The tomato varieties I grow for you in the nursery are selected based on my 30 years of competitive growing. Sadly, I've since lost to my competitor, but nearly every year I learned to grow the most useful tomatoes in their category, because otherwise what was I going do with a million dang loser tomatoes?

Let me explain: it's kind of a long story, so if it's currently a sunny day and you need to get to the nursery then skip my story, go get those tomato varieties, and plant them. But if it's cloudy and you haven’t finished your coffee then read on because it's a story about my Mom who still lights up my life every day despite the fact that she passed away a good while ago. She was so bright and full of life. I see her in every flower and especially every tomato I grow--she brought the sunshine everywhere she went.

In the early 80s I bought a wreck of a house in a good neighborhood. I looked past all the flaws -- the broken boards, single-paned windows, the leaky basement -- and set my focus on the backyard which had so much potential! It was huge, backing up to a small creek with a wonderful southern exposure. Like a gopher going home, I went nuts clearing the Himalayan Blackberries and finally started my garden. Mom flew up from The Bay Area to help. It didn’t take long for us to habitually sneak off to the neighborhood nursery, which became our favorite place.

Mom was picking out tomato seeds one day when I spied something new in the gardening industry -- a drip watering system. Mom eye-rolled me. “All one needs is a decent hose,” she said.

"Mom, you gotta embrace science and technology or your tomatoes will just be, you know, average.” Those words out of my mouth, oooh they cut deep. My mom was never average!

She calmly rose to my challenge. "You think your tomatoes will be better with your contraption than me with my simple hose?"

"Modern science will prevail," I said. And thus, the tomato wars began.

Being a new gardener, I didn’t think about how my cooler Oregon summers would compete against her more temperate Northern California summers. I lost many battles. I lost for 10 years! She grew bigger tomatoes, more tomatoes, sweeter tomatoes. She always grew them in the same location which I've heard was a no-no. But she beat me nonetheless. I took my rustiest, most bent garden trowel, spray-painted it gold, cut a slot in a chunk of rotted 2x4 for a mount, and presented her with her trophy: The Golden Trowel Award. It looked horrid and she loved it. I swore I would get my trowel back one day.

She got cheeky and started sending me pamphlets on growing tomatoes for beginners. She had her friend put a tomato on a table and then posed herself at the back of her kitchen with her hands out so that she appeared to be holding a 2½ foot-tall tomato in the picture. I told her next year she might pay for being too comfortable with her win. But, year after year, she kept winning.

At one point, my then-husband took a job near my mom in California. We moved to the Bay Area and IT. WAS. ON! Now she wouldn’t have the heat advantage. Somehow, to my utter consternation, she still beat me every year. I would take the golden trowel trophy and decorate it a little more (to make it look increasingly weird in her quaint house) and give it back to her.

Desperate yet wiley, I built a small greenhouse. I dug up a tomato plant in the fall and nursed it through the winter. The next spring I planted it in the garden as it was just supporting little blossoms. Now that I, too, had the California heat, surely I would have the first tomato of the year! Mom was annoyed but since she had adopted an anything-goes-attitude it was hard for her to call fowl. I thought I had it in the bag but just as she called on the phone one morning, I stepped out onto my porch to see my whole tomato plant disappear down a gopher hole just like in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. That gopher was huge! I howled with frustration! How do you keep your tomatoes safe? Cats, she said smugly with a giggle. Hmph! Apparently my cats were vegetarians.

I really did try everything to win, every trick in the book, every variety. I learned varieties were everything… because what happens when still loose a tomato growing contest and you have a million boring tomatoes. She did clobber me every year for 19 years in a row, even the year she was unwell. At one point, she could hardly walk to the side of her house, but her tomatoes were better than ever. Vanquished, I spray-painted the old garden trowel again and handed it over on its splintery 2x4 mount. Even though I had lost again, I was so happy to see her eyes light up with recognition of our years of loving competition.

In the winter of the following year, she passed away. I miss her terribly. It took me until the following summer to pack her things and sell her house. One day, I went to the side of the house where she kept her tomato patch just to be there one more time. Low and behold her tomatoes had somehow come back even though they weren't being tended by anyone. They tenaciously grew all over the side of the house, the branches so thick and untamed I couldn’t get through. Tomatoes were everywhere! I didn’t know how, but she beat me again!

That same year we decided to move back to my beloved Oregon. I rebuilt my forever dream home here at Paradise Farm. I also built a big greenhouse on the side of my farmhouse and put my moms old rocker in there so I could sit and remember her. It was the strangest thing -- there must have been a tomato seed stuck to the bottom of her rocker. It grew into a HUGE tomato plant. Being in the protected greenhouse, it produced a bounty of tomatoes way before anyone had been able to get their tomatoes in the ground. She beat me at growing tomatoes for 21 years. I know somewhere she is just cracking up at the thought. Meanwhile, in the end I was also a winner, since I have learned so much what kind of tomatoes to grow if you want to win the at least the taste contest of growing tomatoes.

So, my friends, here is my list of the tomatoes I grow (and sell) and why I grow them:

San Marzano Tomato: Best cooking tomato ever. I will be posting a wonderful spaghetti sauce recipe later this summer -- don’t you dare make it using regular tomatoes!!
Long-Keeper Tomato: This one is magical. You harvest all the green tomatoes in the fall. Place them in a box (not touching each other). Put them somewhere cool but don't let them freeze. During the winter, as you need a tomato, bring them in and place them somewhere warm to ripen-up, They won't taste as good as a fresh-picked summer tomato, but they will be a LOT better than store-bought!
Big Rainbow Tomato: These are huge and luscious! One slice can cover your sandwich and the flavor is so delicious!!
Sun Gold Tomato: These are smaller, cherry-sized, and are what I think sunshine tastes like. very abundant!
Sweet Aperitif Tomato: Yum!! Bursts in your mouth with flavor!
Heirloom Beefsteak Mix: Meh. Many people ask for these, so I grow them, but I kind of don't know why.
Orange Sunshine Cherry Tomato: Another taste of sunshine!
Creamsicle: I mean, come on! You don't need the ice cream man with these babies!
Watermelon Beefsteak Tomato: another really big beefsteak… this one I like better.

I have a friend who shared many interesting tomato plants with me this spring. She doesn’t know about the golden trowel yet. But I am excited to try new varieties this year! And, I will be sure to report back how each one is doing. There are bound to be some new winners.

Come see me soon!

Why do I grow the tomatoes I do ?

AN AUTISTIC GARDENER’S OBSESSION WITH PEPPERS

The nastiest weeds in your garden are actually garden gold !