Tomato contest winners cite good see, organic method

It took a little ingenuity, but with some veteran gardening skills and a rare German tomato seed, an Arlington Heights man produced a winner, and took home his $100 prize money and equal amount of organic fertilizers.

Earlier this month, Peter Wrehde of Arlington Heights won the Tremendous Tomato Contest, sponsored by Pesche's Garden Center in Des Plaines and the Daily Herald.

His so-called “German Red" tomato weighed in at 2.74 pounds and measured 19.5 inches in circumference, or roughly the size of a softball.

Right on his heels was the second place winner, grown by Mark Mills of Palos Heights, which weighed in at 2.73 pounds and measured 19 inches around. His prize amounted to $75 and the same amount of organic fertilizers.

“What a surprise," exclaimed Wrehde, a native of northern Germany. “I'm thrilled."

Wrehde is a retired lithographer, while Mills is 44 years old and an operations engineer working on the Randhurst Shopping Center renovation in Mount Prospect. Yet, despite their age differences, the two men share a love of gardening and of growing prizewinning tomatoes.

“I've been gardening since I was a kid," Mills says. “I use a bunch of different techniques, handed down from generations."

They emerged from the hundreds of entrants stretched over the summer, though only a handful qualified officially for the contest, which ruled tomatoes must weigh more than 2 pounds to be entered.

Wally Schmidtke, the manager of Pesche's, ran the contest. He is a horticulturalist who excels at plant pathology and dissecting insect problems.

His favorite subject, however, is organic gardening, and his hobby is raising organic heirloom tomatoes.

After announcing the contest last spring, Schmidtke wrote a weekly column in the Daily Herald, giving gardeners tips on growing healthy tomatoes.

“We had so many people bring tomatoes in, who were so sure that they weighed more than 2 pounds," Schmidtke says, “only to find out they didn't."

Nonetheless, he describes the first Tremendous Tomato Contest a complete success.

“The response was just excellent," Schmidtke says. “People were really into it, and with the good growing season we had over the summer, our customers reported a bumper crop of tomatoes."

Wrehde grew 24 tomato plants in all, but his winning entry came from the seeds of a tomato from Germany that a friend had brought him.

“I kept the seeds and dried them out until I planted them in the spring," Wrehde says.

Like all of his plants, he starts them from seed grown indoors, before moving them into the garage as they began to sprout. Once the weather turned mild, he planted them in his garden, located on the south side of his house, where they got plenty of sun.

“I was really surprised," Wrehde says. “The tomatoes from these seeds kept growing and growing. They're the biggest ones I ever had. I had to tie them up, just to keep them on the vine and keep them from falling off."

The result, he says was a giant tomato, more pinkish in color than red, and very meaty.

“It was big enough to cut up into a tomato salad for four people," Wrehde says. “It was delicious."

Mills, on the other hand, credited his organic gardening methods, which include rotating his soil each season, keeping a compost pit of grass clippings, leaves and table scraps for fertilizer, and starting out by burying the entire plant, instead of just the root.

The seeds also matter, he adds. Seeds for the winning entry came from another engineer working at Randhurst, Jeff Shenoha of Joliet, who knows a thing or two about growing giant crops. He set the state record this month with his 1,493-pound pumpkin.

Tremendous Tomato growers

<b>First place: Peter Wrehde, Arlington Heights</b>

Size: 2.74 pounds, 19.5 inches

Secret: Rare German tomato seed

Variety: German Red

<B>Second place: Mark Mills, Palos Heights</B>

Size: 2.73 pounds, 19 inches

Secret: Organic methods, handed down from generations

Variety: A seed given to him from the winner of the state's biggest pumpkin