Why the Modern Tomato is Flawed: A Review of Tomatoland

[marmar]

from Civil Eats:



Why the Modern Tomato is Flawed: A Review of Tomatoland
May 17th, 2011 By Kurt Michael Friese


First let’s get one persistent canard out of the way. Yes, the tomato is technically a fruit, not a vegetable, but for purposes of economics the USDA classifies it as a vegetable, and as such it is the second most popular vegetable in the nation after that other burger staple, lettuce. This is surprising in only one respect: A vast majority of the tomatoes consumed in the U.S. every year ($5 billion worth), are devoid of the flavor and nutritive value they once had.

Sure, that plant your neighbor gave you that’s just beginning to enjoy the summer heat will produce lots of delicious, succulent tomatoes come August or September. But in his new book, Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed our Most Alluring Fruit, two-time James Beard Award-winning journalist Barry Estabrook tells us why the modern factory-farmed tomato in most grocery stores is a poster child for nearly everything that is wrong with industrial agriculture. A recent USDA study, he points out, says that the average tomato of today, the kind on your Whopper or Taco Bell taco, has “30 percent less vitamin C, 30 percent less thiamin 19 percent less niacin, and 62 percent less calcium than it did in the 1960s. But that modern tomato does shame its 1960s counterpart in one respect: It contains 14 times as much sodium.”

This is because the tomatoes grown in the fields in and around Immokalee, Florida, where nearly one third of the tomatoes consumed in the U.S. are grown, are bred for one thing and one thing only. And it’s not flavor, and it’s not nutrition. It’s shipability, period. To qualify as grade A in that department, it needs to be a specific size, and a specific shape, and it needs to be picked while still green and rock hard. In fact, Estabrook relays a story of nearly losing control of his car as it was pelted with the tough green orbs bouncing off the back of a tractor-trailer on a Florida highway. The fruits hit the pavement at 60 mph and rolled to the gravel shoulder unscathed.

That truck was likely headed to one of the many enormous warehouses in the area, which “force-ripen” the fruit by smothering them with ethylene gas. This process does make them red, but it does not truly ripen them. Thus the sugars are nowhere near as developed as the ones in your back yard will be and the result is the mealy pink baseballs in your grocer’s produce section right now. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://civileats.com/2011/05/17/why-the-modern-tomato-is-flawed-a-review-of-tomatoland/

[KT2000]

1. Red Delicious Apples

were bred for shipping and totally lost their flavor. They were the #1 seller until they did this. It opened the door for lots of other varieties to take over the market. Can't wait until that happens to tomatoes - they are awful and serve only as color anymore.

[Zephie]

28. Ugh, I can't stand those things.

Tasteless as all get out. I refuse to eat them. I like macintosh apples myself.

[KT2000]

40. Those make the best sauce!

There are always new varieties to try now and they are getting it that people want flavorful apples.

[Auntie Bush]

33. The nice red strawberries out now are hard as rock, have no juice,

no sweetness and last for weeks. I'm not buying them again till their in season around here. Guessing they probably don't have as many vitamins either. Save your money!

[laundry_queen]

76. And they are the size of small apples! WTF?

I've picked REAL wild strawberries. They are hardly bigger than a blueberry. The last pack of supermarket strawberries I bought had a few that were the size of a small apple. I couldn't believe it! That's just not normal!

[JDPriestly]

47. Can't stand red delicious apples from the store.

They have no taste. I miss the good apples from the midwestern orchards and farms of my childhood.

[Hannah Bell]

56. when i was a kid, washington red delicious were delicious.

the delicious apples today are different:

The Red Delicious is a clone of apple cultigen, now comprising more than 50 cultivars, that was recognized in Madison County, Iowa, United States, in 1880. As new cultivars with improved color and earlier harvestability have replaced the original cultivar in commercial orchards, the taste and texture of the harvested commodity have deteriorated, and many customers have begun to reject the Red Delicious at the food market.<1>

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zg2JQ9DrUfkJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Delicious+red+delicious&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com

[JDPriestly]

58. The article you quote from is so right.

I remember the Iowa apples of my childhood.

