TOMATOES: We recently shared gardening tips from fellow master gardener Donald Comes of Smethport.
He’s since passed along a couple of gardening-related articles he’s found.
One is an old ’Round the Square column with a brief history of growing tomatoes. We’re not sure how old the column is, but it mentions a recently passed bill from the Ohio Senate naming tomato juice the state’s official drink.
We looked it up, and tomato juice became Ohio’s state drink in 1965.
The column reads, “The tomato was probably carried into Central America and Mexico about 2,000 years ago. Aztecs gave it the name tomatl.” The seeds were taken by explorers Europe, where it was grown as a decorative plant until Italians began growing the fruit for food. That was around 1550.
There is no record that tomato plants were grown in the colonies in North America until after the Declaration of Independence — Thomas Jefferson grew them in 1781 — but it would be decades before tomatoes were accepted as a food source here.
“Until a century ago, most Americans regarded the tomato as poisonous and grew it mainly as an ornamental curiosity. Now they are consuming tomatoes at a rate of about 5.5 million tons a year.”
In fact, “Lingering uncertainty about tomatoes was reflected in an 1893 Supreme Court case concerning import duties on fruit. The justices held tomatoes to be a vegetable because they were served and eaten at the main part of the meal.”
We wonder if that is why the fruit is so commonly considered to be a vegetable?
The column details the “tenacity of horticulturalists and farmers” who have helped the fragile vegetable survive through temperature extremes, mildew and a host of pests: everything from mites to turtles.
With the innovations like the mechanical harvester and new tomato strains, tomatoes have become extremely popular.
Donald also passed along a column written by fellow local gardener L.A. Rotheraine. Rotheraine is biodynamic gardener, and he looks to the sky to help determine when to plant.
According to Rotheraine, the moon journeys through the 12 constellations over the the course of a month, and during that time, the energy entering the earth changes. He recommends sowing and making fruit seeds when the sun and moon are in fire signs, sowing root crops when the sun and moon are in the earth signs, sowing leafy veggie seeds when the sun and moon are in water signs.
Larry’s methods are a little unconventional, but no one can deny he grows amazing tomatoes. The Evergreen Elm garden, where Larry works with the agency’s tenants to grow their award-winning vegetables, has boasted tomato plants reaching more than 12 feet tall over the years.
