July is peak season for Heirloom Tomatoes at Terra Firma, and we hope you’ve been enjoying it. As we roll into August most years, our harvest begins to slow down. The thin skins of the fruit and their tender flesh are not just appealing to human eaters, but to bugs as well. Insect populations tend to grow over the summer with the warm temperatures. And as the days get shorter and the nights cooler, we start to have lots of dew in the mornings that settles on the fruit and causes the skin to crack. With the cooler weather we’ve had in late July, we are already seeing that in the fields.
Yolo and Solano Counties are both in the top 10 tomato producers in California, which is by far the largest tomato producing state in the country. Very few of those tomatoes are harvested in July; most are harvested in August and September. That’s always been a source of frustration for me. But there are several huge differences between the heirloom varieties we grow here and the tomatoes grown on tens of thousands of acres around us.
First of all is their intended market: Heirloom tomatoes are grown entirely for the fresh market, and are eaten raw. They are tender, juicy, and bred to look pretty when sliced or chopped. Cooking them for more than a few minutes generally turns them brown due to the high sugar content, and often produces odd flavors thanks to their high acid levels.
The vast majority of tomatoes grown in our area and in the state are grown not for fresh market but for processing. They are hard as a rock even when fully ripe so they can be transported in bulk directly from the fields to factories where they are cooked down and made into sauce, paste or the canned tomatoes you see in the store. Few of them are eaten raw, but if you did ever happen to try one, you would find it dry, pasty and relatively flavorless. When these tomatoes are sold “fresh” the supermarkets call them “Roma Tomatoes”.
The Second big difference is how the tomatoes are grown: Most heirloom varieties are vines that grow continuously. They must be trellised to keep them manageable, for ease of harvest, and to keep the delicate fruit from touching the ground. The tomatoes must be harvested every few days as they ripen over a 3-6 week period. Truth be told, they are better adapted to growing in greenhouses where their environment can be 100% controlled. Most of the “vine-ripened” tomatoes you see in the supermarket for most of the year are grown indoors. Having grown them outdoors now for 25 years, I can completely understand why.
Processing tomatoes are low-growing bushes designed to produce a concentrated amount of fruit all at the same time. The thick-skinned tomatoes can withstand all kinds of stresses. They are fairly impervious to insect damage, they can sit on the ground without being squashed, and they can be harvested with a giant “tomato combine” that sucks up the vines, yanks the tomatoes off, and then shoots them via a conveyor belt into a giant fiberglass bathtub riding on a semi-truck alongside. If you’ve ever driven on I-80 or Hwy 5 in late summer, you’ve likely seen this harvest in action.
As a fresh-tomato grower and admitted snob, I used to look askance at the way canning tomatoes were grown. But over the years, I have developed a profound appreciation for the incredible efficiency and productivity of the industry. Then, just a few years ago, I realized that I could borrow one of the “tools” they have developed.
In 2020 I noticed our processing-tomato farmer neighbors growing a San-Marzano type that was incredibly productive with a big, healthy plant. These are Italian-style canning tomatoes are long and pointy with a rich flavor. I picked a few of them and cooked them that night, only to discover that they had great balance of sugar and acid. They made wonderful sauce. We planted the variety — which has a number rather than a name — the next year and they grew incredibly well, producing ten times more fruit than any other San Marzano type we had grown.
In case you’re wondering: while the “6420” is an industrial tomato bred for machine harvest, we don’t have a tomato harvester. We pick them the same way we pick all of our other tomatoes — by hand. They tend to come into production right around now, when our heirloom plantings are beginning to fade out, and they produce abundantly well into the fall. You will see them on and off in your boxes alongside both heirlooms (as long as they last) and our go-to Early Girls.
Thanks,
Pablito