I loved Mackintosh's. My grandmother grew sweet, yellow apples that ripened early. She called them "spring apples," but my mother assures me that they were not really edible in the Spring.

[damntexdem]

2. The tomato is only one fruit that has lost its flavor.

I don't bother with peaches or pears anymore, because they are tasteless. At least I can buy Fuji Apples, which do have a good taste.

[blondeatlast]

3. Same with bananas. I have a tiny little patio tomato plant and the fruit is divine.

Unfortunately the yield is too small even for just my son and I, but oh, wow...

[asjr]

9. I'm glad someone else thinks

bananas are not flavorful anymore. I thought it might just be my imagination but for some time now I have thought bananas are not as good as I once thought. I buy mine almost green because they will grow brown overnight. Maybe my taste buds have grown too old to remember how delicious those lovely yellow breakfast cereal ornaments are.

[trotsky]

13. Unless you are over 60 years old, the bananas you buy today...

are genetically identical to the ones you enjoyed as a child. That is the nature of how bananas must be grown - we've bred the seeds out of them. They cannot sexually reproduce anymore.

[blondeatlast]

14. That's interesting, because I'm nowhere near 60 and they don't taste at

all the same. The science itself may be the same, but I'm guessing the processing has changed.

They are hard and not nearly as sweet.

[trotsky]

17. The banana is an interesting story to be sure.

There's the whole agribusiness / American colonialism angle going back over a century, but then just Google "gros michel" vs. "cavendish". Pity what we've missed out on.

[asjr]

16. Well, maybe it is my age. I will be 79 in Sept.

But they still turn brown overnight.

[trotsky]

19. Then you got to enjoy the gros michel.

Color me green as an unripe banana with envy.

[surrealAmerican]

27. Genes are not the whole story when it comes to flavor in fruit.

You are right that the plants are clones, but that doesn't mean the fruits will all taste the same.

Soil, weather, and storage conditions can all alter the flavor of bananas.

[KamaAina]

15. I was in my mid-30s before I realized that bananas had flavor

when I had some in Hawai'i, where they grow in people's backyards. 'Ono!

[trotsky]

20. Yeah right, next you'll tell us people can grow pineapples and sugar cane there too!

Pshaw!

[KamaAina]

24. And coffee

:-)

there's a place in Kona (Big Island) that serves lattes, mochas, etc. made with the beans that grow right upslope. Hell yeah!

[tridim]

18. I don't eat them until they start turning black. Maybe that's why you don't taste them?

Pristine yellow bananas aren't ripe yet.

[JDPriestly]

48. My view also, tridim. But most of my family disagrees with me.

[hedgehog]

Of course, this has nothing whatsover to do with the obesity epidemic,

which is a result solely of people being lazy pigs.

[Gormy Cuss]

11. +1

[sharp_stick]

4. Store bought tomatoes

don't have any flavor at all anymore. I don't even bother buying them they taste so much of wet styrofoam.

It seems that the more expensive vine-ripened varieties, at least here, are a lot better in the store but I always enjoy trying out some different kinds in the garden and fighting with my 6 year old daughter to see who can get the good ones first. She usually wins just because she gets home before I do.

[Champion Jack]

5. Buy local, support the small farmer

[hedgehog]

6. I just commented about this on another thread: the strawberries

shipped cross country from Florida or California last for days. The local berries might last two days before they start turning moldy. The difference is that the industrial berries have been treated with biocides to kill any mold.

Now, which is better for you; the out-of-season berry that lasts for days or the ephemeral berry that you can only get for 3 weeks in June? Me, I prefer the mold. At least I can see the mold. I can't see the biocides!

