Gaga in the Garden About Home Grown Tomatoes

By Colleen’s Contributor on Gardening, Barb Bataillon, Master Gardener and More

My local garden center consultant advised me that tomatoes are this season’s biggest seller. I love gardening and I love garden-fresh tomatoes—so much so that one year visitors had to walk through a tomato forest to reach my door. Of course, that year brought record rainfalls—and a record number of BLT dinners. But, even I had to admit to going overboard when a neighbor, who I’d gifted with more tomatoes than she could use, suggested I set up a stand at the curb.

There’s nothing like the taste of just-picked, home-grown tomatoes. Home vegetable gardening will never yield enough crops to make it cheaper than buying at the grocery store, but no other spot will produce such exquisite taste.

I’m frequently asked why home-grown tomatoes taste so much better than store-bought. The main reasons have to do with shelf-life and timing. Mass-produced tomatoes must be picked while still green. This gives growers enough time to transport them to their ultimate destinations. Since they have a relatively short shelf-life they must ripen indoors. Tomatoes that ripen indoors will never have the robust flavor of those that ripen completely on the vine. Additionally, thicker skins have been developed by growers to reduce bruising in the transport process, but they aren’t so pleasing to the palette. Even the “vine-ripened” designation can be misleading because it means the product has been partially ripened on the vine, but not completely.

Tomatoes aren’t fussy plants. Once in the ground, they require little work, especially if the gardener takes time to carefully read labels and selects those marked as resistant to disease and infestation.  These days I buy plants from the garden center to put into the ground, but I’ve started them from seed many times. I don’t notice a difference in taste. I get results with less work from plants though because cultivating from seed requires a culling process during which you must play Darwin and select the fittest.

Visit Eve Laments Blog http://colleenwalshfong.com  "Garden" category to see the full text of Home Grown Tomatoes, including Barb’s advice for those “in the grow.”