Grow What You Love: A Life of Tomatoes
Photography by Valery Rizzo.
When Tim Mountz was given some of his grandparents’ forgotten beans as a young man, he became intrigued by the genealogy of heritage plants: one of the beans was so rare that it had been extinct—until then.
A feast at Tim’s tomato acres in the Brandywine Valley, Pennsylvania.
Grow what you love.
“The two foods I’m always thinking about are pizza and tacos,” says Tim.
“It is a great sauce tomato, and I sell out of the seed every year.” Tim is a great supporter of open-pollinated varieties, a wider selection than the heirloom group (in which a variety needs to be at least 50 years old).
Heirloom is the way to go.
Grow together what goes together.
Purple basil ‘Opal’ grows alongside tomatoes; a prime pizza ingredient. If I’m depressed, I just grab some and bury my face in it.
Tim testing green tomatoes for ripeness. Splitting in tomatoes is caused by a heavy rain just as the fruits are ripening; tomato aficionados watch the weather and relax in the morning if the weather is fine or harvest when rain is predicted.
Don’t prematurely harvest.
There’s a neat way to store them for winter.
Trusses of Grappoli d’Inverno (winter grape), a storing tomato that can be harvested for months, when hung in a cool place.
Condensation on the skin of a refrigerated tomato.
Tomatoes aren’t all sweet.
Peach tomatoes have a slight fuzz and a slight sweetness.
If Tim could choose just one tomato it would probably be Black Krim from Crimea It s salty and savory and intense Not like the the whites or the yellows that are giddy and sweet...
...and super summery it s the thinking man s tomato Other favorites are Brandywine which couldn t be more local since his tomatoes are watered via the Brandywine River and every type of peach tomato
You can eat too many tomatoes—but it’s worth it.
A salad of basil, red onions and very ripe tomatoes.
Cut as a truss, smaller tomatoes store well.