Cultivating Forbidden Tomatoes with Gian Perrone

My tomato growing is not really about maximizing yield. You know, I already got my perfect tomato for the season. It's, it's all, all gravy at this point.

This is 5 to 9, a podcast where we discover the hidden passions and hobbies that engineering, product, and technology leaders obsess over when the workday ends. Jian, thank you so much for being here early in the morning here. Appreciate you. If you don't mind, maybe, um, you could share a little bit about, like, you you know, you, what your thing is, and then let's— we'll jump into the fun stuff.

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, yeah, so I'm Gian Peroni, uh, I'm the VP of Engineering at Nav, um, basically small business-focused fintech.

Awesome. Well, thank you for being here, uh, but the real reason we have you here is to actually talk about a thing I heard about you did, or I heard somewhere in your lineage did, which was smuggle tomatoes. And, and so I wanted to, like, I, I was like super into this, which is the headline alone. Well, because like for me, like we run a small garden in the backyard and my in-laws help me out with it every once in a while. But, uh, you know, my general thing around growing things in the backyard, either has to be something you use really frequently, something you can't get at a regular market or something that just tastes way more delicious than you buy at a market.

Right.

And tomatoes definitely fit the triple bill or at least double bill. You will use them a lot when they're good. You can get some quirky ones that you can't get in the store so often. And then they just taste so good at the perfect time. And so, you know, I'm here in Boston and gee, what is this? Almost November here and we're about to get to mealy tomato season. But when that September tomato hits, it's so good. So when you said you had the special ones, I wanted to hear about it.

So anyways, what's the context? Yeah, probably similar to you in some ways. You know, I'm just a little picky about tomatoes, but there's a lot of family history with them, as you can maybe tell by the Slightly ridiculous name from an Italian background. My grandfather came from Italy to New Zealand where I was raised and was a tomato grower. That was his profession. And so they brought some seeds from sort of where they were, sort of Naples area effectively, and they started growing those in New Zealand commercially. And that was his profession. And then it moved to my uncle when my grandfather retired. And so I would get sent down for like school holidays to go pick tomatoes. Thankfully I didn't have to do it too many years. But, you know, teach me a little geography here because you said silly.

I think it's great. Like, just, just orient me. Where is Naples? And orient me in like the shape of New Zealand and like where's where.

The Italian side of the family is Naples, Italy. And then they moved to the sort of the top end of the north— sorry, of the South Island in New Zealand. And that region is— it's warm. I mean, it's grapes, you know, wine growing. It's the Marlborough region, basically, if you've ever bought some New Zealand supermarket wine. And they also grow a lot of, you know, produce like tomatoes and things like that. But that was sort of a very nascent thing, I guess, when my grandparents arrived. And even the idea of sort of commercial cultivation of these, like, more like Roma tomatoes, San Marzanos, it was just unheard of in New Zealand. New Zealand palate was not particularly cosmopolitan. So that was, yeah, that was kind of the, the impetus for all of that, or me getting involved in tomato growing was really just having some—

Summer job.

Yeah.

After-school job. Yeah.

Right.

Like, what age were you when you were doing this?

Oh, probably like 10 through, you know, 13 or something.

Okay. Okay.

Yeah. I started getting coding jobs later. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to handpick them. I mean, it's just sort of, you know, I'm sure there was a whole level of sophistication going on that I wasn't really privy to in terms of my, you know, my uncle, uh, working, you know, maintaining the plants and things like that. But I was just there with a basket early in the morning and going down the rows picking the right ones.

Love it. And so this southern hemisphere, so this would have been, this would be our April, right, would be tomato season, or would it be Yeah, I mean, they had heated greenhouses.

So, this was probably Christmas through, yeah, kind of April, something like that.

Okay, got it. And this is, okay, so San Marzanos and some Romas and take it from there. I interrupted you.

Yeah, no, no. So, the particular variety that came over from Italy with my grandfather is Isle of Capri. It's an indeterminate tomato. So, it's a little bit like a San Marzano, very few seeds, quite a sort of fleshy, a little bit of a beefsteak quality. So anyway, this is sort of— this was the— became the Platonic ideal of a tomato to me because, you know, they're fresh right off the vine. They're everything, you know, in my grandparents' house was always cooked with those. And my grandmother's cooking was this. So I became kind of, you know, that was the ideal tomato to me. And then as I moved around the world and things like that, I was really disappointed by tomatoes everywhere I went.

Me too.

So I said, yeah, so I set out to try and grow a tomato. But, you know, the $64 tomato. You're familiar with this concept, right?

No.

