COOKSTUFF : FINDS
There are more varieties of tomatoes than flavors of Baskin-Robbins ice cream. The problem is that very few varieties are available commercially. Growing plants from seeds is about the only way to get to taste some of the world’s really great tomatoes.
Lore Caulfield, a former lingerie designer, knows this. She was once an avid weekend gardener poring through seed catalogues between plane and train layovers. Then three years ago, the former executive traded in her designer suits for denim and started selling her flowers, herbs and heirloom tomatoes at local growers markets. “I wouldn’t go back to my old life for anything,” says Caulfield. “I don’t miss all that aggravation and I don’t ever want to go back to managing people.”
Caulfield’s colorful tomatoes were a hit from the start. “The first year everybody else had perfectly shaped red tomatoes,” she says, “and here I come along with my misshapen ones. I didn’t grow any red and none of the popular commercial kinds. So I put out this sign that said ‘Heirloom tomatoes, 100-year-old varieties, low-acid, sweet, juicy, big, ugly and wonderful.’ People laughed. They all related to the ‘big, ugly and wonderful’ part.”
And they stood in line to buy the ugly things. They couldn’t get enough of the meaty whites, the red and yellow striped pineapple tomatoes, the dusky purple Cherokees, the deep yellow-orange beefsteak tangerine tomatoes.
Unfortunately, tomatoes are seasonal (Caulfield says hers should be ready to harvest by the end of June) so this year she started selling the plants too. “I didn’t know how many seeds to plant,” she says. “It seemed like I planted hundred and hundreds, but I guess I should have planted thousands. Every time I take out three flats they are gone in 15 minutes.”
Although Caulfield uses the French intensive method (she hand-digs the plots twice as deep as normal to get more plants into a tighter space), she is already looking for more land. Right now she plants two acres. She is also trying to come up with some new crops.
“All my life I’ve been very good at starting up something new and fresh and then somebody else comes in and beats me at it,” she says. “So I suspect next year everybody is going to be growing heirloom plants and then I’ll have to do something else.”
Besides Thursday afternoons at the Thousand Oaks growers market, Caulfield sells her tomato plants ($4 for four-inch plants; $5.75 for gallon size) and fresh herbs at three other local growers markets: Santa Monica on Saturday and Sunday mornings; Hollywood on Sunday mornings, and the Encino market on Sundays.