[druidity33]

23. Most strawberry farmers

spray their crops. If you've got more than a row of them, they are prone to fungus and mold. You will need to ask your farmer if they are organic or not. Keeping in mind that you can spray certain "organic" chemicals on crops too (Bt among others).

:shrug:

[hedgehog]

31. I won't claim the locals don't do any spraying, just that their stuff

rots pretty quickly. That sound bad until you realize that the reason the other stuff doesn't rot is that it's been sprayed with poisons.

BTW - you know those recipes that tell you to grate some fresh orange peel? I've noticed that orange peels that go into our compost take forever to rot. i don't know what fungicide is sprayed on them, but I wouldn't eat the peels!

[druidity33]

32. Actually, the reason they rot quicker

is because they are picked riper. Strawberries picked Industrially are picked pink, packed and shipped same day. It takes them 2-5 days to end up on a shelf though, fruit and vegetables don't rot the same way when they are not matured enough. There are exceptions of course...

As for orange peel, they certainly have chemical residue and wax, but again there's a reason the rind takes longer to rot. Think of the way the shell of a nut protects the seed through the Winter, so it can rise in some future Spring. So goes the rind of an orange, or the tough skin of any fragile seeded fruit.

:)

[JDPriestly]

63. I don't spray. My homegrown (what I can grow of it) goes

straight from the picking to the eating. Love it.

[TygrBright]

71. Just grow your own in a nice big washtub.

They are the single easiest fruit to grow. Half a dozen plants of an indeterminate habit will provide nummy breakfast cereal additions, lemonade flavoring, shortcake ingredients, etc. for a family for a whole summer. If your climate is really harsh, haul the washtub into the garage or the basement from Dec - Feb.

Once you've gone out and picked them warm from the deck (or wherever,) and tasted them still warm, juicy, and impossibly sweet, exploding with flavor in your mouth, you'll never even be TEMPTED to buy industrial "woodberries" again.

proselytizingly,
Bright

[druidity33]

74. I live in a rural area...

We have multiple strawberry farms within a 30 mile radius... 2 even have an organic crop (very difficult with strawberries, mostly BECAUSE of mold and fungus). My garden spaces are packed with things I CAN'T buy around here. Gooseberries, yellow raspberry, sour cherries, shiro plum, black currant, hardy kiwi, sunchokes, etc.

:)

Wish i had a spare bathtub, though i'd probably use it as a rinsing station or potting area.

Cheers

[smirkymonkey]

25. The best strawberries are the small wild ones - You haven't

tasted strawberries until you've had them. I grew up in upstate NY and we had wild fruit growing everywhere - it was delicious. I can't even eat this cultivated garbage anymore because it just tastes like colored styrofoam. Every once in a while I'll splurge at the Farmer's market or on organic. I don't see the point in eating them otherwise.

[Retrograde]

39. My farmers' market gets the ones that were too ripe to ship

One of the growers brings the ones she can't ship, and they actually taste like strawberries. Still too big, though: I think they were bred that way to make it cheaper to fill a pint basket.

[emcguffie]

75. Strawberries have also been bred to be shippable.

The older varieties, from which the ones in the stores are descended, had more natural sugar, but you couldn't ship them anywhere.

I'm trying out some alpine varieties in my garden this year. They are much smaller, but are supposed to be much more flavorful. People don't know that, and they grow them as ornamentals. You do have to cover them up with netting if you want to eat the fruit yourself.

I know people down the street from me who can grow tomatoes in their back yard. Their squirrels don't bother them. Our squirrels will take every single tomato we grow. They don't eat them. They just take one or two bites out of them and then toss them. But we do grow tomatoes at the town garden. It's the only way we can have real tomatoes, because we certainly can't afford the ones in the grocery store, which are nowadays about $5 a pound. The good ones, I mean.

[kestrel91316]

7. I miss my garden primarily for the hundred-plus pounds of heirloom

tomatoes it used to produce every year........I am quite certain they had a great deal of nutrition: they actually TASTED like tomatoes.

