What’s a drupe?

And yes, it’s true about the SoCal weather. Our daily highs in Palm Springs were ~7° under normal for May and the first week of June. We’re supposed to hit 112° the next few days, so Spring appears to be over.

Hence the fact that only hobbyists and mexican workers harvest them in north america.

If you doubt this, look into the tomato greenhouse industry in southern Ontario, Canada, where we fly in Mexican workers.

Canadian tomatoes tend toward large watery centres, but there’s definitely enough of them.

The greenhouses look like huge salt plains from a distance and they reflect the intense solar radiation, nicely contributing to the greenhouse effect , and the further scorching of the area. Not to mention the enormous amounts of water they use up, a pretty scarce resource.

The unbearable sadness of supermarkets.

Good tomatoes need good soil, heat, and humidity and rain.

To me they’re seasonal things and after the season I use canned tomatoes for sauces, etc.

We wouldn’t expect oysters to be served raw from the Gulf in the heat of the summer and have them taste the same (or be as safe) as cool weather months when they’re in season.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato#Picking_and_ripening

“Although it looks like a tomato, it is a notional tomato. It’s the idea of a tomato.”

I’ve yet to see the Happy Mutants fail to ‘get’ the dark underside of any subject opened for discussion on BB. The frivolity/amusement is often a deliberate balance for a highly intelligent, well-read group of commentors who are all too aware of what goes on in the world.

With tomatoes, you need to lay down a layer of high-quality landscape cloth (don’t use the cheap stuff) to keep the tomato’s roots from getting into the water chamber. You run it from the bottom of the bucket all the way up to the top of the soil line. If those roots get to the water chamber, your tomatoes will end up tasteless and watery. As long as you lay down the cloth and keep the SWC full, use good potting soil, fertilizer, etc. – you will have some damn good tomatoes, and plenty of them!

If you’re going the fertilizer route instead of organic compost, consider the occasional use of hydrogen peroxide, too. The 3% solution at the drug store is fine. Add maybe 1/2c-1c every other day if the plant is looking weak. The plant can access the oxygen in the peroxide, which relieves a lot of the stress associated with transplanting or recovering from an aphid infestation, etc. The downside is that it will kill ALL the bacteria in compost. Still, it’s something to keep in mind if you have a plant that’s on the ropes. The hydrogen peroxide won’t transfer from the fruit to you, either. By the time your tomatoes have ripened, the peroxide is long gone.

My husband is neither a hobbyist nor Mexican. He’s an urban farmer who grows tomatoes right here in N. America, processes them into salsa and sells the salsa.

We have a restaurant here that serves fried green tomatoes, and they use local sources whenever possible. They’re okay in the winter, but the summers, well… Glorious is a mild term.

While tomatoes grown in greenhouses may taste boring a good thing about greenhouses is that they increase the amount of light reflected back from Earths surface which in face will probably reduce human caused global warming

You can read about the growing movement encouraging people to paint their roofs white to help reduce heat buildup in cities, etc.

BLT’s with Blue Plate Mayo are my little slice of summer heaven.

PS Try picking the whole tomato plant out of the ground just before the first frost and hanging it upside down in a cold place, but not freezing, like a garage. Green tomatoes will continue to ripen for months. We’ve had pretty good tomatoes in December or January from plants pulled up in September or October.