Leonard Moorehead, the Urban Gardener: Tomato, the Love Fruit

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Sunday, May 22, 2016

Leonard Moorehead, GoLocalWorcester Gardening Expert

Tomatoes are a staple in my garden and easily grown in yours too. Treat yourself to the home garden’s supreme delicacy, a sun warm ripe tomato eaten from the plant. Redolent foliage offers nature’s garnish, appetite prompts search for more. Nowhere is the gap between local home grown produce and mass marketed more pronounced. Without the need to withstand shipping, or engineered to fit mechanical slicers, a gardener enters an older, more diverse world. Urban gardeners can hop on the bus for the exploding interest in heirloom varieties grown primarily for fresh eating taste. Leave behind the ordinary red round tomato and explore myriads of shapes, colors, and best of all, extraordinary flavors. 

Tomatoes are far from commonplace. Meso-American cultures domesticated the tomato and its cousins, the tomatillo and more distantly, the potato, into countless varieties millennia ago. All are true to their tropical origins. No garden plant relishes the dog days of summer more. A perennial vine in its native habitat, the tomato thrives in direct sunlight, well composted soils, and reliable moisture. Tomato seeds are highly viable and easy to start. Composters routinely weed out volunteer tomatoes or sometimes, in a pique of curiousity, allow them to grow. Volunteer tomatoes in my garden produce tasty fruit within days of transplants. Provide a little support or hang for a luscious cascade. 

The tomato made the trip to Spain and Portugal as one of the treasures of the New World. It soon became a staple in the Rennaisance Mediterrean but slowly made its way further north into cooler Protestant northern Europe. To English speaking Puritans, the tomato had lots of baggage, not least being known as the Love Apple and far too stimulating for those beset by temptation. Michele Felice Cornè (1752–1845) was an artist born in Italian Elba who settled in the United States during the Napoleonic Wars. The front steps of his house on Corne St, Newport, RI is reputed to be the site of the first public consumption of tomatoes in New England, Corne ate fresh tomatoes before a crowd of locals who suspected the worst in 1820. Corne survived the tumult and tomatoes lost their reputation for being a poisonous love apple. 

Heirloom tomatoes ignore the controversy of whether the tomato is fruit (technically, yes) or a vegetable, a Supreme Court ruling in 1892 assigned it vegetable status to conform with common English, not botany. Although the first genetically engineered plant was the tomato, the species great adaptability offers many locally developed types. Most are treasured for their robust flavor. More commercial growers have little tolerance for lower yields, odd shapes and colors, or short shelf life. Home gardeners however suffer no qualms for these deficits. 

Black Krim, Mr. Stripy, and Brandywine rival Beefsteak for eating out of hand. Brandywine produces huge grotesque fruit that must be harvested while the stem is still a bit green. The large fruit is thick and flavorful as compensation for lower yields. Have fun and explore the numerous specialty tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes are the sweetest, golden or white tomatoes are least acidic, the so-called plum tomatoes, after the shape, not the fruit, such as Roma and Napoli are superb thick fleshed cooking types. 

All tomatoes require cultivation. Their rampant vining origins are somewhat limited to determinate and indeterminate types, generally tomatoes continue to grow right up to frost leaves the gardener with hordes of green tomatoes on withered vines. Tomatoes are reliable from seed, although seldom directly sown into Zone 6 gardens. Most growers start seed indoors or for the majority of us, much of the fun of growing tomatoes is the search for untried types available as single transplants. 

Tomatoes free ranging vines are ideal for vertical garden techniques. The range of trellis designs is limited only imagination. Clad wire bent into 24” cages bought years ago continue to support the tomato crop. Father loved to grow Beefsteak. A notable forager, he chanced upon dumpsters full of ski pole “seconds”. The light weight pointed metal poles were the perfect length, their metallic blue, red, and other colors an added bonus to utility. His tomato poles lasted for decades. Loosely tie off tomato plants with torn tshirts or burlap. Snip off sprouts from leaf junctures for a more groomed appearance and visible picking. A few will escape attention during summer’s dog days when many gardeners seek relief from the heat on beaches or mountain sides. No worries, they will also produce fine fruit. 

Tomatoes form roots from the stem.  Bury spindle transplants grown in tiny pots up to the first leaf juncture; especially if purchased before Memorial Day. Rare finds in the heirloom department are best kept in larger pots, roots near the bottom, all but a few leaves covered in soil. Keep in a sheltered space and moist. The transplants will form extensive root systems during the busy late spring season and can be moved into spaces vacated by cool weather crops such as lettuce or mustard. Tomato cuttings also root easily in dark glass jars. 

Healthy soils are often the best insect and disease prevention. Basil and garlic are good companion plants for tomatoes. The Great Horned Tomato worm is a notorious tomato pest. Stripped leave stems and distinctive droppings are often the best evidence of their presence, the voracious “worm” blends into tomato foliage. Pick off and compost. Tomatoes grown surrounded by a thick mulch are usually soil and blemish free. Follow these simple guidelines and enjoy one of the garden year’s highlights, the hot sunny day late in July or early August when the gardener’s hand reaches for the first tomato. It’s love at first sight. 

Leonard Moorehead is a life-long gardener. He practices organic-bio/dynamic gardening techniques in a side lot surrounded by city neighborhoods in Providence RI. His adventures in composting, wood chips, manure, seaweed, hay and enormous amounts of leaves are minor distractions to the joy of cultivating the soil with flowers, herbs, vegetables, berries, and dwarf fruit trees.

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