Tomatoes
I have grown tomatoes for over fifty years. At our farm in Sebastopol I used to grow 48 plants, so many because of possible disease and depredation by gophers. We ate them fresh, made sauces, gifted many, and dehydrated enough for a year’s supply of “sun-dried” tomatoes which we froze.
There are 10,000 varieties of tomatoes. I tried many through the years, and settled on a few. If I do say so myself, those I grew were very good, as agreed upon by a variety of folks and even commercial enterprises that tried them. I attribute this to my techniques, but mostly to the exact soil I inherited when I bought the farm. The garden area had been a garden for 100+ years; lucky me.
Tomatoes are on my mind because though we live in a condo we are still able to access the garden on the farm. So I settled on two varieties….Early Girl, which is the world’s best all-around tomato, and Ace, incredibly tasty and large. While house-sitting (and cat-sitting) during our kid’s vacation I have been focussing on the tomato bed. Keeping the growth under control in the cages, weeding, snipping off the few yellowing leaves, and, especially, flicking off the dried flower petals from the bottom of each tomato. This completely prevents Blossom End rot in my experience. Adding calcium like bone meal at planting helps this as well. Most people over-water tomatoes. Near the end of summer I cut back, for more intense flavor.
When buying tomatoes try to find those with “heft”, that is, seem heavy for their size.
Note to belinda and maggiejean…...yeah, I know New Jersey tomatoes are the best (so they say).