Hi Don, thanks for starting the thread.
I grew up on a truck farm in the 50s and 60s. Started peddlin' vegetables when I was 8.
Back then with the tomatoes, we started the seeds in a cold frame to have transplants ready to go in the ground as soon as weather permitted. We used contour farming to control erosion and planted on south facing hillsides to take advantage of the inclination of the sun in the early spring.
3 or 4 varieties of tomatoes were chosen for planting each year based on past performance, early maturity, production, and disease resistance. Red, Round, and good Flavor were a given, nothing else would even be considered. All were hybrids and my father always bitched about having to pay $65 for an 1/8 ounce of seed. You could buy a good mule for the same money or a matched pair for $150. But he always bought the seed.
As soon as the tomatoes started ripening, they were harvested twice a week. Any tomato showing color was picked, wiped with a soft rag, and the stem removed in the field before being placed gently into a basket. This minimized bruising and damage from sand.
When the tomatoes had been picked, they were moved to a shade tree or shed, depending on the weather for sorting and packing.
We used a pink to ripe pack in half bushel baskets. Clean baskets in good condition were lined with doubled newspaper in the bottom and sides. You sat with 2 of these baskets in front of you to pack in and 3 or 4 baskets of field tomatoes around you to pick from. A bushel basket was placed between the packers for cutters and canners (blemished tomatoes, cat-faced, malformed because it had grown in the fork of a vine, over ripe or too green, too large or too small, sun-scalded, anything which wasn't a number one, but was still an edible tomato.) (These were sold to cafes, restaurants, and home canners for half the price of number one tomatoes and normally covered all the production and marketing expenses for all the crops.
The number one tomatoes were packed tightly with a layer of pinking tomatoes on the bottom, a layer of tomatoes showing good color next, a layer of half-ripe tomatoes next and a layer of ripe tomatoes on top. A properly packed dry basket would weigh 23 pounds and wouldn't vary more than an ounce (22 pounds of tomatoes and a 1 pound basket).
The merchants and grocers liked this because all they had to do was place the basket on an angle and the produce was ready to sell. As the ripe tomatoes sold, the greener tomatoes below ripened and were ready for sale.
Today you can buy tomatoes year round and can find fresh tomatoes on sale for $.88 a pound in the dead of winter. They've been picked green, gassed and shipped for hundreds or thousands of miles to a store near you.
All that work and effort to put inedible fruit within your reach. And because of the marketing and economics involved, I don't think things will change in this regard.
But you can take those red rocks and easily turn them into tomatoes almost as good as those from your own vines.
I do love a good tomato and mayonnaise sandwich. That's why I started growing tomatoes after 40 years away from the farm. I couldn't get good tasting tomatoes for a sandwich.
That long dry spell from when the tomatoes petered out in the fall until the first ripe ones were ready in the spring made that first tomato sandwich of the year a pleasure.
Well, not anymore.
A hot water bath will improve most tomato varieties flavor. (A lot)
Buy a half dozen of the hard red slicers available at most stores now. Pick out tomatoes without bruises or breaks in the skin and less than ripe. Use a meat Thermometer and run 125 degree water in a pot. Place the tomatoes in the hot water and cover with a saucer so they stay submerged. After 5 minutes remove the tomatoes and allow them to ripen on your counter (don't refrigerate) for a week. Then enjoy.
Tomatoes - 125 degree water - 5 minutes - ripen on the counter for a week
This works great on the red slicers currently coming out of Mexico. The only tomatoes I've found that weren't improved are the "Tomatoes on the Vine". I think they must have bred the flavor out of that variety.
Now keep some tomatoes ripening. Claud
