I love good tomatoes, the only-available-in-summer kind, with firm flesh and flavors so sweet and complex you can almost taste the soil.  That is to say, not the store bought kind. In her book Animal Vegetable Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver searches for an American “food culture” by eating – and feeding her family, the brave woman! -  locally for a year.  Well, I have come to the conclusion that tomatoes are part of my food culture and having elevated this humble fruit to the status of “culture,” I feel compelled to pass this love onto my children.  Their verdict:  not so much.

But I am undeterred in my mission, knowing I’ve got time on my side (my husband didn’t like tomatoes until his early 20s) and a few resources to help me along the way.  My plan is to grow tomatoes in my city garden every summer, knowing that someday my boys will claim tomatoes as part of their food culture as well.

My growing project had some fits and starts over the past few summers.  Last July, our family trip hit right at the peak of tomato season – leaving town for two weeks meant we missed those daily harvests of 3 or 4 perfectly ripe ones.  We did come home to very happy neighbors - while we were out of town, they had agreed to water our plants and in return, we encouraged them to take all the tomatoes ready for picking.  And they did.  Some of our homegrown tomatoes have been pretty so-so – ones that tasted nice, but had thick skins.  And one year, our plants had so many hornworms that I almost gave up on the whole venture, although my kids were thrilled with their new bug pets.  Yuck.

Recently, a few resources have helped me get some good results.  For small space gardening, you can’t go wrong with a planter from EarthBox

This tidy little number takes a bit to set up, with a mesh screen covering a water reservoir and moistened soil for wicking moisture and a water fill tube – but what is provides in return is worth it:  weed-free, high yield happy plants that are impossible to over water. Put one of those puppies near a south or west facing wall and you are looking at a glorious crop.  And there not just for tomatoes.  The librarian at our kids school grew pole beans in a EarthBox this past spring with impressive results.

For those of you who share my goal of getting kids to love tomatoes, I have a word for you:  Sungold.  This variety of bright orange cherries is tomato candy. I found them at Tomatomania, which bills itself as “The World’s Largest Tomato Seedling Sale,” but is really more like a tomato planting festival, with everything a home gardener needs to get started – plants, stakes and cages, potting soil – even worm castings.  Their plant selection alone blew me away!  Even better were the knowledgeable tomato loving staff there to help customers find the varieties best-suited growing conditions and particular preferences. They suggested a few varieties suited to my cool near-the-ocean micro-climate, one of them called “Siberia!”  Siberia in West LA?   Hmmm, but they are growing well.

And what to do with all those tomatoes once the plants start really bearing?  This is where Epicurious.com comes in really handy - a quick search turned up 515 recipes to choose from.  One recent family pleaser was Pearl Couscous with Olives and Roasted Tomatoes.  The kid-friendly essential step was roasting the tomatoes first, which intensified their sweetness and reduced texture troubles.

Last week, my older son had a group of friends over for their Book Club meeting. The discussion of Bone – an interesting graphic novel by Jeff Smith - eventually devolved to playing in the yard, at which point Kellianne spotted our Sungold tomato plants.  “Wow, you grow these?” she asked, eyes wide.  “You can try some if you’d like,” I responded.  She picked a handful, and gobbled them after a quick rinse under the faucet.  “I love these!!” she proclaimed.  A smile grew across my face, knowing I’d managed to share my food culture with a child, even if it wasn’t my own.