What was it? It was a book about a guy, sort of this home gardening trap people fall into where, like, you know, once you get all the equipment and everything and the obsession takes over and then you end up with the actual, like, yield of fruit, each tomato is like $64, I think is the idea. Um, and I was like, I think I can do better than that. I think I can, I think I can have like a $128 tomato.

Uh, yeah, dude, you're a fintech guy. You could do this. You could amp it up.

Yeah. It's like, why, why, why do things by halves? Uh, so yeah, I mean, it's, it's just been backyard gardening. Uh, I moved from San Francisco to Wisconsin. Um, I gotta say the wild, the lack of wildfire smoke has improved my yields. Um, even though the climate's a little less forgiving and the growing season's a lot shorter.

A very tight growing season, right? Like, you gotta get— yeah, you gotta— like, when's first frost come? First frost probably comes in kind of early October for you guys, something like that.

It was actually today. Uh, okay. Yeah, you timed it perfectly.

We kill all the plants today.

Yeah, yeah, they're— they look— I'm looking out the window at them there. I think they're sort of holding up. I can probably go grab a bit of fruit. It was a light frost.

Got it. Well, so, so tell me, what's your ritual? So, you know, when do you plant? Like, what seeds? And like, I'm kind of baiting this one, but like What do you actually— like, give me the technique, give me the technology here.

Yeah, um, so I, I start seeds under a grow light in my basement. Uh, sometimes I'll start them in a couple batches just because the, the last frost can be a little, uh, you know, time sensitive, or rather a little hard to predict sometimes. Yeah, so probably somewhere between like late February through about mid-March, I've usually got seed trays So yeah, I, through means that I couldn't possibly speculate on, I ended up with some of the Isle of Capri seeds that made their way from Italy to New Zealand for a few generations and then now are somehow here.

Not sure how.

Could have been anything.

Could have been anything.

Yeah. And look, wind, wind patterns, you know, I'm sure something like that. And so, you know, that's, I grow a decent number of those. I usually try and, you know, Aim for maybe 30 or 40 plants and then I'll throw in usually a San Marzano and maybe some cherry tomatoes or something. I've gone more and more monoculture just because cross-pollination means you don't necessarily end up with true type. You end up with perfectly nice tomatoes, but they're not necessarily the variety you planted.

You're generally doing a lot of Capri. Is this from your— Is this because this is your, your youth tomato or have you committed to this one or how do you, you know, how do you think about that and what do you do with them?

Right.

Like why those?

Yeah. So, so primarily, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll make passata out of them, a sauce, basically puree them. So I've got a whole sort of electric puree rig, which is, it's a fun little ritual. I'll can them and then that's, you know, I don't, I don't buy canned tomatoes or anything like that. So yeah, I enjoy, you know, I enjoy cooking.

In theory, these are the same tomatoes that your grandfather like brought from Naples over to New Zealand. The seeds from those, like, you know, have been carried over generations. Somehow these seeds made their way parallel with you to somewhere in Wisconsin that in theory you're growing them over, you know, months here starting in February, get them in September that has the same taste and flavor that your grandfather had probably, and probably the same sauce flavor you've been eating, right?

Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, I would say I'm sure there's a lot of like soil conditions and all sorts of stuff that it means it's not precisely the same. And, you know, the memory of youth is fickle, right? So, you know, who knows? Who knows if it's the perfect tomato, but certainly it's one of the It's the high I'm chasing, you know?

Yeah, but I mean, I don't know, I am with you actually. Food memories are so ingrained and like, I actually think they, yes, they're romanticized, but they're like this, and they're powerful when they hit. So I totally get what you're saying here. Well, so tell me about the setup. So you got basement LED grow lights, rigs, like give me the end to end, like what's the mechanics here?

Yeah, yeah, so the starting seed trays, Basically, you know, I will start with seeds I've saved and sometimes I'll, you know, if there's some other varieties I like, sow them in seed trays. The seedlings are pretty self-sufficient. They're just under grow lights. All you got to do is sort of move the grow light around a little bit as they grow so not to burn the tops.

And these days they're LED grow lights these days, right? They're no longer like those big old, like, you know, high electric yield kind of things?

Yeah, they still throw out a decent amount of heat, so they can definitely scorch the tops of the young seedlings. Then it's just a matter of starting to repot them because they'll basically grow to a height that's sort of proportional to the pot they're in. Okay. So I'll repot into, you know, they start in seed trays that are like a couple inches deep and then repot into sort of a, you know, larger and larger, successively larger pots over, you know, maybe the next month or two.

So that takes us into like March, April, right? Or something like that.

