The Frugal Gardener has asked me to put together a short article on growing tomatoes. Since frugality seems to be the keyword, let me forego hyping the hybrids and go straight to the heirloom tomatoes.
Hybrids are combinations of two other tomatoes.
The resulting seeds contain desired traits from the parents such as disease resistance and such, but the seeds in the resulting tomatoes may or may not breed true. Without getting into a long genetics class, just take my word for it. The only way to consistently get the same tomato is to always cross the two parents. So, they aren't very frugal, since you have to buy new seeds every year. Instead, opt for some of the heirloom tomato seeds.