225: EVERYTHING You Need to Know About Tomatoes

Frank Hyman returns to the Flora Funga Podcast to dive into his newest book, Ripe Tomato Revolution, a playful and practical guide that uses tomatoes as the gateway into gardening, self-reliance, and finding your calling. Known for How to Forage for Mushrooms Without Dying, Frank brings his signature mix of humor, science, storytelling, and hands-on experience to everything from growing and transplanting tomatoes to drip irrigation, trellising, rain protection, pest management, heirlooms, hybrids, and why healthy gardens depend on working with beneficial insects instead of spraying everything in sight. Along the way, he shares stories from his unconventional path as a “successful college dropout,” reflections on mastering multiple callings, and practical wisdom from decades of farming, carpentry, writing, and gardening. This episode also wanders into wonderfully weird territory, including tomato-tobacco grafting, the possibility of “nicotine tomatoes,” Everglade tomatoes on Naked and Afraid, and why the humble tomato can teach us so much about plants, people, purpose, and resilience.

Today’s episode is supported by Schedule 35. As always, please do your own research, know your local laws, and make informed choices that are right for you. This is adult-oriented content, and nothing we share here is medical advice or a recommendation to use any substance. Schedule 35 is part of the larger conversation happening around mushrooms, plant medicine, and changing cultural perspectives. For listeners in places where their products are legal and appropriate, you can learn more through Schedule 35 and use code FLORAFUNGA for 15% off.

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Transcript

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(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Today we are having Frank back on. If you don't remember Frank, you will in a second because he wrote the book How to Forage for Mushrooms Without Dying and today we are covering his other book that he has written all about the ripe tomato revolution. So we dive into, when I say all, I say everything you need to know about growing your own tomatoes, how to grow them, how to transplant, how to build any of the structures, how to collect rainwater, like the tomato book is just the gateway drug. You get to learn about all the other aspects of gardening. You get a little memoir from all of his stories in the past, all of his jobs, finding his purpose. We dive into so many topics in here. We even cover some fun interactive questions like, what if you grafted a tomato and a tobacco together? Since they're in the same soleaceae family, they are able to be grafted together. But do you think we could grow nicotine tomatoes? So stay tuned for that. As well as on Naked and Afraid, somebody has eaten Everglade tomatoes so then he can poop them out and grow his own tomatoes on the show. So we dive into some really fun, interesting topics. So please enjoy our vibe. I could talk to him forever. Frank Hyman. Hello, Frank. Oh my gosh. Welcome back. We've had you on for a mushroom book called How to Forage for Mushrooms Without Dying, but today we're taking a different approach, maybe into the flora, if you will. Major flora. Yes. So this book, which I actually have right here, Ripe Tomato Revolution. Why did you decide to focus on tomatoes after all of this mushroom talk? So I'm kind of an unusual person. Not weird, just unusual. I spent my 20s as a very, very successful college dropout. I was on a quest to find my calling in life. And this is 1979, and people weren't talking about finding your calling. So I was the weird guy. Nobody understood why I was dropping out. I was getting good grades. I had girlfriends, professors invited me home for dinner. Oh, wow. And I'm like leaving college. Like, what the hell, Frank? But I felt like the whole idea of college that like 18 and 19 year olds were wise enough to choose a major, as if they would know what their work life would make them happy. And I realized, I'm a dumbass. And in the larger scheme of things, I was a plenty smart kid, obviously. But I was like, I think I should stop going to school. And I should somehow go on this quest to find my calling in life. How do you do that? I don't know. But I will figure it out as I go. And it turns out that you can have more than one calling. And that isn't unusual. I used to think I was unusual. I have mastered nine different callings or professions, whatever you want to call it. And I'm not a dabbler. I can afford like seven weeks paid vacation every year. Okay, I'm doing well. And I have for 35 years, I just I feel like I goof off. And then people give me checks. Yeah. And so I used and I was wondering, why am I? Am I? Why do I have to be this odd, unusual person? And I realized because I had worked with archaeologists, studies, donated