Harvesting Wolf Peaches

In the course of my random research, I learned that tomatoes were once called "wolf peaches" because it was thought that the tomato, being a close relative of the deadly nightshade, was poisonous. For years after Cortez brought them from the New World to the old, tomato plants were grown only as novelty plants in royal gardens. Eventually, some brave soul must have decided to eat one, but it wasn't until the late 1800's when Joseph Campbell introduced his famous tomato soup that the plant's popularity really took off in America. Its high acid content also contributed to its popularity; it was a perfect candidate for another relatively new innovation: home canning. Since then, people have been cultivating tomatoes in every state, and the different cultivars reflect the characteristics of the regions they were diligently bred and developed through the painstaking process of selective breeding.

Cortez's wolfpeaches were probably a bit like the cherry tomatoes I pick every day -- small in size but tasting exactly like what they are -- little drops of sunlight and rain perfectly ripened on the vine. I've been using them to make salsa, pasta, and most recently panzanella (Tuscan bread salad). It's probably one of my favorite things. It was a big hit at our weekly dinner party and I promised I'd share the recipe, so here it is:

2 C cherry tomatoes, halved (or regular tomatoes, diced)
1 large cucumber, sliced (I used two cute little ones from my garden)
2 day-old baguettes, cut into bite-sized pieces. Or, you can use fresh baguettes, cubed and toasted in the oven at 400 degrees until slightly crisp.
1 small red onion, sliced thin
1 C basil leaves, chopped
1/4 C grated parmesan

Dressing:
Balsamic Vinegar
Olive oil
Sugar
Salt & Pepper

Toss all the salad ingredients together with the dressing until well-mixed. Serve at room temperature.

I borrowed this picture from another website because I forgot to take one. But if you do it right, it should look like this lovely photo!

Over the course of the summer, I've learned a lot about how tomatoes (and other plants) grow and what they need, what I want to grow again and what plants seem to just take up space. From where I stand now, in the middle of harvest season, I can say enthusiastically that my first garden has been a success, but I know what I'm going to do differently next time.

One of my mistakes that annoys me most is that I didn't grow a good, high-yielding, standard-sized tomato. I love the flavor and instant gratification of my cherry tomatoes, but their scope of use is pretty narrow. The same qualities that make them so delicious for eating fresh make them unsuitable for sauce or preserves - being composed mostly of juice and seeds, there wouldn't be much left of them after skinning, coring, and boiling them down. The romas I'm growing are great for sauce, but not much else. They are so dry and mealy the idea of trying to eat one fresh is actually pretty gross. And, Brandywine tomatoes are unmatched for flavor, but they are low-yielding, difficult to pick, and split if left too long on the vine. Purple Russian was pretty useless all-around, though the few that I did get to eat were tasty, juicy, and had a very interesting purple/forest green color that I've never seen in another tomato.

Purple Russian Glamour Shot - This is the stock photo they show you in seed catalogs! You can see a couple of my Ruskies in the very top image - not as purple as they appear here.

Bottom line: next year, I will be growing exactly one cherry tomato plant (probably Peacevine again -- I love it!), and I'll probably skip Brandywine tomatoes entirely. Even though I love their pretty leaves and their amazing, pumpkin-sized pink fruits, they just take up so much room for relatively little payoff. Instead I'm going to grow one nice, mid-sized heirloom. And, in spite of my love for the unusual and old-fashioned, I'm going to give in and grow some hybrids that will give me the yields I need to make all the trouble of canning worthwhile. Some pictures from one of my canning adventures:


Some things I've learned about tomatoes:
- "Crack Resistant" is a very good quality to look for, lest you be stuck with five 1-pound tomatoes that are rapidly splitting and oozing all over your hands as you're trying to pluck them from the vine. On the plus side, many surprise spaghetti dinners have started this way.
- Earliness is a nice thing in our short-season climate, but when you get a picture-perfect summer like we had, slow-maturing tomatoes are supposed to be of better quality.
- Heirlooms are great, but there's a good reason hybrids exist: they mature faster, produce more uniform fruits, have greater disease resistance, etc. etc.
- You probably don't need more than one cherry tomato plant in a small garden.

So that's my two cents. Oh, and after an entire summer cooking with tomatoes I've decided my favorite way to eat them is still like this: cut tomatoes and some good mozzarella into quarter-inch slices. Layer with fresh basil leaves on a pretty plate and sprinkle with sea salt and fresh pepper. Enjoy these marvels of selective breeding and think of that brave 16th century dude who dared to eat the first wolf peach!