Scott Daigre - Tomatomania!: A Fresh Approach to Celebrating Tomatoes in the Garden and in the Kitchen

A Fresh Approach to Celebrating Tomatoes in the Garden and in the Kitchen

Scott Daigre & Jenn Garbee

PHOTOGRAPHS BY STACI VALENTINE

ST. MARTINS GRIFFIN

NEW YORK

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For Noon and Nub, and for Sam, the real gardener in the family

Gardening is not a rational act. MARGARET ATWOOD

My fatherwho was not prone to aphorismsonce told mea man can truly be happy only if his hands are able to touch the soil. My mother, who routinely channeled Virginia Woolf, liked to say, One cannot love or work with passion if one has not dined with equal passion.

Fast-forward forty years. I am a visiting chef in a public school helping thirty first-grade gardeners harvest zebra tomatoes, sugar snap peas, and multicolored carrots. A mosaic of ingredients hits the hot wok and I ask the kids what else we should add ginger, garlic, fresh mint, chili? A chorus of enthusiastic voices squeals yes to each. We eat, perched on planter boxes, enjoying food that still glows of the garden. I ask if anyone is trying these vegetables for the first time and hands go up. One girl confesses her mom would be shockedshe normally didnt eat anything green at home.

Ive come to expect small miracles like this in the garden and am reminded that lecturing kids about food choices cannot match their utter delight in growing and eating real food. Watch someone of any age taste their first homegrown tomato; it is a transformational moment, particularly after years of enduring what I call zombie tomatoes. Found year-round in the supermarket, zombies look just like real tomatoes but arent. These undead orbs stagger through peoples meals, sucking the flavor out of everything in their path.

Take heart! The surest way to fight this zombie onslaught is through an irrational act of faith and defiance: namely, growing your own. Tomatomania! is the definitive guide for beginning ones own exciting tomato odysseyfrom plant to plate and beyond. Because when eager gardeners commit to grow their own food, it is also a commitment to something deeper: a pledge to put their hands in the soil, to be truly happy, and to eat with passion.

CHEF CLAUD MANN, HOST OF DINNER & A MOVIE ON TBS

Stop! Dont buy your seedlings yet! I hope I caught you in time. I know. Waiting is hard. You can almost taste those summer tomatoes, cant you? If you got a little excited and already bought your seedlings, its all good. No matter where you are in your season, Im anxious to help you make the most of it.

I love tomatoes. Every color, every size, every wrinkled, striped, and flattened orb. When spring comes around, I cant think of anything else. I plant rare heirlooms first, then last years best producers, my favorite cherries, and the hybrid workhorses that will be sure to fill the counter by harvest time. Then more of all of them.

Some of them will sit in the bed of my truck too long and get a bit leggy. But most will make it to the vegetable garden or into a lonely pot in need of a resident. Some may find themselves firmly rooted in that bare stretch near the garage, or maybe among the roses and shrubs in the perennial border. Soon, Ill have ten, maybe twenty seedlings. Okay, fifty. Know that feeling? If not, you may soon.

I can easily trace my tomato hysteria to my grandfather, Moms dad. Pa Pa was the best kind of gardener. No offense to the zucchini and cucumbers, corn and lima beans, but to me, his garden was all about tomatoes. If I close my eyes, I can still smell his garden shed: a gumbo of Louisiana Delta soil and moisture and compostwith a little radical pesticide aroma mixed in for good measure.

[My first garden in Denver]

Liberal pesticide use wasnt the only thing that was different about growing tomatoes back then. Every year, with practiced and religious precision, Pa Pa grew rows and rows of Better Boys, a popular old-school hybrid. There was no sway there. Bright red, perfectly round with a medium-large girth; those were the qualities you looked for in a good tomato back then. Oh, and that taste! It was the taste that became the hallmark of summer. Remember those days? I still toss a few Better Boys into my garden every year.

To help you find the same success, though without pesticides and with a more open mind for tomato variety, well start by assessing your site and home garden. Is the soil prepped? Are your stakes, cages, and fertilizers all in line, ready to go? If youre a seasoned Tomatomaniac, the answer will probably be a resounding Yes! (We tend to get a little excited about these things.)

If not, well get there after you develop your tomato strategy. (Yes, there really is such a thing!) If you first evaluate your growing conditions and develop your plan for the season, youll make great strides toward that soon-to-be immensely successful summer tomato harvest. You will also make smarter and more appropriate choices when you shop for seedlings. My hope is that as we move into the growing season, I can charm you tomato veterans into trying new varieties, strategies, and practices that will make your efforts this season even more successful and rewarding.

First-timer? This is your year. Well start with the basics. Take a deep breath. Growing tomatoes isnt difficult, time consuming, or physically taxing. The plants practically a weed. But the rewards, oh, the rewards! Keep this book handy, and well plow through the season together. Soon, youll be growing (and cooking!) better tomatoes than I do.

Enough talk. Time to get our hands dirty.

Almost. One more thing before we get started. Lets make this fun. Im a hugely enthusiastic gardener, but Ive been known to be a lazy one as well. Id rather do just about anything than spend hours pinching tomatoes on a hot July afternoon. Perfection has never been my goal, and it neednt be yours. In these pages, if I do my job well, I will provide you with all the tools you need to succeed. Use them. And then step away from the always perfect gardening illusion and just relax. Lets all follow good gardening practices, but lets try not to be so