people, I after thinking about it, I realized, Oh, my God, Frank, you're not the unusual one. You're the normal homo sapiens. Because we're all homo sapiens. So so 99.99% of our physiology and psychology, everything is the same as Stone Age people. Okay, study Stone Age people. And this comes back to tomatoes, trust me, when you study Stone Age people, it isn't like one guy in the clan is chipping out chipping out all the arrowheads. They all know how to chip out a professional high quality arrowhead. They all know how to forage for wild food. They all know how to fish. They all know how to hunt. They all know how to weave a basket. They all know how to make a fire from like, without a Bic lighter. They all know how to like, tell a story around the fire that keeps everybody like, what happens next? Right, right, which is a skill storytelling, a professional skill. And I realized I'm like a normal homo sapiens. It's luck and random things. And our culture has trained people to think, oh, you pick a major when you're 19 and don't know shit. And then you get this job that like it pays good, but you're, you're not real happy, but you're not totally miserable. So you slog it out for 30, 40, 50 years. That's normal. And people thought I was weird. I'm like, no, you're weird. Yeah. Right. And so, so I kind of, and, and so in my search for people like me, who've, who've, who've cracked this code and have found multiple callings in life and are making their living from them, I've started like making it clear. This is the kind of guy I am. And if you're that kind of person, shoot me an email, text me. And so on page 218 and 219, everybody turned to page 18 in your books, uh, read silently while I read aloud. And, um, so I list all the things I make a living from, you know, at a professional level. Yeah. And, uh, partly to kind of, uh, partly to kind of vet myself. Yeah. And I'm not just a random guy who looked up a bunch of stuff about tomatoes and looked up some stuff on mushrooms and looked up some stuff for my first book on backyard chickens. Like I've mastered all these things. Yeah. And which isn't a boast it's it's, I'm saying this to encourage other people that you're a stone age homo sapiens. You can master multiple callings. And if you get them up to a professional level, which that one of the virtues of finding your calling is everything about it is exciting and easy to learn. Whatever books you have to buy, you will buy them. Whatever class you have to take, you will take the class, whatever local professional you have to interview. You will like, can I buy you coffee or lunch? And tell me about your work life. And you're like, and it's all exciting and fun and it feels easy compared to taking the classes we all took on shit. We hate, you know, if you didn't like physics or literature or whatever, you know, whatever class you didn't like, your life won't be like that anymore. If you find your calling, cause then it's all beautiful and easy. Right. And so, yeah, so the tomato thing, so I'll, so I'll go backwards. So the tomato, the reason I'm writing this tomato book is because in part of my being that successful college dropout, I knew I wanted to work outdoors. I knew I wanted to be doing physical things. I knew I want to be doing sciency things. Wow. Right. And who, who do you call to get that? You'd have to search. And so I found in, I grew up in South Carolina on the coast where there were tomato farmers and the extension agents who are like the sciency people. They had this program called integrated pest management, scouts, where I was this young guy. I didn't know hardly anything, but they hired me and trained me to identify insects, the good ones and the bad ones, and to identify diseases and weeds. And so I was getting paid to drive my little pickup truck through the countryside, pull into somebody's 20, 30, 40 acre farm and walk up and down each row looking for bugs, weeds and diseases and taking notes. Yeah, right. I can see you enjoying this. Walk around, look for bugs, take notes, go to the farmer and say, look, there's no bad bugs in your field. So ignore the chemical salesman because the chemical salesman would guilt trip them into feeling like they had to spray for everything. Every week, a shit ton of money and time and wear and tear on their equipment because they would guilt trip, the salesman would guilt trip the farmers like, oh man, if some bug eats up your plants, you'll be broke and bankrupt and homeless. And so they would be all guilt tripped into spraying stuff. And so my job was to help them see you don't need to spray. There's nothing out there. You're the good guy. Right, exactly. And when you don't spray, so I haven't sprayed anything in my garden for these 40 something years now because what I learned is that when you spray for pesticides, you're not just killing the bad bugs, you're killing the good bugs that would