Episode from the Grow Yourself podcast (host Nicole Johnsey Burke) that surveys tomatoes: their history and etymology, global and U.S. production and trade statistics, nutritional highlights (including lycopene), differences between fresh vs processed and organic vs conventional tomatoes, and practical home-gardening advice (varieties, supports, pruning, and feeding). The host also contrasts tomatoes with peppers and gives consumer/seasonal recommendations.
Questions this episode answers
Approximately 170 million tonnes (2014).
About 12 million acres.
~18 calories and ~95% water per 100 g.
About 35 billion pounds produced in 2015; roughly 8% were for fresh market (≈92% processed).
They can be in the can in less than six hours after harvest (short window).
To the Grow youw Self podcast, surprising stories about food we eat and inspiring conversations. What it really takes. Live whole happy life. We're all craving. I'm Nicole Johnsey Burke, your host, owner of Rooted Garden, Gardenary Incorporated, Author, Kitchen Revival. Welcome. Is it obvious yet? I'm kind of obsessed with the kitchen garden. The kitchen garden may just be the answer that you've been looking for on your own journey to health and wholeness. In this podcast. It's going to inspire and enable you to make garden magic right in your very own space. If you're someone who wants to eat more good food that's actually good for you, fill your day with great stories you want to text to a friend. If you want to hear more about inspiring people and do a little bit each day better than the way you did it the day before. Grow yourself is what your ears have been waiting for. You won't just learn about gardening here, you'll learn how to make growing as a person a big part of your everyday life. And your life, your community. And your garden, of course, will be all the better for it. So put in your headphones, turn up the volume and let's take a walk, go on a drive, or just hang out in the kitchen garden together. Welcome to Grow youw Self. Did you know I love you from my head? Tomatoes. That's right. It's time to talk about the crowning jewel of the kitchen garden. Tomatoes. Today you're going to discover the truth about tomatoes. And let me tell you, you're going to be surprised. I can't wait to tell you about how tomatoes are trucked across the country and what is in that tomato that you're enjoying right now. Whether it be ketchup or salsa or spaghetti sauce or pizza. So much to learn about tomatoes and you are going to be inspired to grow yourself. Today's episode is brought to you by my Kickstart workshop. My Kickstart your kitchen garden workshop is an hour long workshop, super affordable and it will get you going with your garden because some of you haven't started yet. And hello, summer is here. It is time to grow yourself. Don't let another season pass. Go check it out@gardenary.com Kickstart and check out the whole Gardenary site while you're over there cause we have to tons of exciting things happening this month on the Gardenary website. We are celebrating the launch, the official launch of Gardenary. This month you're going to meet coaches. You're going to get to see all the garden coach businesses around the country. And you're going to be so inspired with our amazing articles and resources. So go check it out@gardenary.com now let's find out the truth about your tomatoes. Let's do it. All right. How do you fix a broken tomato? Do you know? We just need some tomato paste. Oh, gosh. I'm back with the bad vegetable puns. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing it does not belong in a fruit salad. Do you want me to keep going with these puns? No, I hear you. You don't like them. It's okay. Today we are talking about tomatoes. Everybody wants to grow a tomato. When you go to Lowe's and Home Depot and all the stores, they're going to have these tomato plants out there, and they're going to be absolutely tempting you to buy them and grow them and all that stuff. So let me start with a little reading from a special book known as Kitchen Garden Revival. Have you ever heard of it? I wrote it and it's out right now. Got to go grab it. In the book, I teach you the unique way to classify your plants, which is by plant family. I'm going to tell you more about the Solanaceae family in just a little bit, but I'm going to read you from the book right now. If you've seen a garden photo, you've almost certainly seen a picture of this family. The quintessential kitchen garden harvest always includes loads of tomatoes for good reason. They are the crowning jewel for the kitchen gardener. Tomatoes are part of the Solanaceae family, which also includes eggplant, peppers, potatoes, and tomatillos. These plants love to grow in warm to hot temperatures and receive loads of sunshine. They have deep roots, so they prefer a bigger garden. Nearly all of them need support. Plants in this family are hungry for loads of nutrients. They will take whatever your soil gives them, and then they will want more. And then some more. Thank you. Most are also in need of pruning and weekly care during their growing season. So don't plant these veggies just before you head out of town for three months. No matter how much work they require, members of the Solanaceae family make it well worth your while. Tomatoes are absolutely worth your while. And today on the Grow youw Self podcast, you're going to find out why you might want to grow a little bit yourself. So let's dig into this super interesting topic, because tomatoes. Oh, my gosh. I kid with my kids that basically every meal I cook for them has tomatoes in it like pizza, hamburgers, spaghetti tacos, nachos, BLTs, I don't know. Chicken nuggets with ketchup. It's like we have tomatoes and carbs and dairy in pretty much every meal they eat. And I know some of you guys might be hating on me for some of those things I just listed, but you know what? That's what we eat. So we