[AsahinaKimi]

8. My favorite are Cherry Tomatoes but I discovered...

Grape Tomatoes


They are grown locally here in California, and wow, are they ever sweet. I never new a little tomato could pack that much flavor! I have this dish I like to make, its basically cottage cheese, with some added Olive oil, black pepper, soy sauce, and some cut up red onions. Its really good
and I got used to eating it when I was low on cash.

[JDPriestly]

49. You can grow your own, even in a small backyard.

I buy those plastic bins that people use to ice canned drinks at parties, drill holes in the bottom and fill them with dirt and steer manure. Great for the cherry tomato plants.

I am already getting tiny ripe tomatoes. I have lots of green ones on some of my other, larger varieties. It is so much fun and so yummy all summer long.

I am in Southern California. I usually cut my tomato plants down, say October or November and start new in the Spring. But some people just leave the plants. I don't know whether they produce tomatoes after the first year.

It's so relaxing to watch out for a few tomato plants. I grew a lot of lettuce and herbs this year also. And this summer, I will add as many bean plants as I can and, of course, a few squash. I'm going to try winter squash this year.

I have some basil seedlings on my back window shelf. It's too cold to put them outside. I like to start plants from seed, but I usually buy the tomato plants. This year, I have one volunteer tomato plant. It is a lot punier than my other plants, but we shall see how it works out.

[izquierdista]

57. Tomatoes are not annuals

Just in climates where there are freezes. The tomato is a naturally indeterminate plant, which means that it will continue growing, with continuous flowering and fruiting until it gets too old for its root system. Even then, the distal end of a vine can take root and start a new plant. You can take cuttings in the fall, put them in water and get them to root and have plants to start again in the spring. I've got some nice Roma tomato plants now that are cuttings from last year.

Another 'advance' of modern agriculture is to select and grow determinate tomatoes, where the entire field flowers and sets fruit at the same time. This makes it possible to make one pass over the field and harvest with machinery instead of picking the fruit one by one by hand.

[JDPriestly]

59. Very interesting. I think I will try starting plants from cuttings next year.

I have rooting hormone. Good idea.

[TheMadMonk]

73. You do know boild willowbark is a a decent rooting compound.

As well as an absoulutely disgusting cure for a headache.

[rucognizant]

72. I have

grown them right through the winter! THe little yellow pear & red cherry tomatoes are good for that. Without a growlight they slow down in Jan & Feb.
I HAD to DO IT! I grew up in the catsup capital of the world, & learned to drive dodging the very ripe tomatoes falling off the truck headed for Campbell's, Camden NJ plant.
Cudos to Maine however, our winter tomatoes are grown in the state in greenhouses. Belgien based grocery chain, with some inovative ideas!

[monmouth]

10. "Jersey" beefsteak tomatoes out of someone's garden...Ahhhh..n/t

[Gregorian]

12. I remember the tomato someone gave my mom in 1960.

It was grown in the field that is now Google Campus.

It's hard to express how I feel about what our demands did to the things we loved. Not only the loss of the fields, but the loss of good food. Carrots, tomatoes, even meat. And zucchinis were just a different thing altogether. Maybe we can grow enough good tomatoes for everyone who wants them, but we'd have to have a lot of people who dedicate their lives to tending vegetables.

Sadly, I'm in the process of trying to buy an organic farm. But it ends up that land values for places like that are so sky high, I'm about to give up my 3 year effort, and move on to who knows where.

Sorry. I didn't mean to blab about my troubles. It's just a shit world for some of us. I don't see how anyone can truly be happy the way things are now. I look at beautiful properties in Oregon, and the neighbors have clearcut everything around them. Tomatoes.

Oh yeah, that tomato was something so good I'll never forget it.

