Vibrant Village ™

Plump grape tomatoes ripe for picking

Tomatoes--those fleshy, juicy, seedy, in the best sense of the word, fruits that we hold off buying all winter just so we can cling to the memory of how wonderful they really taste when plucked ripe off the vine.

“Better Boy,”  “Big Boy,”  “Pink Girl,”  “Celebrity,”  “Marglobe,”  “Roma,”  “German Johnson”…..the list of varieties is long and getting longer by the year.  If you peruse a seed catalog of heirloom tomatoes, there are page after page of red, yellow, pink, even purple/black fruits.

I took an easier route this year and bought plants, but I’ve ended up with “Red Defender,”  “Mount Glory” and “Clarissa.”  I’ll either have wonderful tomatoes, Transformers or characters from a Stephen King novel hanging off the vine.  I’ll let you know.

My love for tomatoes goes far beyond the wonderful taste of this succulent fruit.  Planting tomatoes brings back one of my strongest and fondest memories of my Grandmother, Beulah Cox, aka “Gardener Extraordinaire.”

I intimated in an earlier article that she was my genetic link to “green thumb-ness.”  She shared a package of pumpkin seeds and a small plot of good earth with me and I was hooked.  But aside from my own space, Grandmother always let me help with the planning and planting of the “real” garden.   This garden was our food source for fresh vegetables throughout the summer and sustained the family through the winter with canned goods.

We’d make the trip to the nearest garden center or FCX, as it was called in our community, to buy seed by the ounce and plants for peppers and tomatoes.  I think it’s the smell of tomatoes, plants and fruit, that makes an indelible mark on you.

My grandmother swore by some of the more common varieties such as “Better Boy” and “Big Boy” and always planted by the “Farmer’s Almanac’s” instruction on moon phase.

But the best part for a young gardener-in-training was the actual planting.  We would pile everything needed in the wheelbarrow:  peat moss, shovel, hoe, water bucket, plants, and 10-10-10.  Needless to say, my grandmother was not necessarily an organic gardener, but always a successful one.

She wielded the shovel, digging 10-12 holes.  My role was basically to get as dirty as possible so that she could avoid getting as dirty as possible.  I would get down on hands and knees, placing peat moss and fertilizer in each hole.  Then each hole would be filled with water to saturate the ground.

Once the holes were really mucky, the lucky trainee would get to scoop out a small hole, carefully place the tomato plant in the hole, and fill in around the plant.

She taught me to plant them fairly deeply, or at least up to the lowest leaves, 'because tomatoes continue to grow roots on these buried stems.'  Once finished with planting, my hands and clothes were fragrant with fresh tomato scent.

As the plants grew, I was also allowed to aid in the staking process.  Grandmother always took care of the more dangerous jobs, so she would hammer the stakes into the ground, but my task was to cut the twine and help tie the plants delicately to the stakes--again my nose was infiltrated with the aroma of tomato and I loved it.

Once the fruit was ready to pick, I learned one of the most important skills of my life:  the making of the tomato sandwich.  At that time, Sunbeam white bread was the “healthy choice,” and the basis for the most delicious sandwiches.

Of course, one must smother both sides of the bread with Dukes mayonnaise--there really is no substitute--then apply slices of vine-ripened tomato, and salt and/or pepper.

The memory of peeling those gooey sandwiches off the roof of my mouth combined with the taste of the sweet ripe tomatoes is one of my fondest remembrances of my childhood--and some of the happiest, most satisfying times of my adulthood.

These sandwiches are my incentive to get dirty all over again each spring--to prepare a bed, dig holes, water, fertilize, and place these wonderfully aromatic plants into the ground.

A few things have changed.

The bread is now whole grain, the tomato varieties are a bit different, and the fertilizer is organic, but the end product still lives up to the memory.

And with you, too, my tomato loving friends? I toast you in sweet redness. Bon Appétit