love our tomatoes, but they're usually packaged up. So you're going to find out why in this episode. Let's talk about tomatoes. They are one of the world's most consumed vegetable crops according to the Food and Agricultural Organization around. Are you ready for this? £340 billion. That's 170 million tons of fresh and processed tomatoes were produced around the world in 2014. The harvested area covered is 12 million area. 12 million acres of farmland. The world production of tomatoes has consistently increased over the last 20 years since 2000, growing more than 54% from 2000 to 2014. Can you guess which countries produce the most? China's on top, followed by the US and then India. Other major players are in the European Union and Turkey. And these top five tomato producers supply 50, 70% of the global production. But this is key, and you'll find out why. Mexico is actually the largest exporter of tomatoes in the whole world, followed by the Netherlands and Spain. Mexico, Netherlands, and Spain accounted for basically a quarter of the world's total tomato exports. You're going to find out where Mexico is sending their tomatoes soon. All right, so where's this word tomato come from? Tomatoes came from south and Central America. I reference this in my book, actually. So the word tomato comes from the Aztec word Xi'tlatl. I don't know if I said that right. X I T O M A T L I don't pretend to understand to speak Aztec, but we got the word from them. But that wasn't the first name that the fruit was known by. Back in Europe. It had different name. And. And in French, the tomato was called Pommes d'. Amour. Do you guys know French? It's the apple of love. Can you guys tell? I'm just like super relaxed. And this is like the third recording I've done today, so I guess I'm kind of losing it. I hope you enjoy Laid Back Nicole. Here we go. So there are several theories about that name, and some say that the tomato was confused with the mandrake. And the mandrake was an aphrodisiac as far back as the Bible, at least that's what they thought. I think you're going to find a lot of times people thought foods were aphrodisiac. It was almost like they were really hoping in the Arugula podcast episode, I don't know if you listened to that one, but they thought it was an aphrodisiac, too. It's like people, like, crossing their fingers, like, please let this work the magic. So they thought that the tomato was the apple of love, too, but it was also called the pomodoro in Italian, which is golden apple. And this may suggest, they think that perhaps the first tomatoes that came to Europe from South America were yellow. And then, yeah, we just kind of. Now we all call it tomatoes. Tomatoes are actually pretty good for you. They like, in just 100 grams of tomatoes, super few calories, like 18 calories, tons of water, so 95% water, a little bit of protein, a little bit of carbs, a little bit of sugar and some fiber in, like, no fat. Of course, you're going to get in one tomato, you're going to get about 30% of your daily intake of vitamin C. You're going to get potassium, you're going to get some vitamin K, which is great for your bones and for your blood clotting. You're going to get folate, the vitamin B9 inside of tomatoes. And then there's an interesting thing in tomatoes called lycopene, and it's been studied for special health effects. You're also going to get beta carotene that's usually more associated with carrots, but it's in tomatoes, too. There's something called naringen found in tomato skins, and then chlorogenic acid, which is an antioxidant compound known to possibly lower blood pressure. So no bad things in tomatoes, just good things and some things that you can only get in tomatoes. Like, my understanding, I think, is the lycopene thing is, like, pretty particular to tomatoes. So we know that tomatoes are super popular, like, one of the most popular in the whole world. But guess who loves them most? The United States, of course. So in the United States, approximately 35 billion pounds of tomatoes were produced in 2015. 8%. This might surprise you. Of the total production was for fresh tomatoes. Those have much higher prices. So more than 92% of those tomatoes were processed tomatoes, meaning becoming my pizza sauce, my spaghetti sauce, my salsa, all those things I serve my kids, and ketchup. Let us not forget. Let's see. The total value of the fresh and the processed tomatoes in the US was 1.2 billion for fresh and 1.39 billion for process. That's a lot of tomatoes. Can you guess where most tomatoes are grown in the US they're mostly grown in Florida and in California. Those two states account for at least about 70% of the whole US tomato production. And it says California alone accounts for 95% of the processed tomato production. So if you're buying salsas and sauces and pizza and all that stuff, more than likely you're buying some tomatoes that got processed from California. Florida actually holds the ranking for producing the most fresh tomatoes, but it's kind of sad. So the country's going. I mean, the country, the state is going through a pretty big decline in terms of how many tomatoes they're producing for the U.S. so starting in 2000, production has fallen consistently. So they were doing 1.5 billion pounds in 2000. It dropped to 950 million pounds in 2015. So 40% drop. And the harvested acreage in Florida dropped from 39,000 acres to 33,000 acres. So that's kind of a bummer. So in 2000, the average yield in Florida was about 40,000 pounds of tomatoes per acre, but that dropped down to 28,000 pounds per acre. So they're getting less production. Now. They are attributing this to something that's actually positive. I think they banned the fumigant. It's called methyl bromide, and they don't allow them to use that anymore with tomato production. So they're saying that's one of the main reasons why it dropped, which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing. However, something