Talking Tomatoes!

What Will We Have This Week?

We have sweet corn (an early, small variety but quite tasty), lots of zucchini, lots or cucumbers, lots of eggplants, tomatoes, the end of the peas, some beans, some broccoli, some okra, onions, some tomatillos!, a few cherry tomatoes, and of course anything I have forgotten.

It is a Fruit, Shrooms, Eggs and Flower week. Fruit is cherries, strawberries, blueberries and Flavor Grenade pluots — these are by far my favorite pluot. Shrooms are Chestnut mushrooms.

Farm News

Time for this season’s episode of Tomato Talk!

First, I’ve discussed this before in past newsletters but perhaps some of you with short memories don’t remember. We grow a bunch of different types of tomatoes. We grow yellow ones. We grow green ones. We grow black ones (though they aren’t really black). We grow yellow striped ones. We grow yellow with red striped ones. And we even grow red ones. I mention this because I like to help people. And by telling you this I am helping you. Helping you to realize that you can’t tell how ripe your tomatoes are by waiting for them to turn red. For many of them you’d be waiting a lifetime. And frankly I think there are better things to do in your life than sit around waiting for tomatoes to turn red, but you do you.

We pick the tomatoes at the breaker or blush stage of ripening — or later if we hadn’t picked them yet. Some people would consider this under-ripe and it is. But at this stage the tomato plant creates a layer of cells between the fruit and the plant that stops the plant from adding any nutrients to the fruit. It effectively cuts off the fruit. And since tomatoes are climacteric they will further ripen off the plant. By picking them at the breaker stage we can give you the full vine-ripened flavor (if you wait long enough) with a longer shelf life.

So how do you tell if a tomato is ripe? By feel. The more give the tomato gives the riper the tomato. A softer tomato is riper than a harder tomato. That’s just science.

Second, do not put tomatoes in the fridge. This changes the molecular structure of the fruit and makes them mushy and if you are like me, you do not want mushy tomatoes — that’s just science. If you cut a tomato and for some reason are not able to finish it you may need to look into why you aren’t eating enough but you can also put the cut tomato in the fridge. The ideal temperature for storing tomatoes is 50 degrees (that’s Fahrenheit by the way). If you keep your house at 50 your tomatoes could last a long time. You might want to consider it. If not, your tomatoes will continue to ripen and eventually be ready to eat!

Next, when the temperature outside gets hot like it has been for the last many weeks (I just heard on the local weather report that this summer is the third longest/hottest/something since records have been kept. I probably should have been paying closer attention.) some tomatoes develop an issue called “yellow shoulder”. Yellow shoulder occurs when the fruit doesn’t fully transition during ripening. The chloroplasts don’t fully transition to chromoplasts, again science. High fruit temperature, interacting with a genetically susceptible variety and sometimes aggravated by potassium deficiency or water stress, disrupts chloroplast-to-chromoplast conversion in the shoulder tissue. Without that conversion, lycopene doesn’t accumulate, chlorophyll persists, and the shoulder remains yellow or green and firm (thanks internet!) It is safe to eat the tomato and the shoulder of the tomato. It just won’t have the typical tomato flavor or texture. Hopefully we will get some cooler temperatures to reduce the incidents of yellow shoulders.

Finally, the water we use for irrigation comes from a well that is 290 feet deep. I assume the water we get from this well is quite old. I also assume this water is as old as all water on the planet no matter where it comes from. So this old water we use has been around since at least the days of the dinosaurs and that the dinosaurs drank this very same water. Does that mean we are irrigating our crops with dinosaur urine? This is the type of question that pops into my head when I’m out harvesting 300 zucchini in 90+ degree weather with 70+ degree dew points and no clouds in the sky. Let’s hope for some cooler weather.

Recipe of the Week

If you never tried tomatillos before, here is a delicious, easy recipe for Salsa Verde. I’ll have to see if I can find some jalapenos — maybe next week.

This recipe comes from one of our members who must speak Serbian since I can’t understand what the person in this video is saying and Google says it’s Serbian. But thankfully there is an English translation that helps us non-Serbian speakers. This might be a better recipe for next week since I think we’ll be digging potatoes then.

Joke of the Week

Why did the tomato turn red?

It saw the salad dressing.

How do you fix a broken tomato?

With tomato paste.

As always, send in questions, comments, suggestions, jokes or anything else you think I’d enjoy!