There are two kinds of tomatoes, the kind we grow in our gardens and the kind we buy at the grocery store. A five-year-old could tell the difference. We don't just love our backyard tomatoes; we worship them.

Millions of people race out each spring to buy seeds and plants, devote whole summers to their care and feeding, then proudly enter the resulting fruits in contests, take them to work to show off and wax poetic about the sweetness and complexity of this variety or that. The end of tomato season is marked by the sadness that hangs in the chilly air.
 
The only object that even comes close to engendering the passion that people feel for homegrown tomatoes is the disgust and loathing reserved for the grocery store counterpart. "Tennis balls." "Vine-ripened my ass!" "Worthless; won't buy them." Perhaps the sentiment was expressed best by my waiter when I asked for fresh tomato on my upscale, brick-oven pizza last week. "Madam,” he sniffed; “it is winter. There are no fresh tomatoes."

Ah, but there may be change in the air, a subtle shift to a new tomato awareness in the grocery produce aisle. And it just might command a lot more of that shelf space. We were all grateful when the hydroponic cluster tomatoes from Europe hit the shelves a few years ago. So grateful that we forked over wads of cash to buy these "okay' fruits. Heirlooms at the grocery store were a short-lived joke. We wide-eyed Pollyannas paid $6 or $8 dollars a pound for these convincing impersonators before learning that they tasted like.... wait a minute.... grocery store tomatoes.
 
But now, just in the past two winters, a couple of commercial tomatoes have shouldered their way to the front of the pile, and done something heretofore unthinkable. They have tasted like tomatoes. And here it is folks, proof that these tomatoes taste good...I have had two requests from readers of my garden Q and A, asking if they might save the seeds and grow these at home! The two commercial tomatoes that have excited our winter weary taste buds are Campari and Kumato.
 
Campari is a blocky, salad-sized tomato with good red color and firm flesh. Most are a tad more than acceptable and some have been swoon-worthy. The ping-pong-ball-sized fruits have a higher sugar content and that, along with the fact that Costco sells them, has made them popular. One reader told me that she dug through her trash in the garage to find the box after eating them.  

Kumato is a black (actually, dark chocolate brown) tomato, not unlike the popular old garden variety 'Black Prince'. The critical difference is that it is said to be sweet at any stage of ripening and a long keeper. Since I never, ever refrigerate a tomato (‘cause my dead Italian relatives, if I had any, would turn in their graves), I can attest to that last part. My most recent box of Kumatoes were so good that I sliced them and served them nearly naked (not me; the tomatoes) to guests!

After lots of research, I have learned this: Both tomatoes were hybridized specifically for commercial growing, and the seed is only available to the growers who contract with the produce distributors. You can't buy the seed. Furthermore, the hybrids are, according to the distributors' websites, so complicated that even identifying the 'parent' seeds involved is impossible. One parent seed of the Kumato is said to be a native of Galapagos that must be ingested and expelled by giant lizards in order to germinate. (I did not make that up.) But the folks who save grocery store seeds and grow them at home have reported trying both of these tomatoes and finding them stable and true to type.
 
So there you have it. If the photos I found on various blogs and garden websites are to be believed, you can grow these tomatoes. Type the words "fermenting tomato seeds " into your search engine and find out how you too, can save grocery store tomato seeds and grow these Frankenmatoes in your own back yard. Just don't come crying to me if giant lizards start frequenting your garden.

—Deb Terrill