Yeah, yeah. It's probably, probably most of April we're still in pots. It's sort of— it's one of these things where like you can get into polytunnel setups and trying to plant out earlier. I tend to just get them into decent sized pots or even grow bags and they're up to—

what does polytunnel mean?

Like a polythene tunnel, like a, you know, kind of temporary greenhouse type setup. Just where you can keep the frost off them.

So how big do you think we're getting before we put on the ground? I know you can't control when the last frost is, but like roughly?

Yeah, they're, they're probably like a foot, foot and a half by the time they're, they're going in. Yeah, I'm letting them go pretty, pretty far in the bags often just because it's day by day, like, oh, okay, now the temps start— because you want, you know, you really do want the soil temperatures pretty far up. So, you know, by the time I've been able to go out and do dig the garden and plant in things like leafy greens and stuff that's a little more frost tolerant. Tomatoes are still just sort of doing their thing. I'll start hardening them off where you got to lug them up from the basement. It's quite a time-consuming process and set them out in the sun for increasingly long times, just an hour or two sort of initially. And then, they start staying out there most of the day and then they come in at night.

For a layman because I still go to my local garden store, sometimes I might go to the Home Depot, But like, I mean, it sounds yours are hardier. You're like, you're doing all this work, they're bigger. Like, what's the difference? Like, you know, if I could do all the work, like, would I get stronger plants? All this stuff?

I don't know. I mean, this is just, I think, kind of the process of growing from seed, particularly just for anything that's a little, you know, temperature sensitive. Yeah, I don't, I don't do this with my lettuces, put it that way.

Well, so if you're bringing them up and down every day, like, help me understand the scale. Like, how many plants And then are you planting out there? We're talking like 5, we're talking 500. What are we talking here?

No, it's like, it's— I probably start the season with like at least 40, which is about what I try to get probably into the ground. Yeah, I like— they don't all survive, right? I like to have some backups to swap, and I tend to give away a lot of seedlings at this stage because, you know, everyone else wants to plant something. So it's pretty easy to give away the, the runts of the litter. And yeah, so maybe I'd say maybe it's about like 30 plants is what I end up with sort of in, in beds in the garden.

I'm thinking about the amount of space that would take because I grow mine in these, um, kind of grow buckets that are like, you know, they have the auto feed that I drip into it so that like I've got a drip feeder into there just so I can kind of set it and forget it kind of thing. Um, right, but like that, that puts 2 per like Tupperware thing that's like, you know, this is the size that I can hug. And if you're talking 30, I mean, I just think there's a lot of space out there. Yeah, like it's in the ground, right? It's not— or is it raised beds or is it buckets or what are we doing?

Yeah, yeah, raised beds. Uh, so I've got, uh, 5 beds that are about 12— I think they're 12 feet by about 3 feet. So I've got a lot of space and that's not just for the tomatoes. Um, it's mostly that I try to keep, yeah, like the, the Isle of Capri and the other varieties sort of separate so that they, they do come out true to type. Um, 'Cause always you end up with some weird hybrids, which they could be interesting, they could be good, but it's not what I'm trying to grow.

I'm interested. So, this means 30 plants each of these things must push 100 fruit at some point, something like that at least?

Yeah, it's a decent yield. I'd say it's pretty dependent on the watering cycle in terms of just how productive they end up early. We can get big storms here and it can, you know, the temperatures can sort of chill off again right through June. So it's, uh, it can be, it can be a little touch and go. But no, I'd say it's more, more tomatoes than I could have, would know what to do with if I didn't have the near industrial, yeah, near industrial production of canning.

I'm actually imagining you were in San Francisco before. You didn't, like, where in the Bay were you? You can't, I don't even, I can't even imagine where in the Bay you could have this kind of space to go do this.

Yeah, no, I wasn't, wasn't doing the scale of production in San go, I had a little backyard in the Castro and it was, it was just grow bags. The last year, I guess it was COVID year. And this is, you know, like full disclosure, right? COVID gardening made this obsessive. Like it was just like a toss some seeds in the, you know, in a grow bag and walk away kind of thing. But then I had time on my hands. So remember the year San Francisco had the red skies, the fires, just no sun for years. Yeah, that basically killed off my tomatoes. That was right as they were going through their growth spurt and they just did not love that. And they basically never recovered. It was kind of unfortunate. So that, you know, it's been a lot much smoother out here with a lot more space, a lot more consistent weather and less wildfires.

No, we, yeah, I mean, like, I think the pandemic definitely gave us new rituals that we do, but like, I mean, like, okay, so now that the plants are in the ground, you're like, What are we doing? Are we, are we like mulching on top of this thing? Are we putting compost in, fertilizer? What's the mix in here in the ground? Like, how do you, you know, are you just using that like regular dirt that you're kind of sprucing up, or what are you doing here?