[JDPriestly]

50. There is a bubble in farmland values now. It could just be gambling

on Wall Street or something similar. It could be due to the scramble to produce ethanol. It could simply be viewed as a safe investment by the very rich. Don't know just why and haven't heard much about it.

[shoutinfreud]

21. Shouldn't this be in the tomato forum?

[JDPriestly]

64. Is there a tomato forum?

If not, there should be!

[MadHound]

22. Grow your own,

Tomato plants can be grown in almost any living situation, outdoors in a back yard, in a pot on your balcony, in a pot on your front stoop, wherever. Get heirloom, not hybrid seeds, and grow enough to can for year around deliciousness.

[formercia]

29. I like Pruden's Purple

It's early and has a lot of disease resistance for an Heirloom and is very productive. The fruit aren't pretty and won't ship more than a few blocks but the flavor is wonderful. Last Year I put in 4 plants and we had all the tomatoes we could eat, give away and still had plenty for the deer and other critters.

[JDPriestly]

65. I might try an heirloom next year. I'm new to backyard

gardening, so I haven't dared. Somehow I think the hypbrids would be easier to grow.

[wryter2000]

26. Don't get me started

A homegrown tomato is the most delicious food on Earth. Those things in the grocery store are an abomination. I will not buy them.

[IDemo]

30. Just got the tomatoes planted last weekend

If the snows of May here don't kill them, I'm looking forward to homemade tomato-basil pizza in a few months.

[Auntie Bush]

34. I tried to plant mine last weekend...but too much rain!

[Igel]

36. Mine are just ripening.

Planted them in mid-March. Houston. Should have had them in the ground a few weeks earlier.

Problem is, in a few weeks it'll be too warm at night for them to set fruit. Some are ripening already, but in about 3 weeks it'll be time to can. By the end of June, barring a cold snap, there'll be large, green tomato plants with lots of flowers but with no tomatoes.

(Now, if we could just get some rain in this part of the country. Last week it rained for the first time since before I put in the tomatoes.)

[Tx4obama]

53. I'm in Houston too - lots of great things to grow down here.

It was soooo wonderful to have had that rain last Thursday.

I planted my tomatoes too late this year, in mid-April. I'm hoping they will do okay. I have to put steel mesh around them because the squirrels in my neighborhood steal tomatoes, I've never seen anything like that before.

Have an apricot tree that bared a little bit of fruit for the first time last year - I got two apricots and the squirrels/birds got the other six.
The apricots tasted JUST LIKE the ones I remember eating as a little girl in Illinois from the very large apricot trees in my aunt's backyard. The apricots found in stores nowadays, especially in Houston, to me have no flavor and do not even taste like apricots.

I put in a couple grapevines a few years ago - the birds get most of the grapes :(

Have four fig trees - I LOVE THEM!

I have a grapefruit tree. Two years ago it grew one grapefruit and last year another ONE. LOL :)

A few weeks ago I bought an avocado tree. The tree had 'three' small avocados on it when I brought it home from Houston Garden Center. The first week 'two' of the little avocados fell off - ONE is still hanging on and has grown a tad bigger, but it is still smaller than a golf ball so far. I am REALLY hoping it will get big enough to eat and that I get to it before any critters do! I read online that possums will steal them off of the tree - and a few years ago there were a few in the neighborhood so I hope that they are not around anymore.

My three lemon plants/bushes/trees whatever you wish to call them usually have tons of blossoms and tons of lemons, this year there are no blossoms. Maybe it's because of the weird weather we've been having here this year.

My rosemary and basil are going great.
Hopefully I'll get some tomatoes this year and then can make Italian Caprese: sliced tomatoes topped with fresh Italian buffalo mozzarella, fresh basil, and drizzled with olive oil and freshly ground pepper :)

p.s. I had an orange tree that had two oranges on it last year. One of the BIG trees in the backyard fell down last year and fell on top of the orange tree and killed it. LOL :(

p.s.s. I hope your tomatoes produce well for you :)


Edited to add...
Also decided to try growing blueberries this year. Probably should have bought more than one bush though because I'm getting only one or two ripe berries every two or three days - LOL - not enough at one time to even put in cereal.

