Home › Lifestyle › Food
The annual regional tomato extravaganza called Tomatomania kicks off this weekend in Encinitas and comes next week to Encino
Download this story as a podcast!
When the tomato-seedling sale known as Tomatomania started 18 years ago in Pasadena, “heirloom” was a word you used to describe your grandma’s china, not the tomatoes in your yard.
By featuring varieties from the days when a tomato’s taste trumped its ease of packing and shipping, however, Tomatomania helped introduce Purple Cherokees, Red Brandywines, Aunt Ruby’s German Greens and other, equally colorful oldies but goodies to a new generation of SoCal gardeners.
Today, even mainstream nurseries are getting in on the heirloom act. Seedlings for formerly hard-to-find tomatoes like Riesenstraube (German for “giant bunch of grapes”) and Garden Peach (slightly fuzzy skin, rosy-yellow flesh) are now available for early-spring planting from nurseries such as Green Thumb International in Ventura.
All of which begs the question: As it grew from a single event to an annual, six-stop “tour” that kicks off this weekend in Encinitas, did Tomatomania also plant the seed for its own demise?
Hardly. Under the watchful eye of founder Scott Daigre, it still showcases varieties grown exclusively for the event.
It’s still the place where tomato trends get started. Several years ago, the arrival of a flat of Black Krim seedlings set off a stampede among Tomatomania shoppers. Now, the beefsteak heirloom is just one of the nearly 300 varieties — including Vintage Wine and Golden Mama, a yellow paste hybrid tomato — that Daigre hopes to have available April 4-6, when Tomatomania visits the Tapia Bros. Farm Stand in Encino.
“We’ve had some travails with the weather,” he cautioned. “But for every tomato seedling we’ve lost, another equally interesting one takes its place.”
(Requires free registration.)
Article discussions on this site are to support community debates of issues related to our stories and editorials.
Discussions should not stray from the subject of the story or editorial.
We do not allow the following:
We reserve the right to delete threads and/or ban users for these or other reasons we deem necessary.
Opinions are the sole responsibility of the person posting them. You agree not to post comments that are off topic, defamatory, obscene, abusive, threatening or an invasion of privacy. Violators may be banned. Click here for our full user agreement.