be keeping the bad bugs in check. You need a small population of bad bugs, pests, whatever you want to call them, for the good bugs to eat and grow their population. Do you follow me? Yeah. And so that was my job, helping them figure that out. And so I saw it like firsthand that when the people would spray, it's like the problems would explode and they'd have to spray again. And it was this downward spiral. And if they could just resist, if they would just trust my data and not spray, then the ladybugs and assassin bugs and things like that would multiply. And, you know, every time the population of bad bugs went up, the good bugs were like, chow, chow, chow, yum, yum, yum. Keep them in check. Keep them in check. Right. So I learned about growing tomatoes there because these farmers were kind of the cutting edge. It was the they were some of the first farmers who were using drip lines down the road. They were some of the first farmers using black plastic mulch. Yeah. Which you can now get mulch that's like made from cornstarch. So it's organic decomposition. All that great stuff. But because it was black in the spring, it would absorb heat and warm up the soil. So the transplants would get a better start and it would hold moisture in the ground. It would suppress the weeds. It would keep the any other to some degree. It would keep the bad of the disease microbes from splashing up onto the lower leaves and up. Right. As a good point, a splash ladder is that there's the disease microbes are in your soil. Yeah. And you got your tomato plant is here and the water splashes and some soil with the bad microbes splashes up onto the leaves and then they start turning brown. And the next time it rains, it splashes onto the next tier of leaves. And then the next tier of leaves, the splash ladder. Wow. I'm like, that's exactly what's happening. That's a fun word. Mulch. So any kind of mulch. But they were using black plastic mulch and and they were using a type of trellis system called Florida weave. But I call it cat's cradle because it's like a lot of horizontal lines of twine that hold your tomato plants up with much less effort than tying up each branch. I'm sure you have a picture of that somewhere. Yeah, I will. I will find that. Yeah, that's cool. And so I worked for these tomato farmers, learned a lot. And I moved to North Carolina. My food co-op had some land. They're like, oh, let's grow organic vegetables because this is in the early 80s. You couldn't just buy organic vegetables anywhere like you can now. Right. And so we're like, we're going to grow vegetables, organic vegetables to sell at the food co-op. And I wanted to volunteer and help. And I knew the most. And so they put me in charge. I was like a 25 year old idiot. And they put me in charge of this farm and it worked out great because when you find you're calling it all, you make sense. Everything you're doing makes sense. Everything you need to learn is easy to learn. I was starting to get the idea. I was starting to understand what it meant to find your calling. It was like, this is what it feels like. It feels like it's not an intellectual decision that you find in the course catalog. It's an emotional decision. It's like when you go to a party and you join this little group of people in the party and one person is saying something and you think everything they say is brilliant and funny and amazing. And you have a crush on them and you know, you have to get their phone number and hang out with them. That's what your calling will feel like. It's like a crush. Okay. Here's the clincher though. Oftentimes it's feels you're finding your calling will feel like a crush on a person who is not your type or you didn't think they were your type, but you just think they're amazing, right? You've we've all had those experiences in our social life. And so finding your calling is kind of like that. It's like the, I mean, as a teenager bookworm, nobody would have thought I would have been become a stonemason. Like what the hell? Frank's a skinny little pukey weakling boy. You know, how is he going to move stones? Right. Yeah. And uh, or that I would be, you know, working with plants or anything or writing books. It was just like the last thing my high school friends would have pictured me doing. Okay. So I was getting all these crushes on as if they were people who weren't my type. And then, but they were, I just didn't know it. You don't know it. It's like, think of whatever your favorite food is that you discovered as an adult. Maybe you were traveling and you tried to, Oh, that looks good. And you take it like, Oh, this is my favorite food. Your calling is like that. You have no idea what your favorite food is till you put it in your mouth and you have no idea what your calling or your callings are until you do them. And you're like, Oh, I have to do this every day now. Right. So, so, so then I