funny is happening. I'll tell you about it in a second. So in 2015, 2.7 billion pounds of fresh tomatoes were produced in the US and tons of tomatoes, most of those are being used inside the US but we also bring in tomatoes from other parts. So most of them are from Mexico and Canada. And it's, like, changing. So in California, the fresh tomatoes are produced year round, but not in winter. So they're growing basically from, like, February to October. And then the fresh tomatoes are grown in Florida from October to June. They peak from April to May and November to January. So this is super interesting to me because this is kind of our peak time for my company, Rooted Garden in Houston. There's some other top producing states like Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and Virginia. If you notice, most of these states are more Southern, right? So they've got more sunshine, more heat. But Florida still ranks first. But this is what's happened so we talked about the decline in Florida. Well, there's been an incline in Mexico. So over the last few years we've had a lot of competition with Mexico. And this is part of the reason why less tomatoes are being produced in the US NAFTA eliminated. NAFTA is like, what is that? North American Free Trade Agreement, I think eliminated the trade barriers and made year round imports possible from Mexico. So right around the time that happened, the Mexican government did some smart things on their end to increase the production. So they supported a lower cost of production and basically made Mexican tomatoes more competitive in the US market. So as you can imagine, they pay less for labor in Mexico. And then as we've changed, kind of made our growing a little bit cleaner, taking out the methyl bromide fumigant, then we've grown less and Mexico has grown more. So that means probably if you're finding tomatoes in the winter in your store, which I always see some in mine, I don't know about you, but even in Chicago they had tomatoes all winter long and they were all from Mexico. So I talked a little bit about the name of tomatoes and how they came from South America. Let's get into the history. I think this is so interesting. I hope you do too. I love knowing where my food's coming from, or at least I'm starting to love it. I think it makes food more interesting and less about just like eating, you know what I'm saying? So tomatoes originated in the Andes, what's now called Peru, Bolivia. Wait, not, not Peru, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Ecuador. These grew wild. I talk about this in my, my soil chapter in Kitchen Garden Revival. If you want to listen to me read from that little section about tomatoes, go check out the Think about Nature episode here on the podcast. So but it wasn't until around the six. So they were growing them wild and eating them like with no fear. These people knew what they were doing with their tomatoes. So 700 AD, that's a long, long, long time ago. And then around the 16th century, so about 10 years late, I mean, not 10, about a thousand years later, when Europeans showed up in South America, they were like, oh, wow, shiny, bright fruit. And they took them back to Europe. So throughout southern Europe they started growing them. But it was kind of, you know, like people didn't quite know what to do with this new plant. So I thought this was so interesting and really speaks to the human situation. So a lot of people then didn't know, like, is it poisonous? Is it not poisonous? Are we safe to eat this what is this new plant? A lot of people saw it first as like an ornamental. It's so pretty, right? Like that's one of the reasons why we love growing tomatoes. And they had held on until the Enlightenment took hold. It said botanists relied on like a thousand year old categorical framework in Europe established by a guy named Galen, a physician who lived in ancient Rome. And so he had kind of categorized everything. But then all of a sudden they started seeing all these new plants, especially from the Americas, corn, blueberries, chocolate. And the naturalists were like, what do we do? These don't belong anywhere in our system. They were like, these, like Galen's system. And the thing that we trust as basically the perfect source of truth, we don't have a place for these. And so that's part of the reason why they were a little scared of tomatoes. So David Gentilcore describes in his Pomodoro book that the ancients had it. They were scared that the ancients hadn't actually known everything, which meant the world was in some sense unknowable, that maybe the Garden of Eden had not existed. And oops, that feels a little bit scary. So the tomato maybe was the first exposure for these people that, oh my gosh, there's more out there in the world. And that feels a little bit frightening. So they thought tomatoes might be poisonous and for good reason. So the leaves and the stems, all other parts of the tomato are in fact poisonous. And they also have, you know, some appearances that look similar to say, the mandrake, which is also poisonous. But a couple funny things happen. So one is that most people in Europe during that time, wealthier people especially, were using these plates and flatware that had lead in them, basically. And so as they were eating their tomatoes, it says that the tomatoes would actually like the acid on the plates or the acid would interact with the plates. And when they did that, it would release the lead, I guess. And so this would literally poison the people eating them. So the Europeans thought that this meant that obviously that the tomato was poisonous, when really it was the plates that were the problem. So interestingly enough, what happened is that the poor people, people with less money who didn't have these fancy plates were actually not harmed. So they'd be eating their tomatoes from a wooden plate and loving it for a long time. Only