Homegrown Tomatoes

The tomato... requires heat and sun to bring out its qualities; but even then, it is better if you pick it yourself from the vine.

Charles Dudley Warner

Biting into a sun warmed, flavorful homegrown tomato has to be one of the supreme delights of a summer vegetable garden!!!

Joyce Prisco

Large farm growers have created tomato varieties that have a longer shelf life in the market while retaining a pretty red color. Yet if you’ve ever had a homegrown tomato, it’s hard to imagine that the intensely flavored garden variations are even the same fruit as what you can purchase in a grocery store! 

Homegrown tomatoes come in thousands of different varieties. Colors of red to purple to black. Green and orange striped. Yellow or orange tomatoes. Then there’s the sizes. From tomatoes hardly bigger than your fingernail and growing in bunches like grapes to huge tomatoes bigger than a large person’s fist! 

What’s truly most amazing about homegrown tomatoes is their flavors. Ranging from sweet to tangy to smoky, each has a flavor unique to the tomato variety. Even the common grocery store varieties taste better when homegrown! Whether it’s the intense sun, faithful watering customized to each type, or something else, the flavors are often exceptional!  I like to think that part of it is the personal care and celebrating each type of tomato. 

Makes me wonder if we gave that same care to all the things that we tend to in our lives, what would happen?  Also, if we appreciated the incredible variety in people that we do in tomatoes, wouldn’t the world be a better place?