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Courtesy of manjith kainickara on flickr

The tomato is a plant in the Solanaceae or nightshade family, as are its close cousins tobacco, chili peppers, potato, and eggplant. The tomato is native to Central, South, and southern North America from Mexico to Peru. It is a perennial, often grown outdoors in temperate climates as an annual, typically reaching to 1–3 m (3 to 10 ft) in height, with a weak, woody stem that often vines over other plants.

The leaves are 10–25 cm long, pinnate, with 5–9 leaflets, each leaflet up to 8 cm long, with a serrated margin; both the stem and leaves are densely glandular-hairy. The flowers are 1–2 cm across, yellow, with five pointed lobes on the corolla; they are borne in a cyme of 3–12 together.

Home Cultivars with exceptional taste include:
'Andrew Rahart Jumbo Red' (red beefsteak)
'Black Cherry' (black/brown cherry)
'Box Car Willie' (red beefsteak)
'Brandywine' (red beefsteak, Sudduth strain)
'Cherokee Purple' (purple beefsteak)
'Crnkovic Yugoslavian' (red beefsteak)
'Earl’s Faux' (pink/red beefsteak)
'Elbe' (orange beefsteak)
'Great Divide' (red beefsteak)
'Lucky Cross' (bi-color red/orange)
'Marianna’s Peace' (red beefsteak)
'Mortgage Lifter' (red beefsteak, various strains)
'Sungold' (orange cherry, not open pollinated)


Courtesy of Plutor on flickr


Diseases and Pests

Tomato cultivars vary widely in their resistance to disease. Modern hybrids focus on improving disease resistance over the heirloom plants. Various forms of mildew and blight are common tomato afflictions, which is why tomato cultivars are often marked with a combination of letters which refer to specific disease resistance. The most common letters are: V - verticillium wilt, F - fusarium wilt strain I, FF - fusarium wilt strain I & II, N - nematodes, T - tobacco mosaic virus, and A - alternaria.

Another particularly dreaded disease is curly top, carried by the beet leafhopper, which interrupts the lifecycle, ruining a nightshade plant as a crop. As the name implies, it has the symptom of making the top leaves of the plant wrinkle up and grow abnormally.

Some common tomato pests are cutworms, tomato hornworms and tobacco hornworms, aphids, cabbage loopers, whiteflies, tomato fruitworms, flea beetles, red spider mite, slugs, and Colorado potato beetles.


Tips for growing

• Plant several varieties of tomato to ensure a steady harvest.
  
• Choose a location that gets full sun and plenty of air circulation. You'll want a spot where the dew and rain will evaporate from the plants quickly to avoid disease.
  
• Test your soil - tomatoes do best in a slightly acidic pH in the 6.0 to 7.0 range.
  
• Prepare your soil with lots of rich compost, which can be either homemade or store bought. Put a 1 to 2 inch layer around your tomato plants 2 or 3 times during the season.
  
• Plants can grow to be rather large, so make sure to space tomato plants at least a couple of feet apart.
  
• As the plant grows, secure vines to stakes about 6 feet tall, to keep your tomatoes off the ground.
  
• The more branches there are on the plant, the more fruit you'll produce. So, unless you want to go for larger, but fewer, tomatoes you may want to pass on pruning.

More Links

• Tomato Recipes
• More growing tips
• Buying tomato seeds