Tomato
Lycopersicon esculentum
I
f anyone ever needed a reason to grow their
own kitchen garden, it would surely be to get
a tomato that tastes truly wonderful: a com
bined sweetness with a balanced acidity and a
glorious just-picked aroma, somewhat like a
geranium in full fl ower.
Tomatoes are perennials but grown, for the
most part, as annuals. And in our part of the
world, growing them at all can be a problem
because rainfall can cause heavy blight in the
fall. Mine did very well, at least from my per
spective, which is colored by never having
grown one before.
The fabled Brandywine plant produced
only three fruits—one ugly and two picture
perfect and delicious. (Although I asked our
local experts why this might be, I did not get
any kind of meaningful answer.)
By far the best tasting was an orange cherry
tomato called Sun Gold, which fl ourished
and bore lots of fruit. Meanwhile, the small
lemon yellow pear-shaped variety, Yellow Pear,
split early, its skin too tender for its rapid
growth.
The fruit of the plants nearest the evening
sun, Early Girl, were large, deeply colored, and
abundant.
The other plant I liked, Russian Paste, is use
ful for Italian plum-style (Roma) tomato sauces
and for drying.
My greenhouse varieties didn’t do as well as
those set out in the raised beds with a sturdy
trellis, where I warmed the soil using green
plastic mulch. I let the greenhouse plants climb
sticks and strings, but they quickly became
home to hundreds of whiteflies, which I was
told could be hosed off with a good pressure
shower of fresh water. That technique worked
for only a while and seemed to damage the
lower leaves. Later I used diluted neem oil,
which worked much better.
I had planted them too close to each other
in the EarthBoxes and hadn’t tapped them
each day to self-pollinate.
In the coming years, I’m going to focus on
three varieties: Brandywine, Sun Gold cherry,
and Russian Paste. The latter two I will bring
indoors (the greenhouse) and let them grow up
a coarse garden string. And this time I will do
better with daily tapping close to the fl owers
to help self-pollination (done by the wind and
insects outside) and will diligently remove the
suckers that grow out of the crotch of each leaf
stem. (My pals tell me to do this once a week
without fail and in that way concentrate energ y
toward the fruit.)
The Numbers
For each 100 g (3.5 oz ; ½ cup): 18 calories, 0 g fat,
0 g saturated fat, 4 g carbohydrate, 1 g protein, 1 g
dietary fiber, 5 mg sodium
252 • GROWING AT THE SPEED OF LIFE
