By Linda Elissalde
It has always been my contention that Eve did not give up the Garden of Eden for an apple, but for the botanical fruit TOMATO (Solanum lycopersicum). Apples are certainly healthy and good for you. However, a tomato is much more delicious. No one puts an apple into a BLT sandwich. Ah! But, the tomato is a vegetable you say. Master Gardener Dr. Melanie Wallace provided the answer to that juicy debate during her radio KBEC gardening broadcast. No less than the Supreme Court decided by unanimous decision in Nix v. Hedden,1893, that tomatoes were a vegetable. Therefore, it could be taxed by the Tariff Act of March 3, 1883. (Fruits were not taxed.) If the Supreme Court of the United States of America declared the tomato a vegetable, so be it. Botanists still call it a fruit.

Tomato lovers are a breed unto themselves. My father Charlie Schmucker, Farm Reporter on KLVI for 49 years, was an avid grower. There are quite a few living on Bolivar Peninsula. Mosleys, Fredenburgs, Popes, Denise Boyd and Carole Chambers are some of the most successful growers of that delicious red orb. There are surely more on Bolivar Peninsula, but I must sing the praises of my husband’s yearly presentation of tomatoes. He really struggles to get these vegetables to produce. We live 3 rows back from the Gulf of Mexico receiving large gusts of salty air. IKE made sure that there would only be sand left to Dr. Marcel Elissalde’s pre-IKE tomato patch. Marcel spends the cooler times of each year researching information printed about tomatoes and purchasing needed soils, fertilizers, etc. etc. etc.

Starting in February our guest room takes on the looks of a greenhouse. There are seedlings and baby plants in all types of containers. Come March, Marcel begins placing some in the ground. Celebrity tomatoes are the main ones because they are hardy, but he always experiments with others. The ones that brought delight to tomato devotes this year were his Super Sweet 100s cherry tomatoes. Nicknamed tomato candy, people grab handfuls whenever they pass a plant or a container of them. Being an indeterminate variety they grow and grow and grow. Of course everyone knows that the very best tomatoes are picked straight off a vine, wiped on a shirt sleeve and eaten right from the garden.

Tomato growers love to visit with each other. People add to their knowledge and usually try something new they have learned. One of the greatest joys of growing tomatoes is sharing with folk who love eating tomatoes. The happiness brought by this gift to those who proclaim it queen of summer produce is payment enough for the hard work done by those who grow them.

Whether you call them fruits or vegetables; cook them or can them; eat them in a salad or off the vine, all agree – TOMATOES RULE!

[LCE: July-18-2023]