No, I mean, the tomatoes are, I mean, they're heavy feeders, so I feel like you got to be doing something. Uh, I, I have a compost bin that I've, you know, just put like kitchen and garden waste into. So that goes in, in the fall effectively into the beds, gets to break down all, all winter under, under some snow here. And, that's about all I do. Occasionally, I'll mess a little bit with some of the acidic fertilizers.

So, you're not putting a little generic 10-10-10 fertilizer in there or anything like that or you're just letting it run?

No. Sometimes, later in the growing season, I'll give them a little bit of something. I'm not an organic farmer. Yeah, yeah. But, the main thing is just getting them staked up. I feel like I've screwed that one up a few times of like cheap Home Depot stakes. Well, these are, these are all indeterminate varieties as well. So they're going to keep growing. I mean, these, they'll be, they'll be 8 feet tall by the end of the growing season. So you need a lot of stakes.

Teach me about the word indeterminate, right? Like, and like not just what it means, but like what are the implications of such?

Yeah. So, so tomatoes are either determinate or indeterminate. The determinates basically are things like Romas, which will grow a bush, but they will stop growing. They're sort of self-limiting. At some point they're like, "I'm done, thank you very much," and they stop growing, they stop producing fruit. Indeterminates are vining tomatoes that will just keep growing until they're killed by frost or disease, basically. So, you tend to get a much higher yield, I'd say, but they're much more finicky plants.

How do you know beforehand, like certain seeds, certain varietals are indeterminate?

Yeah, yeah, it's it. There's no, there's no way to know, at least not with my botanical skills, except just reading it, you know, and figuring out where it goes and grows.

And when you say staking, I'm used to actually those circular tomato cages, but it sounds like that's not what you mean. What do you mean by staking?

It's something that— no, probably by the time they're sort of like in the ground a couple weeks, they would just outgrow those cages. So like, uh, I, I'm on, uh, big, big metal stakes these days. Like, they're probably, yeah, 8 or 9 feet. They're big.

And they're big metal 8 or 9-foot poles you put on the ground and you kind of like tape the plants to it or something like that?

Yeah, I've sort of tried every system for like tomato clips or twine or there's like tomato tape and Velcro ones. I have no— I just use whatever I've gotten basically.

So, how do you drive them in? Like, are you on a ladder putting these things in or like?

Oh, yeah, it's very awkward. Yeah, stand, you know, perched on the edge of the raised bed trying to swing a hammer falling off stepping in the bed. It's a mess. Yeah, I don't have a good system for that. I've been kind of thinking about trying to build a frame around the end of the bed, so I just haven't got around to it yet.

This is crazy. Okay, so now I'm imagining this stuff. So then what's the runtime maintenance of this? So take me from May till fruiting time. Is it every morning you get up, you play some classical music to them? What's the vibe? What's the rhythm? And how do you water them? What's the ritual?

Yeah, the main thing is sort of single-stemming them because they will put out laterals, right? They'll put out the suckers. And so, I pinch them all off and single-stem them up the stem.

Just keep letting it go.

Yeah, they just keep going up. Yeah. And so, water-wise, I put them on drip watering. I've kind of experimented with that a little bit because they say that they can end up kind of waterlogged a bit and even in raised beds. So, for me, it's maybe 3 times a week watering and you got to get your drippers adjusted to the right flow rates and things like that. But, I'd say I've got no great science for this except I kind of know it's about maybe 45 minutes of watering 3 times a week on my drippers.

So, it's a feel. Okay. So, it's not like you don't have— because then you have all those— you put probes in the thing and you can actually have feedback loops and all that kind of stuff to get it right.

I stick my finger in the dirt and kind of— Yeah, that's about it.

I mean, I found the same thing, by the way, that every couple days makes it— like, for a while I was actually having it daily and it was just too moist on that stuff. And then like slowing it down.

And you'll notice it in the flavor of the tomatoes. They'll end up kind of like those waterlogged supermarket, you know, mealy supermarket tomatoes. No, I think they definitely need to go through a kind of a bit of a You don't want them to dry completely, but they do need to dry out pretty well. Top layers of soil are dry, and then, and then, uh, because it gives them time to uptake nutrients.

It probably concentrates the flavor too, because I'm thinking sometimes my cherry tomatoes, they get— they grow too fast and they crack themselves, right? They pop out.

