So Much For Out Of Season Tomatoes

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titletown
titletown Posts: 377 Member
edited October 2024 in Food and Nutrition
Right now I'm inching towards the end of our growing season up here in the mid-west and will soon no longer be able to go out to my garden and pick some great tasting, fresh, vine ripened tomatoes.

Soon enough, I'll be relegated to heading off to the local super market to pick through the rock hard, tasteless tomatoes in hopes that they will have a little flavor that I get spoiled on over the summer here.

Well, after reading the article in the link below, I see why these out of season tomatoes are usually bland and tasteless, and after you read the article, I'll assume like me, that you will not be eating any of these over the winter months either:

http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2011/09/08/how-the-modern-day-tomato-came-to-be/

Replies

  • catwrangler
    catwrangler Posts: 918 Member
    I am a home grown tomato fanatic and I am afraid to read that article :laugh:

    Seriously, I am going to try and can some next year!
  • lor007
    lor007 Posts: 884 Member
    I'm sad about the tomatoes, too. I am down to the four sitting on my kitchen counter. :(
  • Contrarian
    Contrarian Posts: 8,137 Member
    No, no. I'll still eat them.
  • RocketsGirl75
    RocketsGirl75 Posts: 648
    what is a tomato?
  • squishycow7
    squishycow7 Posts: 820 Member
    Yes I read that last night!! Depressing. Last year I brought a tomato plant inside and it gave me one very tiny result some time in mid January... Could try your luck with that. It was supposed to be a regular old "big boy" tomato but it gave me more of a cherry sized one. Still I was proud :)
  • sonybalony
    sonybalony Posts: 335 Member
    I take a good strong off shoot of my little yellow pear tomatoes (they don't need a second plant), dip it in rooting hormone, put it in a pot with good damp soil, put a paper bag over it, and wait a week, making sure to keep the soil DAMP not wet. After a week, find a nice sunny window without a cold draft. Have to hand pollinate, but that can be a little shake of the stake daily... Tomatoes in the winter! In the spring you can propagate the same way to have established plants before anyone else! (FREE!)

    Good luck!

    ~ Sonia
  • L2M1D52
    L2M1D52 Posts: 616 Member
    No wonder I was not a fan of tomatoes, but I was just starting to like them. Now I have this to look forward to :cry:
  • houzkat
    houzkat Posts: 78
    Now I have to give up my new favorite snack. I can't unread that article and I can't eat tasteless tomatos :-(
  • jellybean1971
    jellybean1971 Posts: 385 Member
    well that put me off store bought tomatoes, not that they taste like much anyway.
  • SiltyPigeon
    SiltyPigeon Posts: 920 Member
    You think slave picked tomatoes are bad? Wait till they go Union. Not only will they taste just as bad.... there'll be a national tomato shortage and will cost $10 each.
  • Lift_hard_eat_big
    Lift_hard_eat_big Posts: 2,278 Member
    Ehh, this is nothing new. They've been doing this for years. Tomatoes and other fruits and veges have been genetically modified to withstand the extreme conditions of food processing. They pick them underipe to store for the off season. They modify them so that they are super firm to withstand being crushed while being buried under tons of product during transportation and processing. Also, we are down to a handful of varieties, vs. a hundred years ago we had hundreds of varieties.
  • buckaroos30
    buckaroos30 Posts: 127 Member
    I didn't read your link. But I know that they gas green tomatoes to ripen them up fast. I have found that the vine ripened ones at the grocery store do taste a little better than the others. but none can compair to homegrown ones.
  • SiltyPigeon
    SiltyPigeon Posts: 920 Member
    75% of the link talked about Florida using chain-gang slaves captured from other countries to pick our tomatoes while we bathe them in pesticides and murder them if they try to escape. Not kidding.
  • stevenleagle
    stevenleagle Posts: 293 Member
    Interesting article. Although I live in Australia (no Florida tomatoes here), supermarket tomatoes still taste bland, tasteless. Dare I say it, I think that those practises described in the article could be responsible. One thing that there is doubt about: nothing beats natural, home grown tomatoes. I find that the only half decent tomato that I can sometimes find at the supermarket are the cherry tomatoes - still not as good as home grown though.
  • Grokette
    Grokette Posts: 3,330 Member
    Right now I'm inching towards the end of our growing season up here in the mid-west and will soon no longer be able to go out to my garden and pick some great tasting, fresh, vine ripened tomatoes.

    Soon enough, I'll be relegated to heading off to the local super market to pick through the rock hard, tasteless tomatoes in hopes that they will have a little flavor that I get spoiled on over the summer here.

    Well, after reading the article in the link below, I see why these out of season tomatoes are usually bland and tasteless, and after you read the article, I'll assume like me, that you will not be eating any of these over the winter months either:

    http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2011/09/08/how-the-modern-day-tomato-came-to-be/

    Yep, I stop eating tomatoes after the growing season. Same goes for cucumbers and zucchini.

    In the winter months I eat a lot of cabbage, collard greens, mustard greens, carrots, celery and sweet potatoes.
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