Home » Blog » Tons of Tomatoes Tons of Tomatoes May 25, 2016 Plants, Seasonal, Summer, Van Putte Gardens, Vegetables From salads to sauce, we just LOVE tomatoes and now is the time to plant! The tomato is America’s favorite edible, and a great gateway into gardening for kids or newbies. Here are some fun facts & notable numbers regarding this delicious (& versatile!) vegetable! The largest tomato on record weighed 7.7 pounds. It was grown in Oklahoma in 1986. There are about 35 calories in an average tomato. Is a tomato a vegetable or a fruit? Scientifically, a fruit is “the ripened ovary of a plant and its contents,” which does include tomatoes, but in 1887, the U.S. Supreme Court case Nix v. Hedden decided it was legally a vegetable because of the overwhelmingly common consumer belief that it is a vegetable. The average U.S. person consumes 88 pounds of tomatoes each year. About 40,000 festival-goers throw 150,000 tomatoes during the “La Tomatina” festival each year in Buñol, Spain. There are more than 7,500 varieties of tomatoes grown around the world. The speed limit of Heinz Tomato Ketchup is 0.028mph… if it pours any faster than that in the Heinz Tomato Ketchup factory, it’s considered too runny and rejected! We grow over 35 different varieties of tomatoes at Van Putte Gardens, from tiny Sweet 100s to the large sandwich-sized Beefsteak. Now that the threat of frost is past it’s safe to plant vegetables outside, so get planting & we’ll all look forward to harvest in July!