Yeah, yeah. So, so, um, that's also where, uh, you can flush, I think, a lot of the calcium out of the soil, and that's what leads to skin formation going, uh, where you get blossom end rot and cracking and things like that. So I've definitely had problems with that, and this would have been a process of dialing that in. But that's very much a per-varietal thing too. Like, some varietals don't care, some, some calcium deficiency.

Now I'm thinking, okay, right. Yeah, I get this, uh, black, you know, every once in a while this black blight comes through, like, later in the season, like, and that sucks because then there's the whole plant just like I mean, a lot of the fruit just gets tossed and you're looking at it, you're like, ah, I've invested this time and I see the black spot on you. It doesn't matter what happens here, it's doomed, right?

Is that a— Yeah, I've not had too many problems. So in terms of late blight, the only thing that seems to forestall it is ventilation. So I trim lower stalks way, way up. Pretty aggressively. Like, so there's about 2 feet of basically just stem, and then you get some brochette. So I'm pretty aggressive about thinning just so they're getting airflow through. Yeah, it's like soil splash up into those lower leaves is how I think a lot of those soil-borne diseases get, uh, transmitted.

Once it hits, it's just like, it's all through the things. And yes, okay, so this is cool. Okay, so your, your ritual is you're gonna get this thing on an auto drip thing, you're gonna come out here like How often, like daily, you know, check and pinch the— you said suckers, like the little branches, the, like, that they come off it, right?

Yeah, yeah, they're the little arrows. Uh, I wish it was daily. I'd say in, in more, uh, leisurely work times it would, it would have been daily, but, uh, now it's probably, you know, a couple times a week.

Yeah. Um, and at a certain point you have to— you can stop doing that because they're not going to do that anymore, right? Or in the indeterminants they keep going?

No, they'll keep doing it pretty much to the end of the season. Like once they've kind of given up, it's usually the temperatures are dropping and the fruit yields have really slowed down, but like there's, there's still green fruit on, on my tomato plants and it's end of October.

What are you going to do? Are you going to pull them for like a bunch of fried green to pickle them? Or like at some point they just like, they freeze and they'll rot, right? The whole thing.

Yeah. No, no, I'll, I'll go to, I've got to grab them and it's, it's generally like you can shove them in a paper bag and they'll, a lot of them will come ripe. But yeah, I mean, there's some wastage in this, hence where my my tomato growing is not really about maximizing yield. You know, I already got my perfect tomato for the season. It's, it's all gravy at this point. Yeah.

Okay. Well, so it's kind of cool. Cool. I mean, I think a silver lining here of like a little extra time because the pandemic puts you into this, but actually once you're describing the rhythm here of what you're doing, like, I'm kind of like, oh, that's not so bad. Like what's, what's the step function here for like, like, cause it sounds like you, it can fit into your regular life now, even though we're all, you know, running around and stuff like that more. Like, you know, what was that? You know what, like, to go from like a guy who goes to Home Depot and gets a plant and feels pretty proud about it, like, what's the step function to go to where you are?

Yeah, I think, I mean, doing them from seed, I'm not sure there's actually a huge benefit unless there's a particular, like, particular variety you want. Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. Like, unless there's something you just can't get at Home Depot. I know this step function is probably just a watering setup. And yeah, probably grow lights. Like, that's kind of the main thing. Some potting soil or seed starting soil.

By the way, your drip, do you have it set up to a faucet on and off, or do you actually have some kind of fancy iPhone-based timer kind of thing? Like, how are you doing it?

It's an electronic timer, but it's just like dials you set. No, no phone app or anything. I did start down just in the vein of, you know, obsessions you get into. I did start down like the whole building an Arduino watering system, pulling solenoid stuff. It was one of these things where I was like, this is stupid. This was meant to be fun. And I've turned it into an engineering project. Like, this was my relaxing time away from the computer, and now I'm at my computer.

So now we have the fruit. So we're in September now. We're pulling, you know, so we're picking, like, just like your 10-year-old self. Or do you have— do you make family members get at this? Or, like, is it like a big old party? Like, how do we do this?

No, no. I mean, it's a— I mean, it's continuous fruit, probably from, like— it depends on the season, late July, August. And it's just You know, I'll just go out there sometimes, you know, between work calls or whatever and take a bowl and just grab the 10 or 15 or so, whatever, you know, ripe ones from that day. And then they'll, they'll sit usually I'll just, I'll just stack them outside in the sun basically so that they can ripen up a bit further. If they're gonna be sauced, I'll, I'll leave 'em a couple days.

Yeah.

If they're being eaten, they just go into my like fruit bowl in my kitchen and they just, they get used.

