I have a beautiful memory of childhood trips to Mississippi to visit my father's family. My aunt Zelma and my grandmother would cook enormous rich meals. Aunt Zelma would say, "Get those maters from the winder sill, and wash em and slice em."
Now that middle Tennessee has seen a few weeks of hotter weather, my tomatoes are producing something! The peppers and tomatoes have been slow this summer but now I'm eating cherry tomatoes and basil and peppers everyday.
Tomatoes are a warm weather crop, an annual plant, benefitting from open space (air flow) and lost of sunny warm weather. I rarely buy tomatoes from the grocery store, and welcome summer tomatoes from my own garden or from neighbors, friends, and local produce stands.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/37271/title/Opinion--Restoring-Tomato-Flavor/
This easy article explains quite a bit about store -bought tomatoes and why they just don't taste as good as home-grown. Like many hybrid species (even animals), when we hybridize to produce desired traits, we often lose other desireable traits, or even create new problems. Mass-produced tomato species now, have been mostly bred for high yield, easy transport, tough skins, and the ability of a crop to come ripe at a similar time. Bred away inadvertently were many of the sugars and carotenoids. Combine this situation with refrigerated transport, and picking green....and we've got those tomatoes we know so well...pretty and plump and...not so tasty.
It's relatively easy to grow a few tomato plants at home, even with very little space. If you've got six hours of sun or better, try it. Buy your tomato plants from a local plant sale, like Master Gardeners field days, PPSMT sale, or at a store selling local starts.
Here's a pic of today's harvest: a
'Better Boy' and
'Husky' cherry tomatoes. Yum!
