Thursday, October 1, 2026
Every spring, there are more tomato varieties for sale than the year before. You could spend the whole month of May researching them. AI will help: In a flash, Google’s AI mode will inform you that Giant Belgium tomatoes were actually bred in about 1930 in Ohio by a farmer whose name is lost to history, that they bear 1- to 3-pound tomatoes that ripen late in the growing season, and that the plants are very disease resistant and productive.
I was glad to learn all that, because I had impulse-bought a nice bushy Giant Belgium plant based only on what it said on the tag tucked into its pot. It claimed that this plant produces tomatoes with “low acid, mild flavor so sweet some growers use them to make wine.”
AI says “Because it is an heirloom, you can save the seeds from its fruit to plant next year, and they will grow true-to-type.” If you keep asking questions, AI will keep answering them, and will nudge you to ask even more. In a few minutes, you will learn the differences between species, heirloom, open-pollinated, and hybrid plants.
You’ll also learn that tomatoes have “perfect” flowers, which means each flower has both male and female parts. Botanists classify them as bisexual.
Some, but not all perfect flowers can pollinate themselves; there’s plenty of variety about the many ways plants reproduce.
According to Google’s AI, “This condition (having both male and female parts) is common in many invertebrates, including snails, slugs, leeches, and earthworms, as well as the majority of flowering plants.”
In Australia, there’s even a unique tomato variety that is truly nonbinary, and can change its sex from time to time, for reasons not yet understood.
“When considering the scope of life on Earth, the notion of a constant sexual binary consisting of distinct and disconnected forms is, fundamentally, a fallacy,” scientists wrote in a research paper that drew the attention of the New York Times.
The research paper also noted an “all-female lizard species whose eggs have all the genetic material needed to reproduce, and clown fish, which are born male and can transform into females later in life.”
But here in America, our president has decreed there shall be only two genders, male and female. A lot of life on earth is noncompliant with that decree, which must be a source of endless angst for him.
One wonders: If tomatoes are bisexual — or as some might say hermaphrodites — does a DEI foe like our president avoid tomato ketchup on his Big Macs? Have deviant tomato products been banned from military menus?
According to Wikipedia, tomatoes’ capacity to self-pollinate is improved by bees that hover and vibrate over their flowers, encouraging the pollen to fall on the stigma. (In botany, a stigma is a female plant part, not a widely held disapproval of something.)
That’s why knowledgeable gardeners (Helen Mirren among them) gently shake the flowering plants to help pollen get where it needs to go. Her demonstration of how she does this embarrassed Jimmy Fallon.
Tomatoes have other, less controversial issues too. The most common is a malady called blossom end rot, which is exactly what it sounds like. It can be prevented by providing more calcium in your soil — typically by adding bone meal, crushed eggshells or another organic substance high in calcium. Some garden websites recommend lime, but that will raise the Ph of your soil. It may be cheaper than bone meal, but it’s probably not a good idea.
How much bone meal should you use? I don’t really know; I just add a little every year. I’m sure this draws a lot of demerits for a garden writer. But a small, steady supply over the years has worked, and no one has sued me.
There may be diseases and insects to deal with later in the growing season.
But right now the biggest problem is how to choose which tomatoes to grow. Just reading the little tags stuck in their pots is a gamble. A more informed bet — aided by this video by the Millennial Gardener from New Jersey – gives a person better odds.
Overall, the best strategy is to hedge your bets by going for diversity, equity and inclusion in your tomato choices. So far, this has not been banned.
Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers, and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at jill@theJOLTnews.com.
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valerie
Ed Hume loves Early Girl & that's the only tomatoes I grow. My plants get the morning sun up against my house. The foundation warms up and emits warmth all day. I get tomatoes every single year.
Love your comments about tRump
Friday, May 15 Report this
Snevets
Your last paragraph says it all! Thank you
Friday, May 15 Report this
Therese
I love this writing, Miss Jill! It made me chuckle..., no ketchup on his Big Mac, haha!
I love heirloom tomatoes for their flavor, Early Girls for cooking.
Friday, May 15 Report this
AgGrad
Hi Jill
Does your DEI tomato variety choice include Communist tomatoes? I have never had problems ripening cherry tomatoes here in our relatively cloudy & cool climate. It's the tomato desert between the cherry tomatoes and Early Girl/Big Boy season that caused me one year to pick up a plant from Top Foods/Haggen/Safeway about 20 years ago. It had a horrible name, "Bloody Butcher," and may have been from the Soviet breeding program that supposedly produced "Stupice," which you can still find. The verity of last sentence is not vouched for, as it is vaguely remembered info from 20 years ago.
Bloody Butcher ripened for me about 1 - 2 weeks after the cherry tomato crop started winding down, and it had amazing flavor, truly the best I have tasted. It's about half or a bit more than half the size of a Roma, but ripened in early - mid August for me. Romas & beefsteaks mostly never ripened before second week in September, if then. Burpee had seed packets, and then they didn't. A vendor from Littlerock at the Farmer's Market had plants, but deer broke into her plot, and ate all the fruit, plus next year's seeds. There may be other growers in south county, but I haven't investigated..
r.e. Lime vs bone meal calcium, you are correct in their effects on soil pH. However, many soils in Thurston County are quite low pH. A slight bump in pH may not actually be bad. Consult the TC Conservation District on your plot. I have grown Bloody Butcher in both a raised bed potting soil, and Kapowsin "silt loam". Kapowsin (10% cobbles), and Alderwood (20% cobbles) "silt loam" are both common local acidic soils (pH in low 5 range). Their acidity increases with depth (pH in high 4 range), until, at 2.5 feet down, you run into a "weakly cemented" hard pan caused by the Seattle glacier of a few million years ago. The hard pan is not the thin one found east of the Cascades. The soil scientists at USDA stopped digging at 5 foot depth, still working their way through hardpan. Beware of housing plot soil removals. My front lawn soil reaches the hard pan only 6 inches down. Whatever topsoil was there was bulldozed somewhere else.
Happy growing!
Ag Grad
Saturday, May 16 Report this
PegGerdes
What a wonderful essay to start this day!! You've lasso'd a lot of sassy and vibrant education on tomatoes and life in one fell swoop. Thank you, Jill!
Saturday, May 16 Report this
LindaFretts
It is bumblebees that tend to 'buzz pollinate' plants in the nightshade family like tomatoes. Other insects and wind can pollinate somewhat, but the bumblebees are the masters.
Sunday, May 17 Report this
ViaLocal
This article is nothing short of fantastic! Thanks Jill
Monday, May 18 Report this