For tomato lovers, this month could not get here fast enough. July is the time that the good stuff, tomatoes grown in Maryland fields, starts to ripen.
This year, local tomatoes are especially welcome. They provide a flavorful alternative to what I call "outsider" tomatoes, those grown in distant, warmer states.
These outsider tomatoes are suspects in the great tomato scare. It began in May when health officials linked salmonella outbreaks in New Mexico and Texas to eating fresh tomatoes. Since then, some 869 people nationwide have been infected by Salmonella saintpaul, which causes diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps. Last week, health officials said they were not certain that tomatoes were the culprit, but they did not rule them out.
All along, locally grown tomatoes have been free of suspicion. But they were not plentiful. That is changing. From now until the end of September, locals can displace the "outsiders." That means weeks of lots of juicy BLTs.
Like a lot of gardeners, I had hoped to have my own homegrown tomatoes ready for the table by the Fourth of July. And, like a lot of gardeners, I failed.
I had a couple of promising-looking green orbs. I confess that I considered spray painting them pink, just to rile my fellow gardeners. But I refrained. That would be cheating. I am not above cheating - say, growing a few early bloomers in a hothouse - but covering tomatoes with paint has the drawback of making them taste terrible. Trust me on this. So I wait for Mother Nature, and it looks like she might deliver any day now.
I learned, however, that some local growers, more skilled than I, have already reaped a harvest.
Tom Albright, who runs Albright Farms Produce in Monkton, told me he has been picking tomatoes since the first of June.
He grew these tomatoes, a variety called Trust, in the ground inside massive greenhouses. The greenhouses are so big, he said, he drives a tractor through them.
He has several tomato plantings, he said. The early plants go in greenhouses, and the later ones grow outdoors in fields. That latter crop should be ready to pick in late July, he said.
This spring, as the worries about "outsider" tomatoes swept through the market, sales of Albright's locally grown greenhouse tomatoes took off at the Sunday farmers' market in Baltimore and his produce stand in Jacksonville. In prior years, part of his early tomato crop was sold to wholesalers, he said. But this year, demand was so strong that all of his early tomatoes were sold in retail outlets.