If we'd done this a month ago, And the video where we've done this in the garden with, yeah, like just hearing about, hear the rustling of the plants as you go through. Well, so you pick 'em out and then you like put 'em in a basket and then like what's the saucing rig? You said earlier you have some industrial thing here.

Yeah, no, I mean it's just, it's an electric kind of tamuli type thing. So you've basically got a metal funnel. You stew the tomatoes really quickly mostly to just soften them up and get the skins to start separating. And it goes through this sort of electrically powered corkscrew mechanism that pushes it through a sieve and all the skins and seeds sort of go one, one way out the end of the funnel and the pulp comes out through the mesh. And that's, that's the, that's the yield. That's the product for most stuff. I'll also sometimes just blanch the skins off some and can those as whole tomatoes and whatever else. But yeah, that's the, that's the main product I'd say. And the yield is not great.

And you get all that stuff out. Is it in jars or is it in can cans? And do you actually go through the actual act of, you know, jarring them at like high temperature and all that stuff like that?

Yeah. Yeah. So I have Mason jars, you know, with the proper canning lids. I have a pressure canner. I've— there's like, if you were to ask my, my dearly departed grandmother, like she lived to the ripe old age, never having high temperature canned any of this stuff.

Okay.

So like clearly, clearly worked for her. But, our modern age of foodborne illness, maybe I'm a little more paranoid. So, I'm happy to can them, pressure can them just because it's shelf-stable then. They're great. They last a few years.

Yeah. Okay. So, the end of the year, how many cans are we getting out of this? Because back to your $128 tomato, what are we getting here? Yeah.

It depends on the year and it's mostly to do with how much energy I have to do how many batches of this. So the tomato, the raw materials are not a problem, but I like probably 100 jars or something.

100 jars?

Yeah, I started giving them away and like it certainly lasts me the winter and on. Like, yeah, the first year I did this, I've been having—

do you actually get through them?

Uh, the first year I ran out, uh, so that's when I sort of put in more plants and started doing more. And then so the next, uh, the next year I didn't, uh, I don't think I made it through them all. So I, you know, still dialing it in, but I'd say I'm never really sad about having like more tomatoes.

These are big jars. You're like, these are like quart jars kind of stuff like that, right? Or like big, you know, bigger ones than that.

Yeah. No, the quart jars. Yeah. Usually.

I mean, I disagree with you about $120 tomato. I mean, those like each, each a fancy jar of that thing would be like $8 of like San Marzano tomatoes and you're making a, you know, it's like $1,000 worth of stuff there.

Yeah, it probably is. But I mean, it's probably a lot of tomatoes went into each one of those.

And, and you know, by the time you get like, and a lot of love, a A lot of love, a lot of time. Yeah.

That's what makes them taste better. Yeah.

And some mental sanity too, right? That's it. So, is this a cathartic thing for you at this point or is it a thing that, you know, weighs on your shoulders now to do?

It can be a little bit of both. I got to say, definitely when it started, it was a very therapeutic thing. You know, I think when, you know, one year a storm knocked a lot of my tomatoes over and it was, you know, I think everyone was a little worried about me. There's a lot of sort of concerned looks, the hand on the shoulder, like, "Are you okay?" You know, it's like, "No, no, no, I'm okay." But I'd say as I've sort of gotten busier and busier at work, it becomes a little bit of like a, "Ah, I really need to go trim those tomatoes," or, "I need to go dig that mulch out," or whatever. And it sort of, yeah, it becomes a little bit of a chore. But generally speaking, I'd say an excuse to sort of go outside, sun, fresh air, it's really good. So, yeah, no, it's cathartic for sure.

Do you find, like, aside from the guilt of eating all this stuff, like, is the gardening at some point an outlet for you in terms of stress times? Do you find a correlation in your work patterns?

Oh yeah, absolutely. And it is because it's such a short growing season here, right? There's this giant sort of gap where I notice like my emotional regulation changes in terms of my ability to handle stress. I just go when something's growing, it's great. Yeah, I'll go hand water some stuff or do a bit of pruning or something, something totally cathartic. It's a good way to, I think, just kind of refocus a little, have a little moment to yourself, you and your plants, commune with nature.

It's good. I dig it. I dig it. And then, back to the whole thing around the gardening setup, Do you have— do you— so for where I live, I live in the city, so I'm in Cambridge, and, uh, we definitely have our bionic squirrels and bunnies that tear everything up. And, and let's not even talk about the city rodents, but like, they, um, we gotta do some work to fight all these things off. Do you have that out there? Like, you're like, you know, what do you use to kind of keep things away?

