This Year, Tomatoes Are Diseased or Later Than Ever

Halfway into the tomato season, gardeners are getting distinctly mixed results, depending on where they live.

At a tomato tasting at Hortus Nursery in Pasadena last weekend, coastal gardeners were complaining about all the diseases on their tomatoes, and inland gardeners were being reassured that the tomato season was simply late, about a month and a half late in fact. Yes, their tomatoes would eventually ripen.

Until just recently, it’s been surprisingly cool on the coast, and tomato plants have become covered with everything from mildew to diseases no one remembers seeing before.

In my coastal garden, I was out early one morning pulling up an ‘Early Girl’ that had succumbed to various things and some squash that were covered with mildew. Several neighbors stopped to say their plants were diseased too and that they were about to give up.

I suggested that they might try what I was going to, a second planting of tomatoes that might ripen in all the heat that still lies ahead.

Later in the day in Pasadena, a bank thermometer said it was 97 degrees. There’s been plenty of heat in the valleys, but the season did get off to a very late start, thanks to that extended El Nin~o spring.

At Hortus, Scott Daigre had several tables covered with neatly labeled tomatoes, most brought in by customers. There were an amazing 67 varieties to taste on this salsa-hot day. All who visited that morning were given a card on which to list their five favorites in this popular vote.

The winners were an interesting bunch, a mix of new and old, including heritage varieties. But it’s important to remember that this year, everyone’s tomatoes are late, late, late, so the winners tended to be varieties that reach their peak in midsummer.

Daigre pointed out that at last year’s tasting, a whole different lot won the popular vote.

There was also a taste-testing by a panel that included several garden writers, a chef and a seed expert. We came up with yet another list of favorites, but we were tasting only 10 distinctly different kinds.

In the popular tasting, ‘Enchantment’ was the clear winner, which would have been a bit of a surprise in a more typical growing season, except that this variety is one that does well even in cooler weather, so it was already at its peak.

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When I had my vegetable plot at the Ocean View Farms community garden overlooking the Pacific, ‘Enchantment’ was one of the few that did well in those cool sea breezes. It’s a meaty dual-purpose tomato that can be used cooked or raw, and it has a distinctive egg shape.

It’s also a VFFN hybrid, so it resists many diseases. At our plot, it out-produced everything and was constantly covered with ripe fruit.

The next favorite was ‘Fourth of July,’ another hybrid tomato that bears early in the season. It’s relatively new, and when we tried it last year, it almost tied ‘Early Girl’ for earliest tomato ever.

‘Sungold,’ a golden cherry tomato, came in next, and it was a favorite of the panelists as well, but as seed expert Renee Shepherd pointed out, it is unfair to compare a cherry tomato to a regular tomato because the cherries are so sweet.

She called them “candy,” and I would have to agree. ‘Sungold,’ a hybrid developed in Japan, might be too sweet to discover in a salad, but it’s perfect for nibbling on while in the garden or watching TV, just like candy. ‘Sungold’ is another variety that’s considered early, so it too was at its prime.

Mostly missing from the taste test were the big beefsteak types because they are ripening so late this year. There were quite a few heritage types, but they fared poorly, although the old Russian variety named ‘Black Krim’ managed to tie for fifth with the new French variety ‘Dona.’ (‘Black Krim’ also placed in the top five last year.)

‘Black Krim,’ from the Black Sea area, and ‘Black Prince,’ from Siberia, of all places, are two heritage varieties that a friend of mine, Michael Trotter, can grow close to the beach in Hermosa (they’re also his two favorites), which might explain why it did so well this early in the season.

‘Black Krim’ takes a little getting used to when it’s sliced and on the plate because it looks a bit like raw meat, with purplish-brown streaks. running though the red slices. However, another panel member, Evan Kleinman of Angeli restaurant on Melrose, said that her customers love these oddly colored tomatoes, and I must admit they’re delicious. ‘Black Krim’ is one that even tastes like it’s already been salted.

My favorite in the test was the truly oddly colored ‘Green Zebra.’ It got high marks from others as well. These tomatoes are amber-green when ripe, with darker green stripes.

Another chosen by the panel was ‘Carmello,’ a French hybrid with disease resistance.

Interestingly, the highly touted ‘Brandywine’ was nobody’s favorite.

Although most of the heirlooms and beefsteaks did poorly in the popular vote, Shepherd pointed out that they aren’t really ripe yet. “The blacks and greens, especially, have their moment when they are perfectly ripe,” she said, and that moment is yet to arrive.

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She even goes so far as to toss out the first half-dozen or so that ripen on the bush, because they won’t be as good as the later ones. Those of you still waiting for tomatoes, hang on.

Those of you who have given up on sick plants, consider planting some more right now.

Panelist Bill Sidnam, who has grown an amazing 700 or so varieties over the years, suggested that you can plant several kinds in August and they will bear right through winter.

He favors ‘Champion,’ ‘Celebrity’ and ‘Sweet 100’ for this purpose, but I planted a tasty ‘Cherokee Purple’ (originally from Tennessee and the Cherokee Indians), gambling that it will ripen before the season is done.