Jersey Tomatoes

Late winter always gets me longing to get out in the garden. Now is the time to think about garden planning, starting seeds and cleaning up garden spaces. And I can't help but think about my Jersey tomatoes. Any NJ gardener with space for vegetables should be growing tomatoes and though there are many varieties, at least one should be a Rutgers-developed "Jersey Tomato."

I got my 2018 order form for Rutgers 250, Ramapo, Moreton and KC-146 tomatoes (You can also use it to order a Jersey tomato t-shirt.)

In 2008, the "Rediscover the Jersey Tomato" program began with the re-introduction of the Ramapo tomato. That type was released in 1968 and was celebrating 50 years, but it is not your only choice.

The Rutgers 250 resulted from crossing the same parent varieties as the original 1934 "Rutgers’ tomato" with ones featuring high fruit quality and flavor. It was named in honor of the University’s 250th anniversary in 2016. It has a mid-season maturity and firm, crack-resistant fruit with a uniform color. These are semi-determinate plants and best if staked. Rutgers 250 was not bred specifically for disease resistance, but it shows good resistance to bacterial spot and bacterial speck.

The "Ramapo F1" hybrid tomato was developed at Rutgers NJAES and released in 1968. The seeds were unavailable for many years, but Rutgers reintroduced it in 2008. This is a mid to late season tomato (about 80 days) that has medium to large fruits that are resistant to cracking and Verticillium and Fusarium wilt.

The less well known Moreton F1 was Harris Seeds’ first F-1 hybrid, released in 1953 and one of the first hybrids grown by Jersey tomato growers. This early maturing, tasty variety was off the market and re-introduced in a cooperative effort by Harris and Rutgers. Moreton makes a good earlier maturing (70 days) garden choice. Many gardeners will plant several varieties to get ealy, mid and later yields. Moreton is also a treated seed that is popular in extreme climates with short growing seasons and in containers.

KC-146 tomato is also known as Campbell’s 146 because it was developed by Campbell’s Soup Company as a better flavored processing tomato and released in 1956. It was eventually replaced with newer varieties with a more disease resistance, but Campbell’s maintained the KC-146 stock as their flavor standard. A mid to late season tomato, resistant to Fusarium wilt, semi-determinate plants that take 78 days to maturity. This was developed for processing (soup etc.) but has great flavor as a fresh tomato.

• Rutgers NJAES Fact Sheets and Bulletins
• Plant Diagnostic Lab
• Soil Testing Lab
• Rutgers Cooperative Extension County Offices

A Big Ten Rutgers Tomato

At Rutgers’ Snyder Research Farm, a seedling variant
in the search for a reborn Rutgers tomato.
Photo by Jennifer Pottheiser via njmonthly.com

Last week I received alumni mail about Rutgers' inaugural Big Ten football season. I also read a NJ Monthly article about attempts being made at Rutgers to bring back the famed Rutgers tomato.

Rutgers football may be just entering the Big Ten this fall, but the Rutgers tomato was in the Big 10 of tomatoes starting in the 1950s. For several decades the Rutgers tomato reigned in popularity for its Jersey tomato taste. It was tart, sweet, tender, round, red and ripened on the vine.

Companies, like Campbell Soup, loved them for juice, soup and ketchup. So why use the past tense when talking about this variety? It fell victim to commerce.  As the interstate highway system expanded in the 1950s, more produce was being trucked longer distances. The soft Rutgers tomato did not travel well. Scientists worked on developing varieties that did travel.

Those newer hybrids were firmer with thicker skins and interior walls and could be ripened after picking.  And they tasted lousy.

I have been a backyard gardener since I was a kid helping my father. We planted Rutgers tomatoes. My father saved seeds from the best ones for next year. But I moved on to buying plants at the garden center and at some point in the 1980s the Rutgers plants disappeared.

Lots of cherry tomatoes in July. Pop them in your mouth right in the garden

My tomatoes only travel about 100 feet, so "shippability" doesn't matter - taste does. The next generation tomato from Rutgers was the Ramapo, developed in 1968 which had a good ten-year run, disappeared and the was reintroduced in 2008. It tastes like a Jersey tomato, but doesn't ripen until August. Gardeners and farmer like a product in July.

"Heirloom" tomatoes were big for a few years. Those are varieties that go back pre-WWII. Nostalgic, but flawed for the same reasons that they fell away in the 1950s; they cracked, softened in heavy rain, got fungus and other diseases and you ended up throwing too many away. So much for nostalgia.

It probably surprises folks that New Jersey, even with its disappearing  farmland, still ranks fourth in the nation in value of agricultural products sold per acre.

The tomato that we often find in stores now is pretty dreadful compared to what I can pick in my backyard.  Stores, and many consumers, want firmness and picture-perfect fruit. Now that a lot of production is in Florida, California and Mexico,  those supermarket tomatoes are picked green and then gassed with ethylene to turn a sickly red, then refrigerated for shipping. Tomato gardeners know that you never refrigerate your tomatoes unless you want to halt ripening.

I have to plant one yellow tomato for my sister - a fan of the "low acid."

My mom showed me the gassing method without knowing the science. Put some half-ripe tomatoes in a brown bag with a few slices of an apple and close it up. She couldn't tell you why it worked, but it did. It didn't taste like one picked off a plant, carried into the kitchen, sliced and eaten with a little salt, or olive oil and some oregano., but better than the store-bought ones that she called "greenhouse tomatoes."

The Rutgers agriculture people have been working to resurrect the Rutgers tomato we once knew and are down to a dozen or so contenders from several hundred. It will be a Rutgers tomato reborn.

They have been having a Great Tomato Tasting for the past few years (this year's will be at the end of August) where regular folks taste and rate.

The new name is still undecided. "Rutgers250" is a possibility to mark its debut in 2016 which is the 250th anniversary of the college. We'll see if it tastes like the summer of 1962, but hopefully it will taste like summer.

This post was first posted at my Weekends in Paradelle blog in a slightly different form.