpee & Co. products, visit

http://www.burpee.com

To request a 2003 catalog, which will be mailed in late December or early January, call 1-800-888-1447.

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