Tomatoes: The star players in the home vegetable garden

Toma­toes are prob­a­bly the most pop­u­lar “veg­etable” grown in the home gar­den; how­ever, this hasn’t always been true. While researchers have traced the tomato’s ori­gin to the moun­tains of South Amer­ica, the plant was intro­duced and grown in Europe more than 200 years before being grown in the United States. Thomas Jef­fer­son was the first per­son on record in the United States to cul­ti­vate the tomato, or “love apple,” as it was then called. In fact, in Amer­ica, toma­toes were gen­er­ally thought to be poi­so­nous well into the 1800s, and were grown only for their orna­men­tal value.

Alexan­der Liv­ingston of Reynolds­burg devel­oped the first com­mer­cially suc­cess­ful tomato vari­ety, Paragon, in 1870. Over his life­time, he devel­oped and intro­duced 31 tomato vari­eties. In 1898, he incor­po­rated the Liv­ingston Seed Com­pany, which is still in oper­a­tion in Colum­bus today. Accord­ing to the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture, in 1910 about “half of the major vari­eties were due to the abil­i­ties of the Liv­ingstons to eval­u­ate and per­pet­u­ate supe­rior mate­r­ial in the tomato.”

Today, the tomato has earned a spe­cial place in the home veg­etable gar­den — despite the fact that a tomato con­tains seeds, and, by def­i­n­i­tion, is a fruit. There are sev­eral rea­sons why toma­toes stand out. First, and fore­most, is taste. Who doesn’t enjoy a scrump­tious, juicy, freshly-picked, vine-ripened tomato in com­par­i­son to the less tasty, some­times bland, greenhouse-grown vari­eties that many retail­ers offer year-round?

While toma­toes are a key ingre­di­ent in many recipes, such as lasagna, gaz­pa­cho, rata­touille and salsa, tomato afi­ciona­dos also enjoy eat­ing an unadorned ripe tomato straight from the vine. Not only are they deli­cious and rich in vit­a­mins A and C, but they are low in calo­ries. A medium-sized tomato has about 35 calo­ries. They are a well-known source of carotenoids, includ­ing beta-carotene and lycopene, which are key sources of antiox­i­dants. Antiox­i­dants are sub­stances that can inhibit the oxi­da­tion of other sub­stances and may pro­tect against chronic dis­ease. Toma­toes (fresh and processed) account for more than 80 per­cent of the lycopene in the typ­i­cal diet.

There are more than 7,000 dif­fer­ent tomato vari­eties avail­able com­mer­cially, rang­ing from the newer hybrids to older, clas­sic heir­loom toma­toes. While many of these vari­eties are not read­ily avail­able locally, it still can be a chal­lenge to decide which vari­ety, or vari­eties to grow. You can choose from giant beef­steak toma­toes, which are great, sliced on a sand­wich or burger, or you can grow the ver­sa­tile medium-sized fruits, or the smaller cherry-sized toma­toes, which go well in salads.

In addi­tion, you can grow deter­mi­nant toma­toes that ripen all at once and are an excel­lent choice for can­ning or for mak­ing home­made tomato or spaghetti sauce. Cooks typ­i­cally use plum toma­toes to make red spaghetti sauce, since these toma­toes have a higher solid content.

Heir­loom toma­toes have been gain­ing in pop­u­lar­ity, pri­mar­ily due to their dis­tinct fla­vor. How­ever, off­set­ting this attribute, some heir­loom vari­eties are prone to crack­ing and dis­ease, unlike many newer hybrids, which have been bred for dis­ease resistance.

Toma­toes are a warm weather crop and should not be planted until after the last spring frost date (May 20 in Cen­tral Ohio). The plants should be watered reg­u­larly and grow best in full sun. Given the proper care, a tomato plant can pro­duce 10 pounds or more of toma­toes — an excel­lent return on your investment.

This is a brief arti­cle, but the topic is more com­pre­hen­sively cov­ered in The Ohio State Uni­ver­sity Fact Sheet “Grow­ing Toma­toes in the Home Gar­den” HYG – 1624-10 that is avail­able online at Ohioline.edu. It gives more details, includ­ing fer­til­iz­ing, prun­ing and stak­ing tech­niques to sup­port the plants, and a list of sug­gested hybrid tomato cul­ti­vars and heir­loom plants. Spe­cial prob­lems that you might encounter with tomato plants are also addressed.

Even if the amount of space you can allo­cate for a gar­den is lim­ited, you should be able to make room for toma­toes. They fit well in a con­tainer in a small patio gar­den. So, in case this arti­cle has whet your appetite for some fresh home-grown toma­toes, there is still time (if you hurry) to buy plants and then, later this sum­mer, enjoy the fruits of your labor. Visit your local nurs­ery, con­sult Ohioline.edu, or call the Delaware County Mas­ter Gar­dener Helpline (740–833-2030) week­days for help in get­ting started.

Nancy F. Traub is an OSU Exten­sion Delaware County Mas­ter Gar­dener Volunteer.

Schol­ar­ship opportunity

The OSU Exten­sion Delaware County Mas­ter Gar­dener Asso­ci­a­tion is offer­ing a schol­ar­ship in the amount of $1,000 to a Delaware County Ohio res­i­dent cur­rently pur­su­ing a career in Hor­ti­cul­ture, Agri­cul­ture, Land­scape Archi­tec­ture, Envi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies or Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence. Schol­ar­ship infor­ma­tion can be found at delaware.osu.edu/topics/master-gardener-volunteer-program/scholarship%202010.pdf/view. Schol­ar­ship sub­mis­sion dead­line has been extended until June 30.

Posted by Master Gardener on Jun 18 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.