October 15th, 2009 by Overallgirl

Tomatoes are one of my favorite garden crops- I guess they are everyone’s favorite, but is it any wonder?  Their smell fresh off the vine, their taste, their juiciness.  Tomatoes are just one endeavor that is a true pleasure to see through from start to finish.  These pleasures include:  Adding our special compost recipe to prepare the soil in our very own garden bed that hubby built (more on the compost recipe in another post in future).   Planting and watering specific varieties of tomato plants that were carefully chosen (some of which are heirloom varieties).  Hunting for ripe tomatoes under thick mats of dense green foliage (this will be really fun for the baby when it gets big enough).  Picking the tomatoes when they are ready, my wicker baskets feeling full and content as they brim higher and higher with their vivid red flesh.   Swiping tomatoes on a pass through the garden and munching on them whole with just a dash of salt.  Canning the overflow that seem to get ripe all at once, finishing with a shelf full of gorgeous red colored glass quart jars (jars by the way which were sustainably and thriftily found for free on freecycle.org).

Speaking of tomatoes though…unfortunately this year although the tomatoes look great, they don’t taste as yummy as usual.  We think it’s due to the fact that we accidentally ended up having too much nitrogen in the soil- this seems to have resulted in tons of leafy growth and huge tomatoes (or as a friend stated “ginormous”), but the taste category is less than impressive.  We knew it would be a problem, but it was too late to do anything about it.

One thing we’ve found to really improve the taste factor of our tomatoes is watering- or rather, NOT watering.  It may sound surprising, but once the tomato plants are established in the ground and going strong, it’s time to cut off that water supply cold-turkey and let nature do it’s own work.  I’m serious.  Even in the heat.  Their roots grow deep- they’ll be just fine.   We did this last year with great success- I didn’t know at the time that this is apparently called Dry Farming.  Check out the linked article to see an interesting study being done by UC Santa Cruz regarding dry farming tomatoes.  By not over watering, the sugars becomes more concentrated in the tomatoes, making for more robust flavor.  But honestly, in the end, ANY tomato from your garden is going to be better than one from the store.