[Igel]

77. I'm still experimenting.

This is my 2nd year for a garden, we moved in two years ago in July. I just got the fruit trees in last fall. About the only landscaping that's survived is some Bermuda grass and the two small live oaks in the front yard. (And I have my eyes on the live oaks. I keep trying to kill the Bermuda grass, but it will outlive us all.)

The garden last year was the traditional Maryland or Oregon kind of thing,--where I've gardened before. I started the garden in April: Tomatoes, lettuce, bell peppers, spinach. I didn't understand why the tomatoes stopped bearing until I read up on them. Most other things flopped. We won't mention the lettuce, RIP.

This year instead of planting what I wanted I planted what I'd read would do well. Asian greens: tah tsai, mibuna, bok choi. Heat-tolerant chard. I still tried kohlrabi, it's surviving; luobuo, these huge white Taiwanese radishes, are doing well, as are the cukes and other cucurbits, and the Malabar spinach. Lots of peppers. I'm experimenting with molokhia (aka 'kren-kre' or 'Egyptian spinach' or 'Jew's mallow') and trying to get the New Zealand spinach to germinate. Another experiment is jicama--the leaves and stems contain a natural insecticide. I'll see if it works. It's probably good, since the jicama and the misome next to it are almost untouched by cabbage loopers and flea beetles. When the potherbs, radishes, and tomatoes are gone I'll put in some sort of butterpea. Even if they flop they'll provide groundcover and mulch. I'm trying to grow endive, romaine, and bitter gourd, too; the gourd will work, I think. Not sure about the endive and romaine.

I tried growing celeriac and leeks last fall. They're still growing. They were untouched by the cold weather. I'm just not sure when to pull them up.

It's been a kick exploring on-line to find heat-resistant veggies and then find seed companies that carry the seed. And then to see if we can actually eat them. (I'm still not sure about the molokhia. It's really mucilaginous.)

What really annoys me about Houston, though, is the purslane sawfly. Purslane is a great veggie (verdolagas is a traditional Latino food, you can get them at Fiesta). High in omega-3 fatty acids. But cattlemen hate it because it competes with grass, so the US imported a sawfly that feasts on purslane. Just when it's ready to start producing side dishes, the flies show up and eat it all. Argh.

The fruit trees line the S side of the back yard: a nectarine, a fig, a couple of Meyer lemons, and a satsuma. They're small and spaced out to allow room for growth, with irises that my mother-in-law sent (she breeds them) growing among them. The irises will move, eventually. The trees were planted last fall. Lots of blooms, but they all dropped. If we have jobs this fall I'll raise another chunk of the backyard and put in a bunch of goji berries.

I'm also trying to be "green", even beyond the required composting and gray-water use: The western (back) and southern exposures have a lot of trellis. I'm trying to keep the walls shaded. The back side has cukes and malabar spinach and longbeans. The southern side is public, and has kiwis, blueberries, and silverberries (with I think what's growing on the wall itself is called Virginia creeper). All still small, but growing quickly; The kiwis and blueberries were planted in March. I've planted a line of okra against the wall behind them to provide some quick, temporary shade. Since the kiwis are so small, I've planted calabash gourd to climb on their trellis. Calabash is used to make kampyo, which is used in sushi (and I can't find a place that sells kampyo in Houston, not in 5 years of looking). (A Japanese gardener wouldn't feel entirely out of place in my garden, with the longbeans, Asian greens, calabash, Korean radishes, and satsumas.)

Right now I figure I have far too many kinds of things growing in short rows and I keep experimenting with more. That'll probably change in a couple of years. The variety's nice, though; my wife has decided she likes vegetables.