the poor or the lower income groups in Europe were the ones who got to enjoy tomato, while the wealthy assumed that it was poisonous. They also did another thing, assuming that tomatoes, they had this whole thing. I read this Article about how they thought tomatoes turned people into werewolves. So they had this story, you know, I don't know if you've ever watched like the witch trials or whatever, like that horrible time when they were like accusing all these women of being witches and they had created this story basically that women would eat tomatoes and that would turn them into werewolves. So in case you're ever blamed for being a little vicious, you can always just say it's not your fault, it's just the tomato. As they begin to grow, especially in the United States, I don't know if you've ever seen this, but I would definitely call this poisonous or evil. But they started seeing the tomato hornworm, which, if you've experienced this, is so scary. So this horrible, ugly, huge caterpillar that loves to eat tomatoes. And when they saw these, they decided, okay, those things are for sure evil and for sure poisonous. And anything that they would touch or eat is probably deadly and poisonous too. So. So all these things combine to make people a little bit scared of tomatoes. And they were really only eaten, like I said, by the lower income people until really the mid-1800s. And some of the change happened because of, I think, one of the very best reasons for any change to happen, and that is the five letter word pizza. You know what I'm talking about? Pizza. I mean, is there a better invention in the world? You got carbs and dairy and tomatoes. Warm, yummy. I mean, it's my favorite. It's my favorite thing to eat. I'm pretty sure it's just so delicious. So pizza. Pizza came about in the 1800s thanks to the amazing Italians and made its way into the US thanks to Italian immigrants. So they ate tomatoes, they had no problem with them. And they loved tomatoes on their pizza because there ain't no pizza without a good tomato sauce, right? So let's see. There is a story created by a restauranteer in Naples to celebrate the visit of Queen Marguerite, the first Italian monarch since Napoleon conquered Italy. And the restaurateer made the pizza from three ingredients that represented the colors of the new Italian flag. Red, white and green. So the red was the tomato sauce, the white was the mozzarella cheese, and the green was the basil topping. Hence, pizza margherita was born and is still the standard for pizza. And what could have led more to the popularity of the tomato than pizza? How fun is that? So when you eat a Marguerite pizza, you're literally celebrating the three colors of Italy and the amazing Queen Marguerite, which sounds awesome to me. So it was becoming popular In Italy, pizza clearly made tomatoes worth eating and taking the chance of being poisoned. But even over here in the US before pizza, the great Thomas Jefferson, or some. Some parts of him were great. He was growing tomatoes in the 1700s on his Monticello plot. In fact, I'll share in the show notes. I have gorgeous photos from Monticello, not from the 1700s. I wasn't there then. Not quite that old. But I did get photos of tomatoes growing there just a couple of summers ago on these tall posts overlooking the Blue Ridge. And it's pretty beautiful. So he was okay with growing them, even though most people considered them poisonous at the time. He was always a big rebel, don't you think? And then in 1820, a New Jersey colonel by the name of Robert Johnson, he was trying to win over skeptics. He, like, literally really cared about tomatoes, clearly. So he stood on the steps of the courthouse in New Jersey, ate a tomato, and then stood there long enough before people could see that he, in fact, did not drop dead. So these things all came together. And then by the 1850s, pretty much everybody was convinced in the US that for sure, tomatoes were worth dying for. No, not, you know, they realized they weren't gonna die. It was gonna be okay. And then in the 1890s, Joseph Campbell. Hello. Do you know that name? Campbell. Campbell's. You know, Campbell soup Clue. Anyway, he found that tomatoes canned. Well, and began marketing condensed tomato soup. And that's why we have all that amazing artwork from. What's that guy's name? All right, I'll put it in the show notes. You know, the Campbell artwork. It's so. I feel so embarrassed, I can't think of his name right now. Anyway, we'll put that. You can experience the tomato soup can art on gardenary. All right, so, yeah, so pizza Thomas Jefferson, the Campbell guy, all this is coming together to make tomatoes wildly popular. And now we have tomatoes everywhere, and the US Loves them, and Mexico is growing them for us, and they're just everywhere. But let's talk a little bit more about tomatoes as a plant and how we end up getting them on our plate. So tomatoes are, like I said in my bad pun at the beginning, they are actually a fruit. So when we talk about the kind of the lifetime of a plant, the first thing that's going to come up out of the soil is the leaves. And then, I mean, yeah, the first leaves, then you get a stem, you get more leaves, and then eventually you're going to get a flower. And then after the flower, you're going to get a fruit. And that's what happens with tomatoes. So you'll literally watch that whole process. If you've never gotten to grow a tomato before, it's pretty amazing to watch the whole thing happen. And it's really cool that you'll get this little fruit formation after the flower is pollinated. And that fruit will take as long to turn and ripen as it did to form in the first place. So the whole thing takes quite a while, at least usually around 3 months time. Now, in the US as I already mentioned, most of our tomatoes are grown in just a few places and most of our processed, more than 90% of our processed tomatoes are grown in