Yeah, I lose, I lose a, a decent number of usually the young plants to squirrels and rabbits in my yard. The funny thing is they don't even like eating them. Most, most— they just, they just, they just chew them off for fun, you know, sharpening their teeth. So I've kind of done various times, I'll throw up some netting around the raised beds for like at least that early part of the season, then generally sort of take them, take them back down. Yet again, this is all like under time constraints. So sometimes I'm just like, eh, there's enough plants, it's fine. I'll plant a few extra. I'm like, if the rabbits want to chew off a few of them, fine.

Yeah, I like it. So we're talking about this, we're clearly geeking about this. Do you have other community about this stuff, or is there like a work garden channel, or do people think you're a crazy person when you talk about this stuff?

No, there's, there's a work gardening channel, uh, but no, this is— it's always been a fairly like solitary activity for me. I've not— this is probably the most I've talked about gardening with anybody ever.

Um, it's a private session.

Yeah, no, it's good. No, no, I'd say it's, you know, largely trial and error, and then, and then I'd say I've, I've phoned home a few times to get some advice.

Oh yeah. Does your family still professionally do this?

No, no. They got out of that business. So the greenhouses that sort of, I, you know, had the role of picking some tomatoes in when I was young was, they were in the middle of city limits basically. So at some point the land they were on was way more valuable than any fruit coming out of them. So, but it's still, you know, There were some pro tips that came through occasionally like, "Oh, you're screwing this up, you're overwatering them," that sort of stuff.

Yeah. Okay. Is that the pro tip that a layman would screw up? What's the thing that you— what was the one thing if I had access to this super resource, what would they tell me?

Yeah, I don't know. I think for me it was probably a rather specific fruit splitting that I was getting with this one varietal because I hadn't seen anything else do that and it was probably just overwatering largely. Yeah, no, neem oil is your friend for early season mites. Neem oil. Yeah.

What is that word you're using? Oil and neem? N-E-A-M?

Yeah, N-E-E-M. Oil is a— it's a sort of natural insecticide, effectively. Yeah. It's, you know, all the garden centers have it. People use it for indoor plants a lot, but I'll give the— it's supposed to very early season mites on the seedlings. Oh. It can help a lot.

How do I know if I have mites in my tomatoes?

You'll see little black spots all over it. The leaves will be basically being eaten or kind of mottled with insect damage. You'll see them there. They're pretty— I've had sort of black fly or— I don't actually know what these insects are. I sort of know them by sight, but little black aphidy things or whatever they are, they can do some damage.

Love it. Alright, now I got a new tip. I'm going to keep an eye out for that. And some neem oil, learn a new thing. At the end of the product here, like what's something you make out of this that's like, you're like, oh, so you have the tomatoes, like what's the dish you make or that like brings back home or really kind of nails their freshness? Like what's the go-to on this thing?

Well, so I mean, because I live in Wisconsin now, it's pretty easy to get a hold of really good milk. So, I'll make mozzarella, fresh mozzarella, and then do a caprese. That's the—

You're making your own mozzarella. Talk to me here. You just drop this on the last minute and be like, "Hey, by the way, I just made my own mozzarella." Okay. So, you get some beautiful unpasteurized milk then.

Yep.

And, are you going to the farm and getting it with a bucket or are you just going to the actual grocery store?

No, you can't buy raw milk in a in a supermarket in Wisconsin, but you can be part of a club where they'll basically ship it to you in a cooler. So, you're getting sort of, yeah, nice raw milk. You heat it, you're basically throwing rennet into it, and then you have to stretch the curds that form. It's sort of like, I'd say this is much simpler than people think, but it's also like you can just screw it up a lot of ways along the way.

I tried like 2 decades ago, I probably tried doing this, I bought rennet online and I couldn't, it was always mealy. I really couldn't pull it. Like, and I couldn't tell if I couldn't get the temperature high enough or put it as too high. It just never worked for me. And I tried hard on that stuff.

There's a microwave technique that I always thought was like ruining the purest vibe of this, but no, it works really well. But if you're not burning your hands, it's not hot enough. Like, there's pain involved in making mozzarella. Like, that's how it's You know, it's going to turn out good.

I'm guessing you also grow basil in the backyard because there's no way you're not growing basil in the backyard, right?

Yeah, exactly.

And time it with the tomatoes. And then is this the Isle of Caprese, like, or Isle of Capri tomatoes, or are you using different ones for this?

Kind of what usually, whatever looks good, whatever's ripe at the time. It's just an easy summer thing.

Slice them nice. Take your big ball of mozzarella that you just made that might be still warm from your hands. And you slice it down thin, a little chiffonade of basil on top or something like that.

Yep. That's, that's the one. Yeah.