was running that farm and I was selling our tomatoes and getting 50% more for our tomatoes than the other folks who were organic farmers. Cause they knew less about tomatoes than I did from working with the farmers. So we were doing everything organically, but the technical, some of the technical stuff like drip lines, you know, because with tomatoes, you do not want to do overhead irrigation. Cause that splashes the diseases around. So a drip line will keep a moisture on the roots and the leaves don't get wet unless it rains, obviously. Right. So yeah. So that's how I got into tomatoes and then I've been growing vegetable gardens for 40 years. And, and let me warn you, please do not ask me what my favorite tomato is. Cause I I'll just eat them all. My favorite tomatoes, whatever ones my wife wants me to grow. Okay. Oh, I like, I like Cherokee purple or, you know, or San Marino for, you know, sauce. I'm like, yeah, honey, I'm growing those. Yeah. Anything you say, cause my religion is happy wife, happy life, you know? Um, so, uh, Oh, I I'm going to insert one thing. You got to know this is the case with me. This doesn't have anything to do with tomatoes per se, but it has to do with young men, young men out there, especially you guys you're struggling on the romantic front, you're single, or maybe you're partnered up, but you're not happy. Things aren't working out. You need to know there's two kinds of men in this world and only two. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. So we're so excited about that. I have no idea that wasn't me, but, uh, so there's two kinds of men in this world. Decide which one you're going to be first kind. Okay. Your religion is happy wife, happy life. Okay. Cause the average man's life is easier than the average woman in our culture and our physically, emotionally, socially, all the things, you know, and some people want to argue with me and I'm like, they will just be wrong. So happy wife, happy life. The other kind of man dies alone. Wow. Those are the only two options. Those are the two realistic options. Yes. Take it from a 65 year old guy who's been married 21 years and has had a bunch of girlfriends. I'm still friends with most of my girlfriends and some of them still say, I love you. And, you know, so, um, yeah. So happy wife, happy life, or you can die alone. Choose wisely. Wow. Frank's bringing all the cool advice from tomatoes to relationships. Right. So find your calling and then find a woman that you, it's a thrill to make her happy. Yes. Oh man. How do we go back to tomatoes after that? Okay. So tomatoes, so I grow whatever my wife wants. Yes. Perfect. They're all good or good. There isn't like a bad tomato. Okay. Yeah, there is. There's the kind that a lot of institutional big farmers grow where it's bred to bounce around in a truck. Yes. I'm glad you brought this up. Yeah. So there are some that are kind of lame in their flavor and texture, but those are mostly big farm tomatoes. Right. And, uh, most, if any, if you're buying from anybody growing organically, they're probably growing some heirlooms, which have a great texture, great flavor. And, uh, there are, uh, there are plenty of hybrids. So a lot of these farmers are growing a hybrid tomato because those are so the bounce of the truck hybrid tomato don't have good texture. Don't have good flavor because of that. The other hybrids that are good flavor and texture got a bad rap. Okay. Hybrid is bad. It's like, yeah, some hybrids are bad. Lots of hybrids are good. And the virtue of a lot of hybrids is that they don't have the disease problems that lots of heirloom tomatoes have. Right. Everybody's grown tomatoes is like, why is my plant, why are the leaf, half the leaves Brown? You know, why sometimes does like one plant that looks okay on Monday by Wednesday, every leaf is wilted and the whole plant is dead. Why is that happening? So I have the answer to that. Okay. I'm that kind of horticulturist. I want to know. And the issue is that the, the, the short answer is that the tomato plant evolved in a drier climate and it never, so a climate equivalent to the Mediterranean. So plenty of this rain a year. Okay. And then you bring it to like the Eastern half of the U S okay. Which is 40 inches of rain a year. Wow. You bring a tomato plant to the Pacific Northwest, which is going to be 60 inches of rain a year. And what you find is that because it's from a dry climate, the tomato plant never evolved the kind of immune system that can fend off our rainy region, fungus and bacteria. You follow me? Yep. I'm following you. It's just like, so tomato people who grow tomatoes in Southern California have no problem because that's equivalent. And by Mediterranean, I mean, we're all familiar with the Mediterranean sea, you know, Italy, Greece, France, Spain, yada, yada, yada. So that region, the capital M Mediterranean has 20 inches of rain. There's