Why don’t tomatoes taste like they used to, or the ones that came from Grandpa’s garden?
Tomatoes for supermarkets are picked in the field, boxed in the field, and stacked waiting for pick up by the truck.  The boxes are loaded into the truck, driven to a rail station, or trucking terminal, where they may or may not be loaded again, shipped via rail or truck to a supermarket’s central warehouse, shipped to the various stores, and loaded into the back room in the produce department until they’re needed in the counter.  Now they’re loaded into the counter, picked over, put in the cart, go through the check stand, into the trunk of the car, taken home, hauled into the kitchen, and used throughout the week.  And of course they had to ripen somewhere along the way.

Commercial tomatoes have been created to withstand that kind of punishment.  The varieties we use in our gardens would be tomato juice by the 2nd handling.

Can we expect commercial tomatoes to be flavorful, juicy, or have any real resemblance to a tomato?  It’s not going to happen.
Still, the tomato is America’s favorite vegetable.  It isn’t that we love the commercially grown tomatoes, but rather that they’re used in ketchup, barbecue sauces, soups, etc.

Lee O'Hara

www.organichomegardener.com