California. Now what's the difference between a conventionally grown tomato and an organic tomato? So when I talk about conventional tomato, I mean tomatoes that are just farm, however the farmer wants to do them, not regulated by organic standards. So the main thing that's different is that if a tomato says on it that it's organic, then that farm has been inspected and that farmer is not allowed to use synthetic fertilizers or insecticides or herbicides on the plant. So in general, the big, big difference is that the nitrogen that those plants are fed or whatever kind of fertilizer for organic plan, those are going to be fed with like manures or with like clovers and just organic plants that feed the tomato plants nitrogen or they might be grown hydroponically. They can do them both with organic methods. But if you're buying a tomato that doesn't say organic on it, then you can bet your bottom dollar that that tomato has been. They've put on like a synthetic nitrogen fertilizer at the start that absorbs really quickly and that allows them to grow. It was super interesting to read a little study where they kind of weighed out and measured and checked on conventionally grown tomatoes versus the organic kinds, the organic vegetables or fruits. The tomatoes were 40% smaller than those grown by conventional techniques. And they also had accumulated more compounds like sugars, vitamin C and their pigment molecules like lycopene. The thing I was telling you that's so good for you. So they were smaller, but they were more packed with nutrients. And here's the reason why. Are you ready? Those are stress related resistance compounds and nutrients. So essentially what's happening here. Okay, follow me. Is that the tomatoes that are being grown organically are getting attacked more. So they're having pests attack them, they're having to fight weather, they're having to push through situations with less fertilizers or less strong, you know, outside sources to help them grow. And so what happens in those situations is the plants themselves are responding to that stress, and they're creating more sugars, more vitamins, more lycopene, more antioxidants because they're fighting. How cool is that? So guess what? When you eat those plants that are grown organically, you get those good things. You get more good things. So it's not just that you get less synthetic fertilizers. Yes. Less, like, sprays and yucky stuff. You get more of the good stuff. I love this because it's also a sign of the goodness we get when we go through hard things. It's kind of like lifting weights. Right. It's like you break your muscle, like you do really hard work, and then in turn, your muscle, in response to that stress, grows stronger. And so that's what happens when we eat organic tomatoes. We're literally getting to benefit from the stress that those plants have been under because they've had to fight organically. So cool, right? I think so. And here's another reason to eat organic tomatoes. Because they are number 10 on the EWG's Dirty Dozen. So the Environmental Working Group does a dirty dozen list every year, and in 2020, tomatoes are number 10, which means that they found the highest traces of. Of sprays and residues from fertilizers and herbicides and stuff like that on those fruit. So when you're eating them and they haven't been organically grown, then you are getting all that stuff in your body, too. So it's kind of a bummer when you're trying to eat something good for you and you get stuff bad for you at the same time, don't you think? I do. Okay, so that's the deal with organic versus conventional. Now let's talk about fresh versus processed. So these are really. This is really intriguing to me. So like I said, most of the fresh tomatoes are all grown in California, 95%. And then the processed ones are grown around the U.S. no, no, no. Processed. Scratch that. Processed are all grown in California. All right, so here's the difference. So crazy, right? One of the first and most important thing to know is a processed tomato is going to be harvested ripe and red, and there is, like, this very short window where they pick it. And literally they can let less than six hours pass before the tomato is in the can. So they have this very simple. Not simple, but this very streamlined process where basically they let the fruit get to the best ripeness, the best taste, and Then, boom, in six hours, that thing has to be in the can ready to ship. So that's the deal with processed tomatoes. Now, when you are getting fresh market tomatoes. So those red tomatoes that you're seeing at the store, in the produce section, those were almost always picked green, so not ripened on the vine. And then some are even gassed with this natural ripening hormone called ethylene to promote consistent ripening. So if you've ever grown your own, you know that tomatoes don't, like, all turn red at the same time or like, you know, it might take. It's like this process of it slowly changing. It's like, you know, puberty, like, it doesn't happen overnight. You slowly grow up. And the same thing is true for a fruit. Oh, my gosh, I can't believe I just said puberty in relation to tomatoes. I'm sorry. Anyway, so what they'll do is gas these things. They do this with strawberries, too. That'll be another topic. But they gas them so that the whole thing turns red and looks beautiful. And you want to buy it because it's all about the consumer, right? Like, if they can't sell these things, then the whole farm's going to shut down, down. So that's how fresh tomatoes, they're always picked green. Otherwise we're going to run into some serious trouble, right, with them ripening too fast before they get to the store. Now, you do have those tomatoes that now say at the store, vine ripened. So, you know, there is that. We'll have to. Maybe we can follow them around and see what actually happens. So if you live in California, which I do not