A very important vegetable plant you discuss today.
Tomatoes are one of the most rewarding crops for the home gardener to grow simply because their flavour is so much better than their shop bought cousins. Tomatoes grown for the supermarket shelf have been bred to travel well and look good on the shelves for as long as possible; tickling your taste buds is not their number one priority.
Many commercially produced tomatoes are also grown in soilless environments using an artificial fertilizer solution and are picked before they are ripe; both of these practices result in tomatoes that look nice but don’t taste great. Research has also shown that organic, homegrown tomatoes have a much more complex chemistry than commercially produced fruits. Not only does chemistry equal a greater depth of flavour, it is also likely that homegrown tomatoes are healthier with higher levels of the pigment ‘Lycopene’. Lycopene has been shown to help unclog blocked arteries and is thought to be one of the reasons the Mediterranean diet is so healthy.
Tomato white wonderThe other big bonus with growing your own tomatoes is the amazing variety of size, shape, colour and flavour there is available. A bit like the potato (they are, of course, close relations) there are a huge range of different types for very large ‘beefsteak’ varieties to small and sweet ‘cherry’ fruits. They are fun to grow and give such a great reward that they have to be one of stars of the home vegetable plot
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