Florida Predicts Bountiful, Tasty Spring Tomato Crop

MAITLAND, Fla.The Florida Tomato Committee is predicting a large spring tomato crop that features one of the best-tasting tomatoes in a number of years, despite freezing weather that wiped out 80 percent of the states winter crop.

The devastation to Floridas winter and early spring tomato crop forced retailers and restaurants to lean on shipments of tomatoes from other sources in recent months. To date this season, Florida tomato growers have packed 52 percent of the total packed last year during same time period. The bulk of Floridas tomato shipments now are coming from the Palmetto-Ruskin growing region where plants were set in February and March, after the worst of the freeze conditions passed.

Florida is the nations largest producer of fresh tomatoes. With almost every southern county in the state cultivating tomatoes, Florida produces virtually all the fresh-market, field-grown tomatoes in the United States from October through June each year, and accounts for about 50 percent of all fresh tomatoes produced domestically.

The quality is excellent and the flavor is absolutely phenomenalbest in years, said Reggie Brown, manager of the Florida Tomato Committee. We want our neighbors throughout the Southeast and the rest of the country to know that we are back.