2008 Home Tomato Report: Better Luck Next Year!

Another beautiful spring and summer has passed on the Palouse and it is already time for the 2008 Home Tomato Report. The quest to grow abundant, flavorful, red tomatoes and harvest them before the first frost, must be one of the biggest challenges for the average gardener in temperate climates. This year, I reached a new milestone in my home vegetable garden. I grew some of the smallest tomatoes ever known to horticultural science. Unfortunately, I won’t be making the Guinness Book of World Records any time soon, because everyone else in Pullman and the surrounding area reports about the same success with their tomatoes in 2008 as me.

However, rather than blame myself, I’ve got the usual scape goat lined up - weather! This summer on the Palouse was unusually cool to even cold at times. And yes, it did snow heavily on June 10th this year. Who could blame tomato plants for just sitting around for months on end, wondering when the summer heat would finally arrive? The days of 90+ temperatures (but it’s a dry heat...) were relatively few and far between this summer.

It’s not that you can’t get good, flavorful tomatoes in your grocery store, or better yet, at your local farmer’s market. You certainly can. Indeed, my favorite store-bought tomato to combat winter scurvy is the Campari tomato. Slighty larger than a typical cherry tomato, these tomatoes are usually sold about 10-12 on a piece of vine. They are absolutely delicious on a salad or just eaten by themselves as a treat.



And you can also try samples of heirloom tomatoes, if you can get past the weird appearance of some of these old-fashioned varieties of tomatoes. The variations in flavors, textures, and uses of different tomatoes are enormous, and thanks to modern horticulture, we now have tomatoes in stores year around. But nothing can compare to the taste of a fresh, vine-ripened tomato right out of your own garden.

Next year, I’m going to go hi-tech in an all out effort to make sure I’ve got an abundance of vine-ripened tomatoes. I’m going to put plants in fairly early, cover the tomatoes with plastic hot houses, and then extend the growing season in the fall with a miniature greenhouse or plastic put over my raised bed gardens. Okay, we all know it still won’t work and I’ll be trying to get some tomatoes to ripen before the frost, but what the heck? Having an impossible quest for tomato perfection, or at least tomato abundance, gives me something to do and keeps me out of trouble.

So back to the official 2008 Home Tomato Report. Here it is: better luck next year!