The front flowerbed is supposed to be ornamental. I figure serviceberries (aka "Saskatoons") and jujube are ornamental, along with a tea bush (camellia, after all) and Japanese maple. Catnip, rosemary, plumbago, and butterfly bush round complement the things that will grow large. A line of roses is a concession to my wife. I'm hoping to get cardinal vine to grow up the diminutive live oaks we have, to brighten them up. The butterfly vine is supposed to be taking over a trellis shading part of the eastern exposure. "Supposed to be," the poor little thing. No mulch: a couple of low-growing crassulas and evening primrose should keep the weeds down.

My son thinks I'm plant crazy. On the other hand, the sheer variety of small wildlife that the yard attracts in another otherwise non-gardening community is immense, and he likes the wildlife. I found a Great Plains narrow-mouthed toad a couple of days ago and he wanted to keep it. There are a couple outside the living room window. A tobacco hornworm he collected last summer became a sphinx moth. And he thinks the stick insects are fascinating, when he can find them. He also likes having the anoles, geckos, and skinks around.

I really wanted an avocado, but they're picky about drainage and, like grapefruit, get big. We have a postage-stamp sized lot. Right now I'll be happy just to get the trees that we have to bear something and finish the grape trellises. (What I really, *really* wanted was sour cherry trees, but they're iffy in N. Houston--they require too many chill hours for most years. Given the last couple of winters, they'd have done fine so far.)

Blueberries are tricky: Apparently there are two strains that are incompatible. If you get more, make sure they're the same kind. Southern or northern highbush, I think, are the terms used. Two plants are best, to provide pollination. Houston Garden Centers, or at least the one on I-45 just south of FM 1960, also have "Sunshine," a dwarf variety that is self-fertile, but like jujube and nectarine they do better when they're pollinated by another plant.

Tomato-stealing squirrels? That's just wrong. Unless they're after them for the water. I swear, it seems like every March we start a drought. I'm hoping the storms north of us today make it down to where we are. Anyway, we're squirrelless. Too new a neighborhood, all the trees in the cookie-cutter yards are the same, two smallish live oaks.

[JDPriestly]

51. Wow! Snow! Here in LA my plants are starting to produce.

I just love growing tomatoes. And basil. Two of my favorites.

[IDemo]

62. Yes, snow.

We had a high in the mid 80's last week, and wet snow falling yesterday morning. Mother Nature loves teasing gardeners into planting tomatoes early here. The tomatoes and other plants are fine, amazingly enough.

[JDPriestly]

66. I put old curtains over my plants to keep them warm in winter

and protect them from the sun in summer. It helps.

[Mojorabbit]

70. Already harvesting in Fl

Grape tomatoes and Mr. Stripey which is my fav sweet tomato and huge.

[bvar22]

35. NOTHING in the "Produce Section" tastes like it used to.

That is one reason WHY we moved to The Woods in the Rural South in 2006,
and started growing our own.
The Spring Asparagus was sublime.
The Strawberries are peaking now, and are to die for.


Our Favorite Tomato: The Creole,
but those are about 5 weeks away.

[JDPriestly]

52. Good for you, bvar22

Don't you just love watching things grow.

I only have a small back yard in Los Angeles. But farming must be in my blood. I wake up every morning and walk outside to check my garden.

I sometimes think of my grandfather who farmed in Iowa and walked his fences to see that they were keeping his animals and crops safe. My backyard in Los Angeles is a far cry from his acres of land, but somehow it's just being out close to nature.

[Stinky The Clown]

37. There are tomatoes branded "Ugly Ripe" that taste good but are illegal to grow in Florida

They look like this:



You often see them in the grocers in white foam net protective sleeves. They really do taste good. A little "supermarkety, but very nice when compared to the round red things they sit next to. Here's an excerpt of their story.

