By Norman Winter
Horticulturist
Central Mississippi Research & Extension Center

An audience gathered at the courthouse in New Jersey to watch Col. Robert Gibbon Johnson die from eating a basketful of tomatoes. Colonel Johnson's physician warned he would, "Foam and froth at the mouth ...double over with appendicitis ... and expose himself to brain fever." Johnson didn't die that day in 1820, and a new era for tomatoes slowly began.

Thomas Jefferson raised them at Monticello as early as 1781 for ornamental purposes. By 1835, tomatoes were readily available in North American markets, but were used mostly for sauces and preserves. Many cookbooks of the era highly recommended cooking the tomatoes for at least three hours so the raw taste would be lost.

Today, the tomato is the No. 1 vegetable grown not only Mississippi gardens but throughout the United States. For this reason, the National Garden Bureau has designated 1998 as the Year of the Tomato.

1949 was a benchmark year for the tomato as W. Atlas Burpee introduced the first F1 hybrid tomato, Big Boy. It was an instant success, and since then thousands of new hybrids have been introduced. Garden centers today offer us every shape, and colors that range from red, orange and yellow to even those that look a little like a striped zebra.

When looking at varieties, Mississippi gardeners may choose how long before they want their fruit to ripen. Early tomatoes will ripen in 55 to 60 days from transplanting. Mid-season is considered from 66 to 80 days for ripe fruit and late requires more than 80 days.

An even more important decision may be choosing disease-resistant varieties. When browsing through the tomato selections, you may notice the letters V, F, N or TMV. These letters mean the plant is genetically tolerant of verticillium wilt (V), fusarium wilt (F), nematodes (N) and tobacco mosaic virus (TMV).

The two types of plant growth for tomatoes are determinate and indeterminate. Select the growth habit best suited to your garden use. Indeterminate means varieties grow, blossom and produce tomatoes throughout the growing season depending on climatic conditions. The continuous growth produces many main stems all capable of flowering and producing fruit. Because of this abundant lush growth, pruning and staking is recommended.

Determinate tomato plants are relatively compact and produce a full bushy plant ideally suited to growing in cages. These plants reach a predetermined height or number of fruit clusters and do not grow beyond it. The plants flower, set fruit and ripen in a short period of time so that the main harvest is concentrated into a few weeks. This may be ideal for those who want to can or preserve the fresh tomato harvest or for those like myself who travel a lot during the late summer.

A third type called semi-determinate is a bushy plant that will set fruit and ripen over a longer period of time than a normal determinate. This is one of the reasons Celebrity was awarded the All-America Selection.

Tomatoes need full sun and a deep, well-drained soil. They require phosphorous, nitrogen, potash and minor elements, and are not fond of acidic soil, so you may need to add lime.

Tomatoes are ideal for growing in containers, so if you have no garden plot, there is no need to fret. The container needs to be at least a foot deep with drainage holes at the bottom. I'll never forget seeing a friend grow cherry tomatoes in an old bushel basket on the patio table. His harvest was as great as mine was in the garden. If container gardening, use a water-soluble fertilizer about every two weeks, as you will more than likely be watering daily during the summer.