Tomato Timing: Feast or Famine?

In late May, I planted four heirloom-variety tomato plants -- which will give us more than enough tomatoes. So why was I compelled to add two more? I mean, do we really need six tomato plants when there are only two of us in the house? Granted, we do eat tons of them; as with spinach, we eat tomatoes almost every day (which I'm hoping balances out some of my less-healthy choices).

There's always the possibility of giving them away, but it's actually hard to find folks who want them at harvest time. Everyone we know seems to either have a tomato plant or two in the backyard (Sarah and Tim, our Awesome NeighborsTM, have six or so plants of their own), or else they hit one of the many Twin Cities farmer's markets regularly enough not to need produce hand-outs from us.

So, again: after putting in four tomato plants last month, why was I compelled to add two more? It's a timing thing.

When I originally picked out the four heirloom varieties that we're growing this year, I was concentrating on the diversity of the actual fruit, looking forward to having lots of different kinds of tomatoes. (Lund's, a very nice supermarket near us, frequently sells containers of mixed heirloom tomatoes in the summer, and the variety of colors and sizes is just gorgeous. That's the effect I was after. It's amazing to make a panzanella -- an Italian bread-tomato-and-herb salad-- with lots of colors and shapes of tomatoes.)

Look at this gorgeous mix of heirloom tomatoes! Imagine them chopped and then tossed with grilled chunks of crusty bread, roasted onions and peppers, a red wine vinaigrette and a mix of fresh herbs. Pair with chilled Pinot Grigio. Tastes like summer!

So in looking for varying types of fruit, I didn't think about selecting tomatoes that would be ready for harvest at different times. As a result, I picked heirlooms that will probably all be ripe within weeks or even days of each other. And until that time, I got nothing. It's tomato feast or famine.

Well, after a couple of weeks of buying boring old Romas at the grocery store, I got to thinking about staggering the harvest by adding a tomato that would mature a little earlier: hence, two new "Early Girl" plants. While Early Girls won't have quite the flavor of the heirloom varieties, they're still heads and shoulders above the taste of generic grocery store tomatoes, and we'll get to start eating fresh tomatoes a little sooner.