there's four other regions that are comparable and have similar climate and soils and that's Southern California. So the Mediterranean, Mediterranean, and there's four small M Mediterranean, Southern California, coast of Chile, sliver of the coast of South Africa and a sliver of the coast of Australia. And those people who are into their wines will go like, Oh my God, you go to the wine store. All the really good red wines are from those five regions. There's not lovely red wine from Appalachia or Florida. It's from it's from regions with 20 inches of rain. And so the original tomato plant, which was just a cherry tomato, it wasn't like a big slicer. It started out as a cherry. And so that's on the coast of Chile and the Aztecs from up in Mexico, before the Spanish arrived, Aztecs have their trading paths and their connections. And they find out about this tomato plant and they're like, yeah, they get a bunch of seeds and bring them home to central Mexico and they're growing them. And as I was kind of researching this, trying to put the pieces together, it's a central Mexico has a lot of rain in the summer. So I'm wondering if my theory is wrong. And then I realized, Oh no, when we buy tomatoes from Mexico, it's in the winter. Central Mexico in the winter has Mediterranean conditions. So the Aztecs, you know, so other tribes may have got the tomato plant from the coast of Chile and tried to grow it in their tropical region and so much rain, they just rot and die. But the Aztecs bring theirs home, grow them in the winter, Mediterranean conditions, and they do great. And then Cortez and the other conquistadors show up and do their destruction, of course, sad story. But they also discovered the tomato plant. They're like, yeah, we like this. We're bringing it home. So they take it home to Spain, which also has Mediterranean conditions and does super well. And it's like a great plant, you know, and they start making all these wonderful dishes with tomatoes. And then their cousins from Italy are like, Ooh, we like this plant. And they grow it and they invent pizza sauce and spaghetti sauce and all those tomato sauces they make. And it goes great. And then the British come on their tours, you know, and they're like, Oh my, this tomato is so delicious. I'm going to, you know, bring some seeds home. And so they bring, you know, they try to grow the tomato in England with 60 inches of rain and their plants are dying left and right and the leaves are all rotten. And I suspect that might be a contributor to what when people believe that tomatoes were poisonous. Yes, I can picture them with sour grapes kind of thing. Like I tried growing tomatoes, and they all died. They were probably poisonous anyway. I can picture that kind of story being told. So tomatoes were not popular in England until the aristocrats had could buy panes of glass and make greenhouses. Oh, then they could grow the tomato in a greenhouse in the summer, you know, with ventilation, right? So the air gets through, it doesn't get too hot. But the greenhouse keeps the rain off the plants. Yes. And you can still water the roots enough. And you've artificially created Mediterranean conditions. Oh, right. And then you know, so then you come to the States and the plant struggles and people think it might be poisonous, or that's a pain in the butt, but they try it because it's a wonderful food. And then at some point, in the last 20, 30, 40 years, people came up with hoop houses. You know what I'm talking about? Oh, yeah. It's kind of like a greenhouse, but like a quonset hut. Yeah. Ribs made of PVC or steel conduit or something like that. And then you cover the top of it with a sheet of clear plastic. So the sunlight comes through, but it makes a roof to the rain off. And the sides are open, so the breeze comes through, so it doesn't get too hot. But the downside with a hoop house, I mean, so it's a great way to grow tomatoes. But for the home gardener, A, it's kind of ugly. And B, that sheet plastic only lasts like two years. So you got to get up there and take it all down. I did that with one of my jobs. And can you describe how much did you enjoy that? No. And we, it was like a team of maybe 10 to 15 of us to like have each side. And then we had to like roll it up and like cover it. It was a whole day of just not fun. Not fun. Right. Yes. Right. So not a great option for the home. You know, so for a farmer, it can make sense. It's a huge benefit to keep the rain off the plants. Right. But for the home gardener, not such a good thing. And I've got some pictures coming your way of what I invented a thing called the tomato house. Yeah. I'm a designer. I'm a carpenter. Of course you are. I can figure this out, how to like keep the rain off and have it look cool. Yeah. Right. And so I've designed two kinds of tomato houses. One is for people who are just not carpenters. Don't want to learn all those