By Sarah Jackson, Herald Writer
Tomatoes - round, plump, juicy and fresh - are the epitome of summer.
Whether you're munching on cute cherry tomatoes harvested from plants in your back yard or slicing husky heirloom varieties raised on a farm, you're truly biting into the season when you bite into a tomato.
That's especially true if you buy tomatoes raised locally.
Neil Landaas and Dorothea Eckert, who own Flying Tomato Farm in rural Snohomish, promise you'll notice a difference in the flavor of their tomatoes compared with their factory-farmed cousins, often picked green, ripened with ethylene, refrigerated and shipped hundreds, if not thousands, of miles.
"They taste like real tomatoes," Eckert said. "It's a depth of flavor."
Their tomatoes, grown in soil, ripen on the vine.
"It's a balance between acidity and sweetness," Landaas said. "They slice perfectly. They're firmer. They aren't mushy."
In the Flying Tomato Farm greenhouse, there are no pesticides, just a few pints of Rainier beer to drown wayward slugs. They use organic fertilizer and compost, but aren't certified organic because of all the paperwork they have yet to complete to earn the title.
"We're into sustainability. That's our thing," said Landaas, who is on his second season providing tomatoes to local farmers markets. "We don't use anything synthetic."
Landaas and Eckert are relatively new to farming. But their idyllic, gently sloping 1.5-acre property, with its enchanting herb gardens, vegetable beds, beehives, egg-laying chickens and Porter, the 2-year-old Lab, seems like the perfect place to keep the local food movement alive in Snohomish County.
Landaas and Eckert, 42 and 49 respectively, run an intensely local operation.
They bought their greenhouse from Steuber Distributing in Snohomish and they buy their fertilizers from McDaniels Do It Center in Snohomish. Landaas, meanwhile, manages the Edmonds, Mukilteo and Snohomish farmers markets.
Landaas learned how to grow tomatoes from Mike Monas, owner of Pilchuck Gardens in Snohomish.
Monas, who has grown tomatoes for more than 15 years, sells to farmers markets in Seattle. This year he is harvesting from 2,000 plants.
Though Monas has a hugely loyal following in Seattle, Landaas saw a need for more local tomatoes in Snohomish County, especially at farmers markets.
"There was a hole, so we decided to fill it," Landaas said. "We wanted to stay in Snohomish. This is where we live."
This year Landaas and Eckert are tending 350 plants, mostly big, fat beefsteak varieties along with a row of Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes and a few yellow- orange varieties, including Perfection, Locarno and Bolzano, not typically sold in grocery stores.
Despite Landaas and Eckert's warm, down-to-earth nature, their greenhouse is decidedly high-tech - complete with an industrial fan, drip irrigation and hydronic heating buried in the soil.
Their plants and fruits are healthy and huge.
"Isn't that amazing?" Eckert said of the heavy, often 1-pound fruits. "I think it's the organic stuff."
Already their vines are more than 8 feet tall, hanging from adjustable white pulleys that Landaas and Eckert gradually lower as bunches of red tomatoes are removed from the bottom up.
Such vining tomatoes, also known as indeterminate varieties, will grow continuously until frost or disease kills them.
Each plant is pruned to a single thick leader vine that will, over the next few months, snake back and forth, eventually forming circles of vines more than 20 feet long.
Landaas keeps the temperature at a minimum 65 degrees with help from dual-ply plastic greenhouse walls filled with air for insulation. They mulch the ground with hay from Frog's Song Farm, a certified organic operation in Mount Vernon.
"This is a pretty typical commercial set up," said Landaas, who served in the Marines for four years and prides himself on straight rows and tidy plants. "I like efficiency."
Though this is only their second crop, Landaas and Eckert have already found loyal customers at the Edmonds, Mukilteo and Snohomish farmers markets, where they sell their tomatoes exclusively.
Elderly couples eat their tomatoes with a sprinkle of salt and nothing more, while younger foodies make gazpacho.
"People save their grocery shopping for the market. They've been doing it for years," Eckert said. "They want something fresh. They want to cook. They do everything with them. BLTs are a big hit."
Over the years, Landaas has seen an increase in people's willingness to buy local, even if it means going out of the way and sometimes paying more.
"I think Snohomish County is catching up," he said. "Ten years ago, it was a little harder. Income levels are going up."
There are some skeptics in the crowds at farmers markets. Some don't trust tomatoes grown in greenhouses, also known as hothouse tomatoes.
Hothouse tomatoes' bad reputation may be somewhat deserved, Monas said, thanks to large greenhouse operations that have produced low-quality tomatoes for many years.
"If you pick them green or greenish and they come out of the hothouse, they're not going to taste any better," said Monas, who grows his tomatoes in soil in greenhouses. "It really is in the degree of ripeness on the vine."
Tomatoes grown hydroponically in a water and fertilizer solution can suffer the same fate.
"It can be a good-tasting tomato," Monas said. "Although it's very easy to cheat and go purely for yield rather than flavor."
Landaas and Eckert want to grow their tomatoes as naturally as possible and with flavor to boot.
"I want to grow old-fashioned tomatoes," Landaas said. "It lends a better flavor to the tomatoes."
Greenhouses boost productivity because they're dry, hot and help prevent common tomato diseases such as early and late blight, exacerbated by the Northwest's damp, cool spring and fall weather. It's why many home gardeners grow their tomatoes under the cover of hoop houses.
But perhaps most important, greenhouses extend the limited regional growing season, allowing customers to buy local - longer.
"I seed them in January and they go in the greenhouse in February," Landaas said. "We had them (for sale) May 15 this year."
This year, as with last, Landaas expects to sell all the tomatoes they can grow.
He wants to grow more next year by adding another greenhouse, but isn't sure he and Eckert, who do their own picking, can handle doubling in size. They might also like to diversify and sell soap, honey and other vegetables.
"We've been here a little over two years," Eckert said. "We really like the life. We're into it. We have plans."
When their season ends, Landaas and Eckert, who were married in March, will honeymoon in Italy.
Neither of them has been to the country, famous for its tomatoes, of course, but also the international base of the "slow food" movement, geared toward keeping local food traditions alive in a fast-food world.
"We want to be inspired," Eckert said of their upcoming trip. "We'll bring some of that inspiration back with us."
Reporter Sarah Jackson: 425-339-3037 or sjackson@heraldnet.com.Tomato recipes