and never have, but I have heard that when you're in California, it can be literally going down the freeway and passing tomatoes that are carrying tons and tons, literally, of tomatoes. So crazy. So how do we get. How do those tomatoes, even if they're not gas, let's say they are picked pretty ripe, how do they get them from the store to. I mean, from the farm to the store? Because if those, you know, tomatoes are coming all the way to me in Chicago from California, they've got quite a ride to take. Well, the deal is that tomatoes have been selectively bred for over 50 years, and they're really different than the kind that you would grow in your own garden, right? So they've really narrowed it down to which tomatoes can make it over this long kind of journey. And this is pretty true for almost all trucked vegetables. So they have to go to certain varieties that have thicker skin than fresh tomatoes. And that can basically hold up under a lot of stress and hang on with shelf life. So this is crazy. So these thicker skinned tomatoes can actually serve survive the weight of 25,000 pounds of tomatoes without suffering much damage. I've got some photos I'll share with you of these tomatoes. They're just piled up in trucks during the height of the season. It's said that California Tomato growers produce 2 billion. I think, I mean, it literally says 200000000009 zeros. That's billion, right? Okay, 2 billion pounds of tomatoes per week. To put that in perspective, that's 40,000 tomato trucks each carrying 300,000 tomatoes. What? It's crazy. So they harvest them in the summer and they don't cover the trucks. So the trucks just literally drive down the highway with all these billions of pounds of tomatoes just right there for the watching. So one day I'll get to California and watch this happen, I guess. Although I can't say I'm super excited about seeing that picture, but I will share these pictures with you. So. So, yeah, so that's the difference between your processed tomatoes, which are probably, if you buy canned tomatoes or ketchup or salsas, versus the tomatoes that come to you fresh in the market. So quite different. And yeah. So crazy, right? So a typical tomato truck is going to hold about 50,000 pounds of tomatoes, which is about 300,000 tomatoes. So super, super crazy. So we talked about tomatoes that they're in the Solanaceae family. This plant family, I like to say, is for someone who has graduated out of like beginner gardener stage. Most people, I think, jump to tomatoes right away because they're so beautiful and like I said, they're like the crown jewel of the garden. But in general, tomatoes, I find are more difficult. It's kind of like running a marathon versus is running a mile. So in the garden, the leaves are the first things that come from all plants. And so I find it's much easier to start with things like I've taught you here on the podcast, like arugula and kale and spinach and romaine, or herbs like basil and oregano. Start with those because you get to harvest the earliest thing, which usually pops up in 30 to 40 days. But something like a tomato, where you're growing for the fruit, you're going to have to wait 65 to 90 days before you can harvest, harvest. And as we all know, when things take longer, there's a greater chance that things can go wrong. Also, there's just more work involved. But don't worry, I haven't given you all these scary statistics to not give you the step by step to grow your own yourself. So we're going to get into it. You ready? I just wanted to give that little disclaimer there. It is harder. So if you're a beginner gardener, you might want to, you know, you can definitely still grow your tomatoes, but do it with caution and understanding that if it doesn't work out this time around, it's okay because this is like an advanced skill. This is like jumping in and going for the marathon. So there's two types of tomato plants. There's the determinate and indeterminate. And this is kind of true for most vining plants. Like, you can compare this also with cucumbers and beans, etc. So the indeterminate, you can guess with the N there basically means never ending, right? So that's the vining type. That's a tomato that's going to produce tomatoes over and over again along the vine until frost comes. So they will keep vining, keep growing longer and longer and longer, and keep producing more fruit along the way. So they don't produce a ton of fruit all at once. They produce a little bit along the growth. If you've seen the title of my book, I mean the COVID page of my book, Kitchen Garden Revival or My Garden, throughout that book, you'll see my vining tomatoes going across my arch. And they literally, throughout the three months, three or four months of them growing in Chicago, they almost reached from one side of the garden to the other. So we're talking 10, 15ft or more of growth in one season. In Houston, where we rarely get frost, we've had tomatoes that just never stop. So they'll go all the way up a trellis and then back down, down. The other type of tomato is called a determinate or non vining or a bush tomato. So those are plants that are going to grow to a certain height, probably five or six feet, and then they will stop and they'll produce their fruit all at once. This is generally a great kind of tomato to grow if you want to, say, make tomato paste or tomato sauce or salsa, because you can get a bunch of tomatoes all at once, harvest all at once, and then prepare them all once at at once. For me, I typically love to grow the vining types because I'm not a big kitchen person, as you know. So I don't want to spend a lot of time doing processing and canning and stuff. I just want to enjoy them fresh. So a vining type really does that for me because I can pick a little, let it keep growing, pick a little bit more, et cetera. I might make a couple of jars of salsa along the way, but nothing too intense. But you can decide