vine-ripened tomato, plucked at the perfect peak of sweetness and eaten warm and sugary, tart and juicy, right there in the garden as you make a big mess all over your shirt.
2) If you actually get good at this (and you can—I grow great tomatoes just about every season, and I barely have opposable thumbs), you’ll have access to the ultimate summertime bragging right: “Oh, and would you like a slice of fresh tomato on that? Let me go out and pick a nice one for you.”
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3) If you get really good at it, you can go for the gold: Having ripe, red tomatoes conspicuously hanging on your plants days before that pain-in-the-butt gardener down the block who’s been showing off for years.
4) And then nirvana: Knocking on that gardener’s door with a bag of ripe tomatoes while his first love apples are still green and saying, “Here—I noticed your plants don’t seem to be doing very well this year, and we’ve had more than we can eat for weeks now…”
5) Start your own tomatoes from seed, and you can grow (and share and savor and really brag about) wonderful varieties that you just can’t find already started for you at the garden center, much less the supermarket, like Tigerella, Brandywine, Big Rainbow, Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter…
Well, yes, that’s actually five reasons. And yes, I did begin by writing that “there is one big overwhelming reason you should grow your own…” I thought you should know that you’re about to take gardening advice from a man who can’t count. To one.
Here is a nice example of my personal favorite type of tomato: a large beefsteak that begins life green, ripens to yellow, and then continues ripening to develop red streaks throughout the fruit (making the sliced fruit look like a frozen sunset!). Many named varieties sport this size and impressive color combination, including Striped Marvel (aka Marvel Striped), Big Rainbow, and Georgia Streak. With a great mix of sweetness and acidity, this is a must try tomato type for those with room to grow big plants.
Chapter 1
“Picking” Your Tomatoes
(Do all of these things have funny, rude, or mysterious names?)
There are no “wrong” tomatoes (other than those waxed-fruit varieties in the supermarket); you should grow what you like. So I’ll provide a few basic facts and helpful information—like how to start the seeds, how to support the plants, and how long you generally have to wait for ripe tomatoes—and you will fall in love with weird names and romantic illusions and grow as many different solanaceous flights of fancy as you can. Some will become your tomatoes forever, while others will end up being a dimly recalled one-season stand. That’s OK—you’re young and foolish, and we don’t judge. (Unless you dismiss the flavor of a first-rate tomato like big juicy Brandywine as “mealy” or something.)
Anyway, tomatoes are like wine—because all the good ones are red! (White wine is something you drink when you’re sick, like tea.) Actually, unlike wine, some of the best tomatoes aren’t red (but they aren’t white either, tea drinker!). Seriously, tomatoes really are like wine—because you often have the most fun when you break the rules.
Jet Star
Jet Star is a hybrid variety with a reputation for extremely high sugar content, massive production, and rampant vine growth—so give this candy factory lots of room. Said to do well even in cool climes, Jet Star is a real favorite of fresh eaters who have a Love Apple Sweet Tooth.
What’s Your Tomato Determination?
There are two main types of tomato plants, and the difference is important.
Determinate. Determinate plants pretty much stop growing around the time the bulk of their tomatoes form, producing almost all of their potential fruit in that one big flush. Then, they are mostly done for the season. Obviously such plants are great for large-scale farming, but they’re also good for gardeners (like moi) who cook down a lot of their crop to jar up as sauce and paste for the winter: You can pick enough tomatoes from one or two determinate plants in a couple of days to make a full pot of sauce, cook it up, and be done instead of making small batches all the time. That’s probably why most—but not all—paste tomatoes are determinate. Determinate plants also tend to be smaller and more compact, making them good choices for small-space and container gardens. And determinate varieties move in and out of your garden fast, allowing you to pull up those plants when they’re done producing and replace them with garlic, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, and/ or other fall-planted crops. (Which you should do—every space in your kitchen garden should produce at least two different runs of edibles.)
Indeterminate.Indeterminate plants grow like big honking teenagers you just bought new clothes for. Their vines don’t stop creeping toward the next county until they’re killed by frost (although they’ll slow down quite a bit when the days get shorter and the nights get cooler). Indeterminates produce flowers and fruit sequentially throughout the season, making them great choices for folks who simply want to enjoy a nice steady supply of fresh tomatoes all summer long. Just be aware that indeterminate plants tend to be large and sprawling—the opposite of compact.
Most of the old, great-tasting heirloom varieties—and big tomatoes in general—are indeterminate. The yield on some indeterminate plants is sometimes smaller than that of the more compact varieties, but sometimes their extended tomato production time evens things out over the course of a season. And big tomatoes like the treasured heirloom varieties need a larger leaf-to-fruit ratio to create their bigger, much more complex flavors, and so more of the plant’s energy has to go into making solar-collecting leaves to feed those highly anticipated fruits. As with wine grapes, the smaller the harvest, the more intense the flavor of the fruits.
The wild world of heirlooms! Crazy colors, weird shapes, and the kinds of flavor that true tomato growers crave. Don’t worry about a few “cracks” here and there, because these are the Real Deal!
These almost-a-beefsteak-but-not-quite tomatoes are clearly growing on an indeterminate plant. Pick them promptly (the one on the bottom left is ready to come inside), because prompt picking encourages the plant to keep producing.
Sometimes this “there are two types of…” thing gets out of hand. My favorite is, “There are two types of people—those who break society down into two types of people, and those who don’t.” I attribute this to Oscar Wilde but might have read it in a comic book.
Note: You may see some varieties listed as semi-determinate or described using similar weasel words. This means:
1)