The "UglyRipe" tomato was the innovation of Mr. Joe Procacci, the Thomas Edison of the produce industry as I like to call him. Mr. Procacci is a well respected gentleman who is quite dynamic and full of enthusiastic energy in the produce business. He loves tomatoes and he enjoys making them taste good. So he developed the UglyRipe tomato that looks like an old fashioned backyard garden Heirloom variety just loaded with rich, red, juicy flavor.

The UglyRipe is so called for its wrinkles and misshapening appearance. After all, that's what backyard garden tomatoes look like, don't they? But the taste of an UglyRipe tomato is absolutely out-of-this-world.

However, Florida agriculture will not allow it to leave the state because it is claimed to be "too wrinkled". A Florida committee claims the tomato standards rule states that the UglyRipe must be as round as other Florida regular tomatoes before they can be shipped out of state. The round tomato is one that marks Florida's good standard policy.

No.1 tomatoes are firm, smooth-skinned, almost perfectly round.

No.2 tomatoes are round, but onlt slightly rough.

No.3 tomatoes are a bit misshapen and blemished.

The Florida Tomato Committee requires that 90% of tomatoes in any shipment grown in Florida and sold outside the state be at least a No. 2 grade.

Under this circumstance and unfortunately, the UglyRipes cannot be shipped out of Florida for consumers to enjoy.

[CrispyQ]

38. Unbelievable! I think they are lovely. --nt

[DirkGently]

42. They do have a bit of flavor. The others surely don't. Illegal? Unbelievable.

[quaker bill]

41. Something that always irritates this botanist

A tomato is not a vegetable. A tomato is not a fruit. A tomato is a berry.

The Immokalee tomatos are not only bred to be shipable, but uniform in size, and yes they are picked rock hard green, placed in large dump trucks and hauled to storage facilities where they are stored and then indeed force ripened as needed.

I grow my own heirlooms - tasty.

[flvegan]

43. Growing my own this year.

First time trying, I think I got pretty lucky.

[Sonoman]

44. TomatoMania

www.tomatomania.com

We host this at our property in Sonoma.

Hey! Hey! Heirlooms!

www.rareseeds.com

Let it run down your face...

Just two things that money can't buy

And that's True Love

And Home-grown tomatoes

(thanks to Guy Clark)

Give me the juicy and the natural ones....

They are always the best.

Sonoman

[MilesColtrane]

45. I've got three green, golf-ball-sized tomatoes on four plants so far.

Not too bad at the five week mark.

I can't wait for my bad boys to start producing regularly.

Grocery store tomatoes are just a tease, a mockery of what a tomato should taste like.

[sylvi]

46. Tomatoes are my favorite veggie (fruit, berry, whatever)

But I literally cannot eat the ones out of the grocery store.

My grandpa used to grow them on big bushes supported by cages made from fence wire. I could eat 3-4 of those big ones easy just sliced up with a little salt and pepper. So good.

He used to say it was the rusty fence wire that made them good. :)

I miss my grandpa.:cry:

[StarsInHerHair]

54. grow Roma tomatos, they are limited in size & can be grown in pots, they're

full of flavor & can be cut & put on sandwiches & burgers just fine-they're not just for sauce making. They have less "jelly" & more solid tomato, they're smaller than beefsteak tomatos but they put out a WHOLE LOT of tomatos.

[defendandprotect]

55. Tomatoes stink these days -- What's the hard YELLOW stuff in the middle of them? Fish genes?

[Snoutport]

60. I am sad about this!!!!

[blackspade]

61. Thanks for the info!

[Jefferson23]

67. I have a garden and grow tomatoes, but I stopped buying the small

starter plants from garden centers. I buy heritage/heirloom seeds now online and it's worth the
effort as they taste good. Grow some basil with it too, ya can't beat that combination imo.

[The Second Stone]

68. Canned tomatoes taste wonderful by comparison

to store fresh tomatoes.

[Jefferson23]

69. True, San Marzano tomatoes, the very best. n/t