which one is best for you. And I'll talk about the supports for each one in a second second. So the Solanaceae family, as you heard, this originated in South America, so you can guess it likes hot weather, warm weather, not super hot, actually. It likes, like, warm, temperate weather. So we're ranging from like 65 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Definitely don't want to plant a tomato before frost unless you have a great system to protect it from frost. I tried my hand at doing that here in Chicago, and I lost two of my plants when we had a heavy frost just here recently. I tried to cover them, and they did not like it. So, in general, most gardeners that are conservative and don't have, like, a greenhouse or cold frames will wait until all chance of frost has passed, and then they'll plant that tomato. I recommend starting directly in the garden with a plant. It could either be a plant you started yourself indoors or a great plant you buy from a local farm or grower, and you're going to plant it. It's really unique. Most plants you'd only plant up to the neck of the plant, meaning where the stem breaks from the roots, you know, and that's where you place the soil line. But with tomatoes, you can actually dig a really deep hole and plant even the leaves. So the really neat thing about the leaves and the stem of the tomato is they will keep producing roots off of those. So it's so neat, you can. You can bury them, say, the first one or two levels of leaves, and then if you dig it up, you'll see that all those have produced new roots from them. So get this really nice, strong structure at the base, which you want, because this plant is going to be producing a lot of fruit for you. So plant it deeply, and the first thing you want your plant to eat is nitrogen. So the nitrogen is going to give you a nice, strong plant with good, strong green leaves. You want to have a really nice main stalk on your tomato plant because that's what's going to support all of the growth. So if you've ever bought a tomato plant from the store, and it's tiny, and it has a tiny little main stem, and it's already got flowers on it, that's not what you want. So if it's already flowering and it's still tiny and the main stem isn't big and thick, you definitely want to pinch those flowers off and give it time to get nice and strong in the center before it tries to do any production. It's kind of like asking things of a young child, asking the child to produce something before it's matured. So let that baby tomato get a nice strong stem. That's what I'm always looking for with my tomato plants. Then when that first stem and the main stem is really nice and thick, then you can start and you start to see your first set of flowers, then you can start to feed your plant. Phosphorus rich fertilizers. So I love, I found the most success in tending my tomato plants at least once a week as they start to flower and fruit, giving them a little bit of phosphorus rich fertilizer right at the base, watering them really deeply and then pruning a little bit. So I prune from the bottom up, taking the oldest leaves away so that the plant can really focus on fruit production, which is the goal. So some organic phosphorus fertilizer sources are things like rock dust or soft phosphate or even bone sources like bone meat meal or fish bone meal. So generally the mineral sources are going to be cheaper and will last longer. So something like rock dust is really a great thing to use. I've also just used chicken manure. I know not everybody is into doing animal products in the garden, but as you'll read in my book, I kind of think that's just the way nature works. So I'm okay with it as long as I can find a trusted source. So you're going to feed and water your tomato plants well and then let's talk about. What is this called? Support. So like I said, if you're growing a bush tomato, a determinant, you can use tomato cages. I personally don't love tomato cages because it makes it very hard for me to get in and tend the plant because it, like circles encircles the plant. So I'd rather have my plants on the outside of a support structure so that I can get in there and, you know, prune and tend it and pick it. But if you are going to use a tomato cage or you already have some, some the only kind of tomatoes I would use them for would be bush tomatoes because those are only going to grow to say, five or six feet. But you definitely want to buy the biggest tomato cage you possibly can, even for the bush types. My preference, as you know is metal trellises. So I love using panel trellises, obelisk trellises and arch trellises for my vining tomatoes. Reason being is I get to grow the plants on the outside of the trellis instead of the tomato cage and then I get to train the plant up the trellis. So I'll just tie it up every single week when I tend it with water and fertilizer and prune it and then just let it continue to grow up and be supported by the trellis. So many people asked me about my arch trellis and I hope that you go for it. If you are thinking about growing tomatoes around an arch trellis this summer, it's so fun and I think it's so beautiful. And I didn't even mean to be known for doing that. I just thought it was a fun thing to do. But in my book, you'll see tons of tomatoes growing over arch trellises in a lot of our gardens, especially mine. For my particular garden, especially the one pictured in the book, I have black cherry, sun gold and Juliet tomatoes all growing in the front arch. Those are all cherry or grape tomatoes. And personally, those are my favorite types of tomatoes to grow. Like I said, I'm not a big person on lots of preparation for my kitchen duties. So I love cherry tomatoes. I can harvest a ton of them and cut them up and use them just like I would a big tomato. But I don't have to wait around so long for that big tomato to farm. So cherry and grape tomatoes are definitely