And then a nice fruity olive oil. Do you have one that you brought, you smuggled in as well? Or is this a—

No, the olive oil is probably like not, I know, I know that's one you can definitely go deep on, but I'm not, I'm not that guy. I'll just buy like a decent olive oil from the, you know, the supermarket. Okay.

So then we hit a little salt, a little bit of rock salt, a little pepper on that thing.

Peppers going on. Yep. Okay.

Here's a question. This could be controversial, like vinegar or no vinegar. That's always the—

Yeah, no, that's controversial in my house too. I'm a no balsamic guy just because I think let the tomato flavor shine. I see the merits. It's perfectly delicious, but I know I'm a purist in that regard.

I'm with you on that one. We have a debate in my family too on that one. My wife's pro balsamic and I'm I'm like, "Ah, keep it clean." Pick your poison on that stuff.

Well, you use the balsamic to mask a kind of crappy tomato. I mean, that's the thing. It's perfect if you're using supermarket tomatoes, absolutely balsamic. But no, like I just spent 6 months obsessively growing this. Like we're not throwing balsamic on it. Thank you. Thank you.

Speaking truth here on this whole thing. Well, okay. By the way, before, like you're going to have to send me some seeds if you're willing to, like this is is a prerequisite before this airs and this whole thing. I gotta get this. I want to try your tomatoes in that way. It sounds really cool.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, the seed saving is a whole process there because you've gotta do lacto-ferment.

Yeah, give me the 2-minute on that. Like, okay, end of the season. So actually, like, what do we do here? It's the end of the season now. How do we get seeds?

Oh yeah, you've gotta pulp, just pulp a few tomatoes. Some people do the bagging the flowers so that you can end up with something that hasn't had bees cross-pollinating with a different variety. I'm not so worried. I can kind of pick them out. But yeah, you basically just lacto-ferment them in water. You just put them in a little jar, cover them with water.

I take a fruit off the vine, I put it in a jar, cover it with water and just let it—

Well, you did just the seed. You scrape the seeds out. Squeeze out the seeds.

Throw it into a jar of water.

Yep. Cover it. Cover this with—

Is tomato goo still on there or am I like washing it?

A little bit. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. That's the process is basically that it's going to ferment for maybe like 3, 4 days. You'll notice. And that pulp, the kind of casing that encloses the seeds basically rots or is broken down and then you just into a strainer and kind of rinse them. And then out on a tray to dry for a few days. And that's the seeds I use for the next year.

How do you not— like, don't they sprout if you put them in there too long?

No, I think they'll just rot. You definitely want to get them dry pretty quickly. Not on a paper towel is my pro tip there because they'll just stick and then you will break them as you get them off. So just onto like a metal tray or something or a porcelain plate, something.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, interesting. But you got to time it right. Sounds like you know the look of when to pull them out in this thing. Yeah.

I mean, you'll notice that, I mean, they start to, they look, they look and smell pretty horrible and that means they're ready. I mean, you'll know, you'll know they're working because you just like dump them out in the seeds are, they look like seeds you'd buy from a packet, basically just wet. Got it.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right. Well, if you have extras, definitely interested here.

I got you.

Yeah. I appreciate that. Some cross-state, uh, inter-state commerce here on this thing. Wow. All right. You've given us, dropped a lot of knowledge here. If someone wants to get into this, like, where should they go? Like, what's a quickie? Like, what's something you actually like? Where'd you send them?

You know, I like the— there's the guy, the MI Gardener YouTube channel. He's based in Michigan, I guess. I kind of like his style. I mean, it's just he's much more into sort of a professional end of things, but It's like this, how do you get a decent yield from a small backyard garden is his premise. So, I like his channel, but otherwise, I don't know, it's just seeds. Just give it a try.

Just try it.

All right.

Well, for all those folks, like, Jian says, just try it.

I don't know.

Many of you don't have tomato growing in your blood, but maybe you can start it on this generation. You can make it happen here. You never know.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's, it's, uh, it's got a good feedback loop in terms of like either you like the, the taste of the thing you grew or you don't. If you, if you don't, do something different. Love it.

Well, hey, Gian, I think that's, uh, that's it on my end. Um, I know we didn't get to cars, but this was, uh, very fun. I appreciate you sharing all this stuff. Uh, genuine interest on my part because, you know, I want to make mine better on this stuff. And, uh, and maybe we'll trade. Like, I'll find some Spigarello seeds and we'll throw them your way or something.

Sounds good. Yeah, no, thank you so much.

Andrew Lau here. I hope you enjoy this episode of Five to Nine. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on our next episode. Who knows what hidden talents or hobbies we'll discover on the next episode of Five to Nine.