As most of you know I am a TomatoManiac! I grow many heirloom tomatoes each year, as the whole family loves them. Tiffiny, Andrew, Marko and Melania love the cherry tomatoes and eat them like candy. I grow a rainbow of colours-Sungold (orange-yellow), Snow White (cream coloured), Sweet 100's and Chadwick's (red), Green Grape, Black Cherry, Dr Caroline (pink and a yellow one too)and so on make for yummy colourful healthy snacks.
The tomato is the world's most popular fruit.
Often the question arrises "which is more nutritious, the commercial variety that goes into ketchup or the precious heirloom beloved by gourmets?"
The recent scare of tainted tomatoes put a fear into many who wouldn't risk eating store bought tomatoes. Although my tomatoes weren't ripe yet we continued to buy them at the Farmer's Market as they were locally grown in California. California stem tomatoes were cleared early on of the possible strain of samonilla that was making hundreds quite ill. Many of the US tomatoes are grown nearby in the Sacramento Valley, or as we fondly call it "Sacratomato".
In August the gleam of sun-rippened tomatoes amongst the drying foliage is quite a site. Soon the harvesting machines will pick these tomatoes for processing. These tomatoes are determinates IE all ripening at once, which is perfect for commercial harvesting.
Ed Darack/ www.darack.com
Whereas the beloved heirloom tomatoes are indeterminates that continue producing over a few months. To me these are the real tomatoes, those of our grandparents.
Each variety holds history within. Where did they originate and how did they come to be grown in the US.
Most of the commerically grown tomatoes in California are determinate hybrids-bred for shipping and heavy yield. They have thick skins and are fleshy fruit that ripen simultaneously to withstand machine harvesting.
Italian San Marzanos are touted as the best
California tomatoes are supplied to such as Pizza Hut, Campbell's Soup and Unilever, maker of Ragu. Processing tomatoes—condensed or canned—make up 75 percent of the tomatoes that Americans eat. Farmers think of them as an entirely different crop than fresh-market tomatoes. There is no reason in having a lot of volatile flavors in a processing tomato because cooking boils them off, and, besides, much of the flavor of ketchup and tomato sauce comes from whatever the tomatoes are mixed with not the actual tomato.
Heirloom tomatoes yield as little as five tons to the acre, or about one-eighth of Hybrid commerical tomatoes. harvest from one acre. But home canned tomatoes are the best!
