Bridget Veltri
arts@mustangdaily.net
Tomato mania is ripe, ready and returning to the Poly Plant shop April 10 and 11.
“There are people that come into the plant shop asking about tomato mania all year long,” said horticulture senior Angela Magdaleno. “People get all excited about it.”
Aside from being one of the more popular enterprise projects for students, tomato mania has quite a following.
“People have been coming up to the unit asking if they can buy them now,” said horticulture senior Lisa Baray.
Some say tomato, others tomahto, but no matter how you pronounce it, there will be over 60 varieties of the fruits for sale during tomato mania.
Prices will be $6 for one pot and five plants for $27.50. Some of the varieties available are Cherokee Purple First Light Hybrid, Golden Nugget and Red Zebra.
“A lot of people have no idea how many different kinds there are,” Baray said. “I didn’t know that there were that many varieties until I got involved with this project.”
Magdaleno favors the Murray Smith, a large red tomato that was developed by longtime professor and former dean of the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences, Howard Brown. The Murray Smith is only available at Cal Poly and the San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden.
“It’s a local hybrid and it is tolerant in the coastal areas,” Magdaleno said. “It grows really tall and produces a lot of tomatoes.”
A catalog of all the tomato varieties is available online. A small selection of pepper and basil plants will be available during tomato mania as well.
Tomato mania will continue through April as long as supplies last.
“The 10th and 11th is the big sale, those days are dedicated specifically to tomatoes,” Magdaleno said. “They sell really quickly and what’s left over will be on sale but there won’t be as big of a selection.”
“For a lot of other enterprise projects, they usually don’t sell all of their plants,” Baray added. “But tomato mania is done in two or three days.”
Tomato mania is a horticulture enterprise project. The five students involved are able to keep the money left over from the sale and split it among the group after paying back Cal Poly for what they bought and used.
“It just happened to be one of the enterprise projects that was coming up and it was very popular,” Magdaleno said of her involvement. “It was something that I felt I could do.”
Before tomato mania, Magdaleno had never grown a tomato.
“It was interesting to see the process,” she said. “Growing the seeds, then the misting house, transplanting them and watching them grow. Being able to see that product you were able to make was really neat.”
The Poly Plant shop is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and is located on Via Carta.