Janet Kiddoo, a plant lover in Northridge, sent an email regarding a new innovation in tomato growing.
Through conventional plant breeding methods — with no GMO (genetically modified organism) concerns — Supree, a food-tech company in Israel, has developed a tomato that dries on the vine. Until now, sun-dried tomatoes have literally been dried in the sun, but this is done after they have been picked. The new tomato is described as semi-dry because its moisture content is 18%, as opposed to conventional sun-dried tomatoes which can be as low as 10% moisture. The higher moisture content preserves tomato quality even after freezing for twelve months.
Sun-dried tomatoes are typically treated with sulfur dioxide and salt to preserve lycopene, a powerful anti-oxidant, from decomposition. Lycopene is also the carotenoid pigment that makes tomatoes red and so sulfur dioxide is useful in preserving the color of sun-dried tomatoes. Incidentally, cherry and Roma tomatoes have the highest lycopene content of the various tomato types. Some people, however, are allergic to sulfur dioxide so their consumption of conventionally treated sun-dried tomatoes is problematic.
Semi-dried tomatoes are not chemically treated in any way, yet they have four times the lycopene content of sun-dried tomatoes. Semi-dried tomatoes are also vibrant red whereas sun-dried tomatoes are brownish-orange. Finally, due to their higher moisture content, semi-dried tomatoes are juicier than sun-dried tomatoes, which are chewy. Lastly, semi-dried tomatoes are sweeter, making them suitable not only for salads, pasta and fish dishes, and sandwiches but as cake and ice cream ingredients as well.
Semi-dried tomatoes can dry on the vine due to microscopic cracks in their skin. Yana Voldman, Supree vice president for strategy and growth, told me “Tomato breeders do not favor fruit with micro-cracks but we breed for this characteristic and our tomatoes have a hundred such cracks per fruit.” Through breeding for this quality, a strain was developed that ripens a hundred days after planting; five days later, enough moisture has escaped through the cracks that the fruit is ready for harvest. Conveniently, the semi-dried tomatoes are of a determinate variety, meaning that all the fruit ripen at once, as opposed to tomatoes in general — and cherry tomatoes in particular – that are usually indeterminate, meaning they ripen over weeks or even months. All that remains in semi-dried tomato technology is the development of mechanized harvesting. Such harvesting would make sense since, when the plants are mechanically shaken, all of the fruit, which are uniformly ripe and dried, will drop simultaneously.
“The Cut Flower Handbook” (Quarto, 2024), by Lisa Mason Ziegler, is an amazing tour de force and I cannot recommend it strongly enough. Whether you are a novice or an experienced gardener, you will find a wealth of wisdom here that will ensure you grow flowers successfully from seed.
Ziegler has real-world success to back up all of her horticultural recommendations. Indeed, reading the story of her success in the cut flower business is highly enjoyable in and of itself. The story begins when Ziegler went to visit her mother in a nursing home. While sitting in the waiting room, she happened to read a magazine article that “lit me on fire and changed my life. It said you could grow cut flowers in a backyard and even sell them as a business.” She was dating her husband-to-be at this time and, upon marrying and moving into his home, found herself taking care of his garden while “slowly, I began inching cut flowers into the vegetable patch.” Although she had read that vast acreage was needed to make a serious living from growing cut flowers, she learned how to produce premium quality blooms intensively on a half acre and was soon supplying high-end florists with cut flowers. She would eventually acquire a neighboring property and, on one-and-a-half acres of land would grow a quarter million flower stems per season. She also learned that she loved to teach people how to grow cut flowers successfully, whether on a commercial or backyard scale, and made imparting her horticultural wisdom online into a business as well.
Her style of writing is down to earth and her advice carries the authority of someone who has been growing cut flowers for more than two decades with enormous success. For example: “When the directions suggest that a seed can be started indoors or outdoors, I always choose indoors,” she writes. “Planting seeds outdoors requires intense care doing tasks like thinning, watering, and weed control. Starting indoors requires daily watering” but “with no thinning or weeding.” She adds that working outdoors means exposure to the elements and doing work on your hands and knees while working indoors is more comfortable and thus starting seeds indoors is simply less work.
Her technique for getting her flower stems to grow straight involves the use of plastic mesh flower support netting. This is netting that is divided into six-inch by six-inch squares. It can be placed on the ground when planting for symmetrical seed sowing. After planting, put the netting aside until the stems are halfway to their mature size. At this height, attach the netting to stakes so the stems grow ramrod straight.
I learned that maintaining cut flowers at maximum freshness involves keeping them in a number of different solutions, depending on when they will be put in their final vase. The first solution consists of a chlorine tablet dissolved in water, to be used if the flowers will be placed in an arrangement within 48 hours. Chlorine kills bacteria that grow on fluids leaked from the flower stem’s cut end as it enters the water. If the stem will sit longer than 48 hours before placement, a different holding solution is used. Of course, there is also flower food dissolved in water that provides mineral nutrition, assists water absorption, and kills bacteria too. Finally, if flowers should droop, there is a hydrating solution that assists in water absorption, straightening out bent blooms.
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I have read lots of gardening books over the years but cannot think of any that are more useful or inspiring than this one. I should mention that the only flowers Ziegler grows are annuals — zinnia, Iceland poppy, strawflower, lisianthus, black-eyed Susan, sunflower, cosmos, stock, and snapdragon, to name a few.
California native of the week: Parry’s jujube (Zizyphus parryi) is a thorny shrub that grows up to 15 feet tall. It is a cousin of the eminently edible Chinese date (Zizyphus jujube). Although the fruit of this native species is bitter, it has been made into jams and jellies. Golden yellow in color, the fruit also wafts a memorable perfumed fragrance when it adorns the plant in August. Chartreuse flowers bloom in winter and spring. Foliage — absent most of the year — turns an attractive silver gray when it leafs out and branches zigzag intriguingly in every direction. Altogether, this is a highly ornamental plant that makes a fine landscape specimen. Its bark and roots have been used medicinally and investigations have been conducted into possible pharmaceutical applications. It is a member of the buckthorn family (Rhamnaceae), denoting kinship with the California lilac (Ceanothus).
Please send your experiences growing cut flowers to Joshua@perfectplants.com. Your questions, comments, as well as gardening problems and gardening tips are always welcome.