IT'S TOMATO TIME!; FOR BEST FLAVOR, SHEER GARDENING FUN, THERE'S NOTHING LIKE GROWING YOUR OWN.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Daily News Staff Writer

They're red. They're ripe. They're juicy. They add that je ne sais quoi to a spaghetti sauce; they're the piece de resistance in a summer salad.

Bite into a just-picked ripe tomato ... mmmmmm ... and you can almost taste the sun.

That flavor - and the fact that tomatoes will grow in just about any back yard, in any sunny corner of any patio, in the ground or in a container - is probably why they're the No. 1 crop grown by home gardeners nationwide. Of the country's 30 million-plus gardeners, 85 percent or more plant tomatoes, according to the California Tomato Board.

``If you just wanted a tomato to put in a salad, you could go to the supermarket,'' said Helen Miller of Arcadia, who's known in Southern California gardening circles as ``the tomato lady'' after nearly a decade of experimentation with different tomato varieties and growing methods.

``But people want the taste. And to get the taste, you have to grow your own.''

Miller fell prey to the lure of the tomato in the early 1990s, after retiring as a Los Angeles County purchasing agent. After attending a tomato tasting in San Rafael, she was amazed at the different tastes of hybrid and nonhybridized ``heirloom'' tomatoes. Then she attended a University of California Extension class on how to grow tomatoes from seed and how to save seeds for future propagation.

She was hooked.

Half a dozen years later - aside from a small garden of onions, peas and broccoli - just about every available spot in Miller's large yard is filled with as many tomatoes in as many varieties as she can crowd in, each supported by cages made from concrete reinforcing wire.

``Heirlooms can get very, very large,'' she explained. ``They can get 12 to 14 feet tall, and you've got to have something to support them.''

But, she warns novice gardeners, ``Your goal isn't to have a big plant; it's to have a good-tasting tomato. The heirlooms especially have a lot of flavor; the meat is firm. They don't feel like a rubber ball (like a tomato) from the supermarket.''

Her family sure seems to notice the difference, downing every last bit of her crops in everything from salads to winter soups.

It's fitting, then, that Miller's tomato plants have their start in flats on top of the family's refrigerator, the warmest spot in her house.

When the seeds have sprouted, she moves them into a sunny living room window until they're ready for planting. When it's time to move them outdoors, she tries to put the young plants against a heat-reflecting wall. They're faithfully watered, shaded from the too-hot summer sun by mesh shadecloth, and fertilized and fed with home-grown compost. And if a tomato doesn't live up to her expectations - like more than two dozen varieties in the past few years - it's history. She replaces it the next year with another variety, another color, with the promise of a better flavor.

But brown thumbs need not be intimidated. You don't have to turn your yard into a tomato laboratory to get desirable results.

Yvonne Savio of Pasadena, a home gardener as well as coordinator for the Common Ground Garden Program of Los Angeles County's University of California Extension, encourages first-time gardeners to plant cherry tomatoes.

``Once the flowers set, the tomatoes ripen the soonest,'' she said. ``They put out a prolific crop, and the plants can get really big.''

In her own garden, she puts her first plants into the ground in March; a second planting follows in late April; a third comes in late June. Barring unforeseen weather or disease problems, that guarantees fresh tomatoes on her table all summer and - barring a too-hot summer and a too-cold fall - right up until Christmas.

``You can pull up some of the early plants and put in new ones, or if you have the space, leave them going till they poop out of their own accord,'' she said.

While most gardeners are more interested in yield than plant size, tomato grower Charles H. Wilber, 84, who lives about 70 miles north of Birmingham, Ala., decided to concentrate on both - and ended up in the Guiness Book of World Records.

One of his plants a few years ago grew nearly 29 feet tall; four others yielded a total of 1,368 pounds of tomatoes. But he says home growers - who generally count themselves lucky if a plant yields more than 30 pounds of fruit - can easily coax 340 pounds of tomatoes or more from a single plant using the right techniques - proper cultivation, lots of compost and fertilization, mulching to keep weeds at bay and the ground moist, and propping up the growing plants so they don't break or sprawl on the ground.

There's no secret to growing wonderful tomatoes, said Wilber, who recently published ``How to Grow World Record Tomatoes'' (Acres U.S.A.; $14.95) and now works as a consultant to individuals and companies trying to increase tomato yield.

``There's just a lot of work to it,'' he said.

One of the tricks to getting a good tomato harvest is in growing varieties that are proven winners in Southern California, said Kathleen Brenzel, senior garden editor for Sunset magazine. A new 120-page Sunset spring garden guide, listing nearly three dozen of the most prolific and flavorful Southland tomatoes, will hit the newsstands March 10.

The consistent favorite among home gardeners interviewed by Sunset is Celebrity, a midsize, red hybrid that grows about 5 feet tall and produces fruit during the hottest part of the summer. But for a tomato that stands up against Valley heat, plant Heatwave, which produces deep-red, 3-inch fruit, she recommends.

If you want to pick the first tomatoes in your neighborhood, plant Early Girl (``It pretty well stands up to the summer; it comes on early and keeps producing''); if you want buckets of tiny cherry tomatoes, go for Sweet 100s.

Others Sunset recommends for slicing are Ace, Better Boy, Big Beef, Champion, Dona, Enchantment, Floramerica, Jet Star, Lemon Boy, Oregon Spring, Pearson Improved and Sunmaster. For stuffing, try Burgess Stuffing and Yellow Stuffer; good paste tomatoes include Super Italian Paste, Viva Italia, Roma VF and Hungarian Italian; good cherries include Gardener's Delights, Green Grape, Small Fry, Sun Gold and Yellow Pear. Heirlooms Sunset recommends are Brandywine, Stupice, Cherokee Purple and Costoluto Genovese; compact tomatoes for small spaces are Husky Cherry Red, Better Bush and Husky Gold.