my preference. And those are the varieties I grow over my arch trellis. All right, so that is how to grow. Another really cool, fun way to grow tomatoes is called the Florida One Weave. And this is where you're going to set up basically like a panel along the middle of your tomato plants and then you'll plant tomatoes on either side and then you just weave the tomatoes in and out of like twine or the panel itself as it grows up. I did this one year in Houston, had tons of success. I grew like 26 tomato plants or more. We grew tons of tomatoes. It was so fun, fun, and I love that method. I just don't have the setup here to do it, but if you have like a little bit more casual look to your kitchen garden, the Florida weave is a super fun way to pack in a ton of tomato plants. Alright. You've learned so much about tomatoes today. The history, the production, the fresh versus the processed, the organic versus conventional, and how to even grow your own, whether it be Bush tomatoes or vining tomatoes. So let us finish up with a food fight. We're going to have tomatoes versus peppers. Which one do you think is better for you? Do you have an idea? Well, let me tell you. Okay, so both of them, of course, are very, very good for you. One has more sugar. Can you guess which one it is? It's the pepper. So the pepper has more sugar than the tomato. It actually has. Has 50% more calories than tomatoes. It's just got more sweetness than a tomato. It can't help itself. Right. Tomatoes actually have less fiber than peppers. Peppers have 50% more fiber. So they've got more sugar, but also more fiber. And peppers. This is crazy. They have eight times the amount of vitamin C and beta carotene and 15 times the vitamin E. So when you add all that up, it sounds like the pepper is better than the tomato. However, the tomato has the antioxidant lycopene. And as you learned today, the organic tomatoes have tons of it. So if you want to have more antioxidants, then tomatoes are going to be your thing. And if you want to have less sugar and calories, then tomatoes are going to be your thing. But if you want to have more fiber, then you gotta go for the pepper. Here's my little. I don't know. This is a little free advice. Personally, I think peppers are easier than tomatoes. So peppers are just gonna take up a lot less room. They just don't demand quite as much. You don't have to feed them quite as much, and you don't have to trellis them quite as extensively. You do need a support for your peppers, but you don't have to trellis and train and prune nearly as much as you do for your tomatoes. So if you're looking for a quick win with tons of nutrition, I would say the peppers win. But if you're looking for a complete stunner in the garden and something that is absolutely Instagrammable and really just, like, super fun to learn how to grow, then I say go for the tomatoes. That's my unsolicited opinion for the food fight. So there you have it. Tomatoes versus peppers. I would say probably. I don't know, it's kind of a toss up on which one is actually healthier, given the sugar content versus all the vitamins. Clearly they're both really good for you. And then you get to decide if you want to grow both of them or just one of them. And if so, if you want to go for the more practical, easier plant to Grow or the more stunner, the crown jewel of the kitchen garden, the tomato. Tomatoes are super fun to watch happen in your kitchen garden and like you've heard here today day, it just makes sense to grow a little bit yourself. Don't forget the three things we told you to do in episode one here on the podcast, and that is to eat seasonally, to buy locally, and to grow naturally. I hope that now you feel encouraged to do those three things when it comes to tomatoes. So when tomatoes are in season in your town, buy them up. Especially buy from local farmers and eat as many as you can when they are in season. Learn to grow a little bit yourself. It's going to help you appreciate all those tomatoes you consume throughout the winter when you're having pizza and hamburgers and tacos and all that good stuff. And just have a bigger appreciation for this thing that's so popular and yet sometimes so underappreciated. There's a lot that goes into these little red flags fruits and they don't turn us into werewolves. They're just so good for us. Especially when they're grown organically, when they're just harvested, and when they're cared for the way they should be. So grow a little bit of tomatoes yourself. Be inspired. And the next time you're at the farmer's market or you meet somebody who knows how to grow tomatoes, you better give them a serious fist bump and tell them they are amazing. Because now you know that it's pretty difficult to grow tomatoes. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self Podcast. I will see you next week where you're going to hear another surprising or inspiring story about the food you eat every day. I'll see you back here next week. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. Don't forget that it is not too late. No, no, no. Not too late to start your kitchen garden. So go check out the Kickstart yout Kitchen Garden Workshop gardenerie.com Kickstart this is a super affordable, fast way for you to learn all the things you need to set up your kitchen garden the right way right away. I do not want you getting into a summer without a kitchen garden. You can start super small. It doesn't have to be huge and it doesn't have to be complicated. So go check it out@gardenary.com Kickstart and please come over to the gardenary.com site and celebrate the grand opening. Is there such a thing? The grand opening celebration of the gardenary.com site there's so much for you to check out there, so many great garden coaches and just a ton of resources that are going to help you grow yourself in a new way. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you next time. Sam.