COMMENTARY: KNEE-DEEP IN TOMATO TIME

Here we are in the month of the big, colorful garden jewels. Like second cousins to Christmas trees adorned with baubles, the tomato plants, with a little support, stand erect and say to the world, "Look here! See what we offer ..."

Their offerings make the summer menu delightful as well as colorful. The wintertime and even summertime things called tomatoes, at the grocery stores are just that, "Things." Hard, tasteless, with a definite core. Pardon me, Produce Departments.

During my lifetime I think I have experienced every type of tomato known. In my earliest "tomato-remembering" days I don't recall the name of the plants. They just produced big, round, red fruit. Mama and Grandma sowed seeds, saved from the previous year, in a flat filled with garden soil and placed in a sunny window. When the seedlings were about two inches high, at watering time, the room was filled with the good first garden smell, a sweet reminder that the season was progressing just as arranged from the beginning of time.

Tomatoes will return to the garden.

Sunshine and rain will fall on the soil.

Fruit will be eaten. Seeds will be saved.

And all will be done over again.

For our early household of seven we put out about 25 plants which all gardeners know would produce more than enough to eat during the ripe season plus plenty to can. Little tin cans were used then with a flat lid sealed down with melted, brick-red sealing wax.

With the improvements in preserving methods, the improvements in tomato varieties kept pace, I guess. Some of the older varieties like Beefsteak, are still the best in my opinion.

Throughout my long life of tomato growing, which began with the 25 plants in the farm garden, the plants have dwindled to three, which would still be plenty of tomatoes for me if the blossoms stayed on long enough for the fertilizing process to occur. I know all about blossom set. It doesn't always work for the non-professional.

Phase three: Green tomatoes! How we hasten to pick them all at the first official forecast of frost, or if no official forecast is available, use the inherent feel of first frosts coming in the night. Phase three is as if the tomatoes are saying, "We ain't done yet."

One doesn't feel so guilty making fried green tomatoes at this time of the year. In the early stages of maturity it is a little harder to sacrifice a green tomato to satisfy an appetite whim. Tomato abortion it could be facetiously called. No humor intended.

During fireplace time, an opened jay of piccalilli beside a generous serving of butter beans and a slab of crusty, buttered cornbread makes one want to compose a song of praise for those who experimented with this garden jewel and found it to be nonpoisonous as was originally thought.

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.