Botanists know it as Solanum lycopersicum 'wolf peach.' Introduced into Europe, it was supposed poisonous and so lethal to lupus. But Europeans never seemed to agree between themselves and, being European, favour an aphrodisiacal explanation.
According an editorial last year in the journal Nature, the world produces some 800 billion tomatoes each year. Most are an insult to consumers. The only answer is to grow your own. Here are some timely tips and a little on the background of the home gardeners favourite fruit.
In fact the now universally appreciated fruit originated far away in another hemisphere, many centuries previously. Although native to the Andes of South America, it was the Mayas of Central America who domesticated tomatoes, along with avocados, vanilla and maize (corn). Having gazed upon the Pacific from a peak in Darien, Cortez observed tomatoes growing in Montezuma's gardens in 1519. Within a short time his fellow conquistadors had introduced them to Europe.
You have a wide choice when it comes to choosing which tomatoes to grow. There are more than 15,000 known varieties. But you'll likely lucky to discover a half-dozen different plants at the local garden centre, plus perhaps a dozen in seed packages. If you are looking for flavour, ignore bush forms. These may be labelled 'determinate,' originating as a spontaneous mutation in Florida in 1914. Until commercial interests got involved, tomatoes were vines, or 'indeterminate' in tom-talk. Thank the University of California, Davis for the 1950s introduction of that modern monstrosity, the supermarket tomato.
Each plant will require two square feet to grow or, at a pinch, a 10-inch plastic pot. Despite plants being sold earlier, planting out before the air temperature reaches 15ºC will set them back. Since night temperatures often drop below that, experienced gardeners make 'hot caps' out of empty, well-washed bleach bottles with their base removed. They are placed over the tender plants in the evening, removed the following morning.
Tomatoes being vigorous growers, they require a good loam, enriched with composted horse, rabbit, or sheep manure. Gardeners with a sense of humus claim that from elephants produces really big fruit. Calcium is critical for the young plants. Pour a sludge of eggshells whipped up with water in the blender into each planting hole. Fertilize with any commercial blend according to label instructions. Once the first fruit have set, apply a tablespoon of Epsom salts every two weeks around the base of each plant without actually touching it.
Most tomatoes require daytime air and soil temperatures of 22ºC to 25ºC . Pollination fails below 15C, although the 'Siberia' tomato that arrived Canada 1970s sets fruit at 10ºC --and ripens in 48 days.
Indeterminate vines can easily reach six feet or more in a season. A single one may bear half a dozen or more trusses of fruit--ten pounds or more in total depending on variety. Tomato plants then require sturdy stakes--2x2s seven or eight feet long, hammered well in. Support each truss with a tie below. Soft and resistant to rotting, discarded panty hose is an excellent choice for this chore.
The vines will likely attempt to form side shoots at each leaf axil. The laid-back gardener may tolerate these. Many hold, however, that these must be pinched out every few days, directing all the plant's energy into the main stem. Pay particular attention to watering. A single tomato plant in full growth can require two gallons per day. The ripe, lush fruit are 93.5% water.
Spanish botanists distributed the seeds over the rest of western Europe and the rest of the world. A few were grown as ornamentals in garden of Henry VIII (1491-1547). Since panty hose unknown then what they tied them with--if anything--is unknown. They had certainly reached Italy by 1544. There they were known as pomi dei Moro, Moors' apples, misinterpreted by lascivious visiting Frenchman as pomme d'amour, love-apple, an aphrodisiac.
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Perhaps this news reached the upright pilgrims of New England to dissuade them from indulging. Further south, tomatoes reached the Carolinas in the late 1680s. They were grown in Thomas Jefferson's famed Monticello garden from June 1809. In an effort to prove they were not poisonous, Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson (1771-1850) on steps of courthouse Salem, New Jersey on 26 September 1820 ate a whole basketful of tomatoes. While the colonel was certainly a renown horticulturist, the story, first published 1940, is pure folk fable.
Tomatoes botanically are a fruit, if usually grown in the home vegetable garden. But to the legal mind it is a veggie. In1893 Justice Horace Gray of the U.S. Supreme Court argued that since were usually served at dinner, in, with, or after the soup, fish, or meat and so a vegetable and, incidentally, subject to increased import tariffs.
Whiteflies and spider mites are major pests. Old-fashioned soapy water sprayed under the foliage at regular intervals is highly effective as are yellow sticky boards placed close by. Surprisingly, tomato foliage kills many other pests. It will, though, also sicken humans (and their pets) if brewed up in a saucepan used for other purposes. Diseases are another matter. Here, advanced science is the only answer. Genes have been bred into modern hybrids to protect against nearly 50 different tomato maladies. Fusarium wilt, verticillium wilt, mosaic virus, early blight, late blight, anthracnose, blossom end rot, septoria leaf spot, leaf mould--the list seems endless.
Oh yes, and should the juicy fruit be pronounced 'tomahto' or 'tomayto'? Either way--but much depends on whether you are from the UK or the US. The former is standard in the UK--but also in New England and much of the rest of the US East Coast. Elsewhere in the US it is 'tomayto.' A few back the Aztecs, who called it tomatl and, it is claimed, pronounced it 'tomahtl.' In the words of the George and Ira Gershwin song for the 1937 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers 1937 film Shall We Dance, 'Let's Call the Whole Thing Off.'
Wes Porter is a horticultural consultant and writer based in Toronto. Wes has over 40 years of experience in both temperate and tropical horticulture from three continents.