things. You know, you've got your raised bed with the wooden sides and you screw some two by twos, you know, four of them to make little four posts over your raised bed and then some cross pieces to make a simple frame, you know, so it's just two by twos. You can cut them with a handsaw. Easy. And then you just with your hand, you drill, you know, you drill some screws into it and you've got this little bit of a roof frame and then you cover your bed with what's called polycarbonate. It's a sheet the same size as plywood. So four feet by eight feet, much lighter than plywood because it's just some plastic that's kind of hollow on the inside. Okay. So it's a little bit, it's designed to be, it's a little bit rigid and you, so you put it on your two by two roof frame and you screw it down. Easy peasy. And the sunlight comes through, but the rain doesn't touch the plants and the breeze comes through, keeps things cool. And you've got a soaker hose or a drip line on the ground. Yep. And so your roots get the right amount of water without getting all soggy and not getting like a root rot. Yes. You know, you have like feet. Yes. No, no wet feet. Exactly. You know, those technical terms that we learn. Yeah. And yeah, so that's, so it's a simple structure that somebody with like no carpentry skills can do this. Okay. But I'm kinda, I like things to be beautiful and I have access to timber bamboo. So I have bamboo like this big around. Yeah. Okay. That's what's in the book. Yes. Yes. All in the book y'all. Yes. And so I, and so that would require some amount of carpentry skills and is a little easier with some kind of basic carpentry tools that the average homeowner might not have. But I wanted to put that option there if somebody wants to do something cool and they have timber bamboo. So yeah, so I made a little roof tomato house structure and at the end of the season, so we have, we put our tomatoes out in April and we will be gathering fruit through October and sometimes into November. Okay. And by October, November, the tomatoes that were under the tomato houses, their leaves were green from top to bottom, no leafy pieces, none. And the tomatoes that were in beds that did not have a roof over them, they're like half the leaves are Brown, half are green. So the plant wasn't dead. It was still producing fruit, but not as well. Yes. And so this is a very low tech, the tomato house is very low tech, not expensive. And where the, the sheet plastic you were taking down and putting up is the UV radiation will destroy it after about two years. Yeah. It's a horrible thing. So this polycarbonate is rated to last 10 years. Okay. Yeah. If it's year round in the sun, right. At the end of your season, you pull all the screws, you take it down, you set it in the garage or behind out of the sun. And instead of 10 years, it's going to last, you know, close to 20 years. So very cost effective. Yeah. Very easy to put it up. Very easy to take it down. Very easy to store it. Yeah. Then everybody's like, well, why aren't your plants all half dead? Well, I have Frank Hyman's book. Don't you have it yet? So yeah. So I'm very happy that I'm able to share this with people. It's you know, cause then once you see that it's, it, it doesn't have the immune system for heavy rainfall. Yeah. You know, that being said, there are some tomato plants that do better if you don't have the tomato house option or you don't have it yet. The, so cherry tomatoes generally tend to do better. I've met many gardeners who tell me they have just stopped growing tomatoes except for cherry tomatoes. Yeah. I can see that. They'll get a crop off of those. The Cherokee purple is an heirloom variety that does better. That's not a hundred percent disease resistant, but it's, you know, 80% disease. It does much better than a lot of heirlooms. And the third option are, like I said before, the hybrid tomatoes, there are delicious hybrid tomatoes, better boy, bigger boy, mountain pride celebrity. And so they were bred for more of a small farmer, local farmer market gardener audience and gardeners so that you could grow tomatoes. They have some, some amount of disease resistance that the heirlooms just do not have. Okay. And the fruit still tastes really good. Good. Even though it's a hybrid, hybrids have a bad wrap, undeserved bad wrap. And so, you know, in any garden center probably has some heirlooms and some hybrids. So next, this coming season, you can buy some of each and try them out and you'll see, you can have good tasting tomatoes. Nobody at your dinner party is going to go, Oh yeah, cause this is a hybrid. They'll be like, your tomatoes taste hybrid. What's that? Like, like they're tasting like kind of hybrid taste. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Like those, those wine experts. Yes. So that won't happen. You know, the, there are plenty of good tasting hybrids. That's not a problem.