In addition, Miller favors heirloom Dona, Carmello, Green Zebra, Black Krim, Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter (developed by a poor farmer, it proved so productive that it helped him pay off the mortgage on his land), Principe Borghese and Golden Pearl; for hybrids, in addition to Celebrity, she picks Burpee Supersteak.

Savio favors many of those varieties, plus Pineapple, Black Prince, Odoriko and the huge Italian Sweets.

But no matter which tomatoes gardeners choose, they're bound to enjoy their flavorful harvest.

``You just can't beat a red, ripe garden tomato,'' Brenzel said. ``Once you've tasted one, nothing else measures up.''

A few slices of tomato history

American gardeners' love affair with the tomato was a long time in coming.

Explorer Hernan Cortez found the rosy orbs growing wild in the Andes Mountains of South America and took plants back to Spain in the mid-1500s, where early botanists concluded that, since tomatoes were part of the nightshade family, they must be poisonous.

But they were very pretty and were grown as ornamentals. Westward-bound colonists brought tomatoes to the New World about 1710, and farming enthusiast Thomas Jefferson raised tomatoes at Monticello beginning in 1781.

After brave soul Robert Gibbons Johnson downed a tomato on the steps of the Salem, N.J., courthouse in 1820 to prove its edibility, the fruit began to gain in popularity.

By 1888, Burpee - America's first big seed producer - offered gardeners and farmers 22 different varieties of tomato seeds.

Today, with more than 4,000 varieties of tomatoes, tomato growing is big business - as well as a hobby for backyard gardeners. In 1997, California - with its long, hot summers - ranked No. 1 among the 50 states in commercial production of tomatoes (9.7 million tons) for processing into salsa, sauce, juice and other products and No. 2 (Florida is No. 1) for commercial production of fresh tomatoes (27.6 million tons).

Unless you're allergic, tomatoes are a good-for-you indulgence. A medium one has about 35 calories, no cholesterol, almost no sodium, 1 gram of fiber, 1 gram of protein, and significant amounts of vitamins A and C, with traces of iron and calcium.

And, according to researchers at Harvard Medical School, people who regularly eat tomatoes and tomato products may have a lower risk of prostate, pancreatic, lung and colorectal cancers.

Just one question: Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? Although it's botanically considered a fruit, in 1893 in a case involving taxation and importation, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that since the tomato was most often used with lettuce, onions and other vegetables, it would henceforth be considered a vegetable, too.

- Carol Bidwell

Share catch-up secrets with us

If you're not one of them, you probably know someone who is: a tomato grower.

The California Tomato Board says 85 percent of home gardeners nationwide grow tomatoes. And with thousands of different varieties of tomatoes to choose from, experimentation is often most gardeners' only way to find out whether they'll have a vine or a bumper crop come summer.

But there are ways to up the odds of reaping a hearty harvest, whether it's adding epsom salts to the water to promote fruiting or giving the fruit a sturdy structure to climb.

Do you have a secret, or two, for growing great tomatoes? No doubt one of your neighbors is struggling with the same problems you've already overcome.

If you have tips for tomato-growing, share them with us. Write to Carol Bidwell, Daily News, P.O. Box 4200, Woodland Hills, Calif. 91365-4200. You also can fax us at [phone] or e-mail us at dnlalalifeaol.com.

Now's a perfect time to get started

If you're starting your first tomatoes from seed, here's how to ensure a good crop, according to Arcadia ``tomato lady'' Helen Miller:

Start seeds about six to eight weeks before the last predicted frost (usually Feb. 1 in most Valley areas, so this is the perfect time to plant) in sectioned trays with clear plastic lids. Fill the sections with moistened potting soil to a half-inch from the top. Water the mixture and let it drain. Make a quarter-inch-deep hole in each section and drop in one seed. Cover the seed with potting mix, label, cover the container with its lid and place the container in a warm spot out of direct sunlight.

Seedlings should emerge in seven to eight days. Remove the lid and set them in the sun, turning the container daily to keep plants growing straight. When several sets of leaves appear, transplant each plant into a 4-inch pot, burying each so only the top two leaves show above the soil; this will help form strong roots.

Place the pots in the sun and feed with a half-strength tomato fertilizer. When plants are 8 inches high, transplant each into a 1-gallon container, again burying each to just below the level of the bottom set of leaves. Start moving the plants outdoors during the day, but bring them inside at night.

After several days, plant tomatoes in the sunniest spot in the garden, where they'll get six to eight hours of sunshine daily. (To avoid disease, plant tomatoes in different places year after year.) Dig a hole about 18 inches deep, add compost and run some water in the hole; place the plant in the hole, again burying it up to the leaves, then backfill with more compost, soil and tomato fertilizer, plus 1 teaspoon of epsom salts; water again.

During the growing season, water often enough to keep plants from drying out, but not so often that water puddles around the plants. Once a month, add 1 teaspoon epsom salts to water for each plant to promote fruiting. Within 55 to 85 days or more, depending on the variety, you'll be picking your first tomatoes.

- Carol Bidwell

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos, 3 Boxes

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) Red Ahead

GET READY TO GROW YOUR OWN CROP OF TASTY TOMATOES

David R. Crane/Daily News

(2) Helen Miller has been growing and experimenting with different tomato varieties since she attended a tasting event nearly a decade ago.

(3) Super Sweet tomatoes form on the vine in Miller's yard.

John Lazar/Daily News

Box: (1) A few slices of tomato history (See text)

(2) Share catch-up secrets with us (See text)

(3) Now's a perfect time to get started (See text)