Tomatoes are my favorite veggie. And almost my favorite fruit: nothing can best strawberries.
Oh, are tomatoes fruits or veggies? Technically fruits because the tomato part we eat has seeds and develops from a flower. A vegetable is a plant part: a root, a stem or a leaf. However, in 1893 the United States Supreme Court declared tomatoes to be vegetables. Why were they involved? Money, of course. Imported “vegetable” tomatoes could be taxed more than “fruit” tomatoes.
Here “tax” is a relevant word. Have you ever tried to grow your own tomatoes? Now, that can be a taxing experience. Where should you plant them? With dozens, if not hundreds of varieties out there, which should you select to plant? Seeds or little seedlings already sprouting up? How to water, how to fertilize, how to protect from critters, and when to harvest?
In our upstate house, which we visit on weekends, last year Suzen and I tried to grow tomatoes. We enjoyed some. The squirrels and rabbits enjoyed even more — where were those circling bald eagles when we needed them? And sadly many of the tomatoes burst and split their skins before we could sample them.
I wish last year we had had Tomatomania in our kitchen. Authors Scott Daigre and Jenn Garbee are foodies, gardneners, and clearly tomato devotees. This informative new book does have lovely recipes at the end. But first there are 130+ pages of tomato info to answer all those questions about how to grow and nourish your own tomatoes. This volume is just the Wikipedia we all need to create a garden with dazzling red globes of juicy flavor.
There are seven chapters here that begin with the all-important planning and traverse to the all-important “when do I pick it off the vine:”
All Systems Go discusses that critical point of finding the perfect, or at least the best, spot in your garden for planting. Maybe you are not going to have garden tomatoes at all but container versions. Getting off to a great start is, well, getting off to a great start.
Stripes, Lobes, Curves & Trusses covers the strategy of selection. Just what is an heirloom tomato, anyway? Do I want cherries or beefsteak or both? There is a rundown here to remind you of the many types and sizes available to you now.
Let’s Go Shopping let you select your tomatoes with confidence. The packets of seed and the little slips of fading plastic stuck into the containers with seedlings can be underwhelming or overwhelming. It can be like reading a wine label. What does all the information mean? If the seedling name has a capital letter at the end, why? [It’s a code for resistance to certain diseases or maladies!].
Plant Me Already guides you through that critical hour when seeds are placed in the soil or the seedling is separated from its plastic container. How deep should the soil be? What should the soil itself be? How much to water and when? Your tomatoes are beginning a new life and you’ll want that life to begin gloriously. Because in just a few weeks …
Support Your Local Tomato deals with a heavy issue. How do you stake or tie up the tomatoes as they grow. Suzen and I left perfectly fine tomatoes standing upright one Monday morning and returned on Friday to find many of them lying and rotting on the ground. Tomatoes on the vine are heavy spheres of water that need strong, carefully crafted support.
The Garden Doctor Is Out covers critters and diseases, the scourges of all tomato growers. Tomatoes seem to be magnets for not-good things. Not only do we love them, so do those squirrels and rabbits. Diseases can rapidly destroy those tomatoes you’ve expended all the time and energy in growing. The advice here can erase your tomato tension.
You Didn’t Just Pick That Tomato is a chapter dealing with your tomato impatience. When is the tomato perfectly ripe? Red and firm? No, red and already beginning to soften slightly. We are all used to getting tomatoes at the market and there they may still be hard to the touch. Commercial tomatoes are picked before fully ripe, so they can be aged chemically and delivered to your supermarket before they pass over the hill. You are growing your own, there is no hill to worry about, and you can time the harvesting to perfection.
Okay, you’ve planted, grown, done preventative maintenance, and harvested at just the right hour of the right day. Now what?
Do not refrigerate. Ever. You can freeze them, but refrigerating destroys flavor and texture. Once it is picked, it’s time to cook and to eat. There are recipes aplenty here for you:
Tomato-Vanilla Bean Marmalade, the way to enjoy tomato flavor deep into winter
A Black Martini that looks like a Bloody Mary but isn’t
Quick Pickled Tomatoes, a recipe that will be blogged here soon
Stone Fruit and Tomato Gazpacho, combining peaches and tomatoes
Tomato Cornbread and Tomato Sourdough and Tomato Gravy, all vehicles for lingering tomato flavor
Growing things at home, enjoying foods minutes fresh from the garden, is a joy of life. Even if you only have time and space for one little container of something, please consider doing it. A pot of fresh herbs sitting on the window sill above your kitchen sink is a pot of flavor gold. Maybe you have room there or elsewhere for some actual tomatoes. Maybe you have a strip of ground, three feet wide and ten long, that gets loads of sunlight and water. Maybe, you need to look at Tomatomania.
Just, just ignore the rabbits. Or, I do have rabbit recipes, too.