Tomato

Solanum lycopersicum

Solanaceae

The kitchen-garden berry we treat as a vegetable — acid, sweet, and the color of a summer table.

Ripe fruit is food. Leaves, stems, and green fruit in quantity are a nightshade, not a tea.

Parts used: Ripe fruit
Traditional notes: Kitchen fruit · Sauce and salad · Traditional summer table
Grow · USDA 6b: Tender annual. Start indoors; plant out after frost. Seed 6–8 weeks before last frost, or a stout transplant. In work: May · Jun · Jul · Aug · Sep · Oct
Harvest: When the shoulder yields and the color is true. Flavor finishes on the plant.

Stake or cage. A sprawl is a slug hotel.
Water the soil, not the leaf, if blight lives in your county.
A few plants well fed beat a jungle.

Safety

Nightshade leaf tea Known tomato allergy Severe reflux if it is your trigger

Companions

Plant with Asparagus, Bee balm, Borage, Calendula, Carrot, Chives.

Keep apart from Blueberry, Broccoli, Cabbage, Eggplant, Fennel, Kale.

Lore

Nahuatl tomatl. The Spanish brought it; Italians named it pomodoro, golden apple, before it was red. Northern Europe treated it as an ornamental poison for a century because it is a nightshade. Jefferson grew it at Monticello anyway. The ketchup bottle is a later, sweeter argument.

The Herbarium — a teaching catalog, not a clinic. Traditional use is history, not a prescription. USDA 6b dates are a week either way, not a promise. Do not eat, drink, or harvest a plant you cannot name.