Seeking Wild Tomatoes

I am a tomato freak.  One time at a dinner party, a friend told me, “Do you realize that the only thing we’ve talked about all night is tomatoes?”  Those are the sorts of friends I have.  Back when we lived in PA and NJ, I tried growing lots of tomato varieties, and so relished the taste of a tomato just off the vine after flourishing in the long summer sunshine.  The best-tasting tomato is the one you grow yourself in your garden.  The reason why store-bought tomatoes taste so insipid – the more perfect the red tomato you choose, the more insipid it is likely to taste – is due to commercial practices. 

Read investigative food journalist Barry Estabrook’s book, called ‘Tomatoland’, for the sad, shocking story of tomato cultivation.  Estabrook inspired me to look again at the original wild tomato, the tiny cherry tomato – Solanum pimpinellifolium – progenitor of the modern tomato.   Unfortunately, since tomatoes have been cultivated commercially, the original wild tomatoes have become rare, even to their native Andes.   Estabrook described his expedition in the Andes in search of the elusive wild tomato.  He obtained GPS coordinates of a, “pretty good cluster”, of wild tomatoes from the well-known tomato geneticist, Roger Chetelat, of the University of California at Davis.  Chetelat e-mailed him a list of common names to help him in the search – tomatito, tomate de campo, tomate de culebras, tomate de zorro, tomate silvestre.  The names tell us that the locals refer to the progenitor as a ‘wild tomato’, not really a tomato that they would cultivate and eat. 

His Peruvian expedition was full of unexpected adventure but, finally, Estabrook found the plant way up in the high desert of Peru.  Solanum pimpinellifolium was a scruffy plant; scruffy but surviving, despite impossible odds – and laden with tiny tomatoes!  He popped a tiny tomato into his mouth and described what he tasted:  “The bright, sweet pop of taste was followed by a lingering, pleasant tartness, that essential balance that defines a great tomato.”

Unfortunately, the store-bought tomatoes are just as insipid in Costa Rica as everywhere else, but it’s not easy to grow large tomatoes in the tropical garden.  The sun sets in Costa Rica by 6 p.m. year round, and the rainy season limits sun to less than 4-6 hours daily, which significantly reduces the variety of tomatoes that you can grow here.  Thus, small is better.  Tiny tomatoes have a chance to ripen and turn nicely red on the vine long before the tropical elements begin to attack, which invariably happens with large tomatoes.  Where could I find a Tomate Silvestre here in Costa Rica? 

Our search led us to our friend, Hugo A. Zuniga Molina, who has carved out a totally self-sufficient garden paradise for himself and his family up near Pico Blanco in Escazu.  Years ago, he found some tiny tomato plants while walking in the wild areas of high Escazu, took them home and planted them.  Now, they are all over his garden, clearly healthy and seeding readily and delicious.  However, Hugo did remind us that for reliable results, we should ferment the tomato seeds (from the basket of tomatoes that he generously allowed us to pick!), not dry them, prior to germinating them in our garden.  We’d found our wild tomato! 

Hugo regards nature as his teacher and, over the past 25 years, has transformed a steep mountainside into a series of terraced gardens, just like in Peru, where the (now) rich, composted soil produces an amazing array of edible plants.  He collects all the water from the rooftops and directs it into holding tanks, where it is recycled back throughout the garden and into fish ponds.  His septic system produces gas for his kitchen and treated water further down the mountain, which flows crystal-clear into a stream.  Hugo doesn’t recognize any plants as ‘weeds’; all plants have organic value at least.  And most have much more value to man than that; it just requires a little observation and study to discover it.  He explained that every problem on the tropical, organic farm can have very simple solutions, if you just stop to think about it – how to conserve seeds, recycle hydroponic water, produce fertilizer, and so much more, to make your farm more productive and ecologically sound. 

You can learn more about Permacultura Pico Blanco by contacting Hugo and Norma at email:  picoblaco@ice.co.cr
Or take a look at their website: http://Sites.google.com/site/montniveus

It’s clear to all that I’ve been thinking a lot about gardens and weeds lately.  Yes, I just finished Richard Mabey’s delightful book called ‘Weeds’, and it just brought back the whole English realm of gardens, gardening and gardeners.  We used to go to England regularly for Pubs & Gardens tours – Gerry picked the pubs and I chose the gardens.  I loved them all but grew increasingly more fond of the natural, woodland ‘gardens’, such as in the Lake District - natural, free-flowing plantings.  As time went on, and after visiting possibly hundreds of gardens worldwide (but mostly in England – oh! the English and their gardens), I felt certain that you just cannot improve on nature.  The most breathtaking places on earth are natural woodlands.  Humans can create stunning gardens – but we can’t improve on natural succession. 

Reserva El Tigre is mostly forest – left to nature – with the gardens confined to near the house and the solar panels.  Over the last several years, the garden has evolved, as I evolved as a gardener, from exclusively exotic ornamentals to a mix of edibles and mostly native ornamentals.  Volunteers popping into the garden – called weeds by those who maintain designed gardens - are mostly welcomed to our free-form, somewhat chaotic world of green.  It turns out that some of the ‘ho-hum’-looking plants that unexpectedly appear in the garden can have great value.  In fact, a large clump of a rather weedy-looking shrub, Witheringia solanacea (yes, the tomato family again!) has brought students here from the University of Costa Rica, avidly collecting it for their research – yet another effort to seek the true value of weeds!