"People like the fact that they are grown locally, that they know where the tomatoes come from," Albright said.
Sue Gragan told me that the really ugly tomatoes that she and her husband, Dan, grew this spring at D & S Farm in St. Mary's County have been selling well. Called "Mr. Ugly," these red tomatoes are grown in a greenhouse. Instead of smooth skin and soft curves, these tomatoes look wrinkled and knotty. Or, as she put it, "They have a lot of dimples."
But the winning quality, Gragan said, is their flavor. When I spoke with Gragan, she and her husband were carting about 75 pounds of Mr. Ugly tomatoes to sell at the Wednesday afternoon farmers' market in Washington's Foggy Bottom neighborhood. Usually, she said, Mr. Ugly sells out.
Farmers tell me that Maryland's field-grown tomatoes are flooding markets this week. Tomatoes grown on the Eastern Shore ripen about 10 days to two weeks earlier than those grown on the western side of the state, Albright said. But the tomatoes on the western side of the state have more flavor, he said.
Richard Seletzky agreed. Along with his son, Ian, he grows tomatoes on Richfield Farm in Carroll County. They also sell some tomatoes grown on the Eastern Shore at farmers' markets in Baltimore, Towson and at their produce stand in Hampstead.
The sandy soil on the Shore heats up faster in the spring, Seletzky told me, yielding early tomatoes. But, to his taste, the tomatoes grown in the richer soils of Carroll County have more flavor.
Seletzky, who is 69 and has been growing vegetables since he was 10, said that he has noticed that over the years, the growing season has been slower to start, but lingers longer in the fall.
"When I was a kid, which was a long time ago, we used to plant around St. Patty's Day. Now we plant in mid-April, but we harvest well through October," he said.
This April, he and his son planted a field of tomato plants, then covered them for a few weeks with cloth to protect them from the cold.
Those tomatoes, he predicted, will ripen this week.
"By the 20th [of July] we will be rolling," Seletzky said. "By then, we might have too many tomatoes."
After a spring in which most of the reports about tomatoes dealt with sickness, this was good news.
The locals are in; our tomato troubles are over.
rob.kasper@baltsun.com
See Rob Kasper each Wednesday on ABC2/WMAR-TV's News at Noon.
