Just Around the Corner

Broadly speaking, there are two principal categories of tomatoes; “determinate,” and “indeterminate.” Once a determinate tomato plant has matured, it sets all the flowers it’s ever going to have in one big flush. A pollinated tomato flower is just an impregnated embryo dressed up in a skirt of petals. So, just as a determinate tomato sets all of its flowers at one time, it follows that the fully developed fruits all mature at once. I don’t have anything against determinate tomatoes, but I don’t grow them. Determinate varieties of tomato are best suited for large scale farming operations that mechanically harvest their crops. The machines that harvest the tomatoes make one pass through the field, mowing down the plants and shaking the fruits from the vines and they leave a tangled mess of thrashed vines in their wake. Machine harvesting is cheaper than picking the crop by hand, but if a farmer wants to have a series of harvests of determinate tomatoes they need to plant a series of successive crops. Mechanized harvests of determinate tomatoes make the most sense for farms that are big enough to afford the machines and have enough space for a series of plantings. Determinate tomato breeds find their highest purpose in producing the tons and tons of fruit that are needed for processed tomato production. Most tomato juice, tomato sauce, and canned tomatoes that are commercially available come from determinate varieties. The clockwork precision with which these modern, determinate tomato varieties mature on a schedule allows canneries to operate with production contracts that guarantee a steady flow of raw, cheap product into their factories. My farm is tiny and I serve a local community of home cooks who are doing their own canning, so determinate varieties are not relevant to our needs.

We grow indeterminate varieties of tomato. We are picking by hand and we have a small crew doing all the work so it makes sense for us to grow varieties of tomatoes that live for a long season and yield a modest crop of fruit week after week. That said, we usually make two or three separate plantings of each variety of tomato over a period of eight weeks so that we can be more assured of a steady harvest. And planting several sets of indeterminate tomatoes helps us guarantee that we will have a crop to sell, even if we suffer some problem in the field, like a destructive heat wave, a devastating fungal blight, a plague of pest insects, or an unseasonal heavy rain. At one time or another in the past we have suffered each of these environmental dramas. Luckily, this year, so far at any rate, the slot machine we call a tomato farm has been coming up cherries. In fact, since cherry tomatoes are small and they ripen fast compared to their larger cousins, they’re always our first tomato. Our early crop of cherry toms is kicking in now, and we’ll have two more plantings to pick after this first planting is slowing down. If we lived in the tropics where it never frosts, these cherry tomato plants would likely live for several years. Up here on the 38th parallel the cold weather of late fall will eventually kill them but, with any luck, we’ll have cherry tomatoes all the way to Halloween, and in an exceptional year we may even have a few baskets for Thanksgiving.

One of our main crops of larger tomatoes are the Early Girl tomatoes, which we grow without using any irrigation- a practice called “dry-farming.” When you “dry farm” a crop, you plant it early in the season while the soil still has a lot of moisture near the surface. As the air temperatures rise and subsoil water level recedes, the tomato plants send their roots deeper and deeper into the soil as they chase the water down. Deeper soil typically has less humus in it and more minerality. Flavor in fruit and color in flowers doesn’t come from the nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus that promote vegetative growth so much as from the trace elements of various minerals available in the soil. Any wine grower can wax eloquent about “terroir,” but what they’re really talking about is flavor as an expression of local minerality. Fruit from the same breed of plant grown in different terrain will taste different due to the different spectrum of trace elements that the plants take up, as well as the consequence of varying local climatic conditions. Sicily has won wide fame around the world for the flavor of its tomatoes, and while Latin pride may account for a certain amount of bragging, there’s no doubt that the volcanic ash from Mt Etna has blessed Sicily with an amazing profile of minerals and trace elements that enrich the soil. We can’t compete with Sicily because we have no Etna nearby, but we are at almost the same latitude as Ragusa, Sicily, we enjoy a Mediterranean climate that is similar to theirs. When we dry farm our tomatoes we get their roots down past our super rich topsoil and into the mineral zone. Early Girls come “early,” and we’ll make our first pass through the field on Monday, but it will likely be a few more weeks until we see our first meaningful harvests.

Piennolo crop. There’s lots of fruit out there.

Another crop that we dry farm are the Piennolo tomatoes. You may have seen Piennolo tomatoes in magazine articles about the food traditions of Italy. There is the custom of pulling the green Piennolo plants up by the roots at the end of the season when the cold weather approaches and hanging the vines from the ceilings of Italian kitchens and the green fruits will supposedly ripen within the reach of the cook’s outstretched arms during the winter. We got our seed from my friend, Annabelle, who manages Star Route Farm in Bolinas. As near as I can tell, this variety is very similar to the Principe Borghese tomato that we have grown in the past. Besides being useful as a fresh ingredient, Piennolo tomatoes are also much esteemed as the best crop for sun dried tomatoes. Being as we dry farm our Piennolo tomatoes, the fruits don’t have excessive moisture to begin with, and we plan on drying a quantity of ours and packing them in the local Belle Farms olive oil. We will have some dried Piennolo for sale late this fall, but we will have plenty to sell fresh too in case you want to dry or can your own. The crop looks great so far, but they are never “early,” and I imagine we’ll see our first good harvests by the beginning of August.

Our crop of San Marzano tomatoes are doing fine too. (Photo at top of unripe green San Marzanos). San Marzanos are much appreciated by consumers because their dense, sweet flesh makes for a wonderful sauce. You don’t see San Marzanos so often in major retail settings here because the “sauce niche” is typically covered by cheap, mass produced determinate varieties, but the San Marzano is an iconic Italian variety and you can see it’s distinctive, long, bullet shaped image on the labels of a million cans of imported tomato sauce. It could be that many US growers steer away from raising San Marzanos because the vines can be subject to various diseases. Since we’ve lost a crop or two over the years we take care to plant several sets of San Marzano each year in case we lose one. It’s so far, so good for our San Marzano crop this season, and I expect the first harvests by late July or early August. The heaviest harvests will fall through September and early October, but the first harvests are just around the corner, so buy your jars and make your plans now.

Caprese salad.

Our heirloom tomatoes are about to start too. The Cherokee Purples are always the earliest color to present itself in the spectrum, and we harvested half a dozen boxes last week, which is a good first pass. The Pink Brandywines, Yellow Brandywines, and Marvel Striped tomatoes will follow. We have lots of fresh basil planted, so Caprese salad is just around the corner too. We had a trial run on a Caprese salad in our own kitchen last night and enjoyed it with a bottle of wine from our neighbors at El Vaquero winery. They’ve opened up a tasting room with live music and trivia nights just around the corner from our home farm in Corralitos- and next to our friends at Alladin Nursery who are letting us set up our “honor stall flower stand” in front of their store. Thanks, Gustavo and Alladin staff. Starr has been making herb salt in advance of the harvest so that when the fresh crop comes we have some to sell. Herbed salt brings out a delightful taste in the tomatoes. She also has been preparing a wide range of dried herbs for all the canners out there, like oregano, thyme and marjoram. Get ready now while we have lots in stock. And stay tuned for an upcoming Tomato Palooza in an area near you. We’re also planning a U-Pick event at our home ranch this fall for our dry-farmed Piennolo tomatoes. Keep an eye on the newsletters for updates.

Thanks, Andy and the Crew at Mariquita

© 2022 Essay by Andy Griffin

Photos by Andy Griffin and Starling Linden