Trouble with Tomatoes

Back in my previous life in Georgia, I was a pretty decent gardener. Corn, cabbages, squash, zucchini, all manner of "greens," lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, okra, broccoli, and too many snow peas all flourished until the heat and stink bugs of July became too much. I canned, froze, and pickled all summer, and with the aid of cold frames, we had fresh lettuce and "greens" throughout the winter. About the only vegetables we bought were onions and garlic. It was wonderful to wander out to the garden on a hot afternoon and eat warm cherry tomatoes off the vine!

First Cherry Tomato of the Season

In the nearly 30 years I have been back in south Florida, I have yet to grow a decent tomato. It can be done. Neighbors across the street do it. They're "real" tomatoes, red, juicy and flavorful, because I've tasted them. (I have nice neighbors who share). I've never tried very hard, which might be one reason for my lack of success!

Here, the sand we so wistfully call "soil" does not retain water. You can be flooded on Monday and parched by Thursday, especially if it gets windy, and here practically on the Gulf, it is windy a lot. In their article "Unique Challenges for Florida Growers in Tomato and Pepper Production" G. McAvoy and M. Ozores -Hampton called Florida soil in general "merely a media (sic) to hold plants...". Heavy rainfall and high temperatures also mean that our sand doesn't retain nutrients either. In the same article the authors state that in some Florida soils, "there is nothing to bind minerals to what are basically miniature glass beads." Add root-knot nematodes to the mix, and it's obvious that you can't simply dig up a plot in the back yard and go to town.

Raised beds with lots of organic material and some bags of planting soil are the way to go, but somehow I haven't found the time. Hmmm... in 30 years? I've had minimal success growing tomatoes in pots, but this year I decided to try again. I bought good potting soil and composted manure, and planted my bought tomato starts in large pots.

I must have overdone the manure, because the plants almost died at first, but they recovered and bloomed. I was watching one large tomato swell and ripen - it was beginning to glow with promise, especially on one side. Then something - the grackles are my main suspects - pecked/ate a big hole in one side! Muttering and swearing, I  picked it and cut the offending half off.

The "Good" Side

I used the "good" side in a sauce I made - mainly to add bulk and moisture, because in its unripened state, there wasn't much flavor to be had. Actually, it had about as much flavor as many tomatoes I have bought from supermarkets over the years. 

My truly sad-looking cherry tomato plant pushed out a few berries on a languishing stem. I brought this plant into the screened patio to protect it from birds. As for the big flavor test - They were red inside - that's something, and they sort of tasted like a tomato should, but there was no explosion of flavor in the mouth. They also had tough skins. I read that that can be a reaction to too much sun, so I've moved the pot to a shadier spot back out in the yard. I'm hoping new growth will flower and set fruit before it gets too hot. The plant that produced the first tomato produced some small new fruits, so I brought it into the patio as soon as I noticed any color. Now it is a matter of waiting to see what happens.

Surviving Branch

Thirty odd years ago we were following a huge trailer loaded with green tomatoes in Homestead, Florida. They were piled so high that a bunch rolled off every time the truck hit a dip or hump in the road.  A lot of them bounced! That is no lie. After they'd been exposed to ethylene they might have turned reddish, but they never would have developed the characteristic flavor of a vine-ripened tomato. I doubt that anything has changed flavor-wise in supermarket tomatoes since then.

But there's hope, at least for the home gardener. In developing tomatoes that would produce heavy yields, ripen uniformly, ship well, and appeal to buyers, genes responsible for the tomato's distinctive flavor simply were bred out of the mix. 

Dr. Harry J. Klee, in the Horticultural Sciences Department at the University of Florida, and his colleagues here subjected hundreds of tomato varieties to taste panels to select for best flavor and some keeping ability. The researchers identified the minor chemical compounds responsible for the flavor, and colleagues in China sequenced complete genomes of nearly 400 varieties. If you send a $10 donation for the research, Dr. Klee will send you seeds of 3 varieties - "Garden Treasure," "Garden Gem," and "W. Hybrid." 

My summary is a vast oversimplification, but you can read about it all on Harry's Tasty Tomato Page.

Dr. Klee's lab also is doing some work on melons, lettuce and strawberries - sure would be nice to have strawberries that don't taste like styrofoam! 

Part of my disappointing experiences growing tomatoes in containers in south Florida may be that instead of starting specific varieties from seeds, like I did in Georgia, and like my generous neighbors, I have bought plants from garden centers. They may not have been best-suited for this climate, and it is possible that they suffer from the same genetic flaws as their relatives in the supermarkets. I'm going to send my $10 to Dr. Klee, and wait until it cools off enough to plant - sometime in August or September, I hope. And maybe by then I will have made a few raised beds. It's about time.