#125 – November 29, 2020 – Corn & Tomatoes Prashad!

Dear Friends,

The volunteer gardeners at the ISHA dera site in Wisconsin cultivated three varieties of corn and eight varieties of tomatoes. All of which were grown without chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides.

Sweet Corn varieties: Bodacious; Montauk; Temptress

Tomato varieties: Belgium; Celebrity; Mountain Magic; Pruden’s Purple; Valencia; Sunsugar Yellow Cherry; Roma; Blue Beech

“A light wind swept over the corn, and all nature laughed in the sunshine.” — Anne Bronte

Known as “maize” in most countries, corn was first domesticated by native farmers in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago. The large-scale cultivation of corn in eastern North America occurred over 1000 years ago, when indigenous people cleared forests and grasslands for their important new crop.

In addition to the exquisite taste of our garden-fresh sweet corn prashad, the Wisconsin sevadars benefited from its high nutritional value, including B vitamins, thiamin, niacin, folate, fiber, magnesium, and phosphorous.

“Homegrown tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes
What’d life be without homegrown tomatoes
Only two things that money can’t buy
That’s true love & home grown tomatoes” — John Denver

Tomatoes are a fruit — the edible berries of the tomato plant. The ISHA garden elves grew some large fruit, in great part due to the glorious compost that was added to the garden soil in early 2019. This 2-pound ISHA Belgium tomato is impressive, although the world record heaviest tomato, grown in New York in 2019, was 9 pounds 10.4 ounces. Maybe next year ….