🍅 Tomato
King of fruit vegetables. Loves warmth and sun, dies at first frost — worth the wait.
What the numbers mean
These are the actual parameters this game runs on. Growth is driven by growing degree days: each day contributes max(0, min(mean temp, 32) − 10), and Tomato is ready when that total reaches 1300. That is why the same seed takes a very different number of days in Dublin and in Guangzhou.
| Base temperature | 10°CBelow this, the plant accumulates no growing degree days at all. |
|---|---|
| Degree days to maturity | 1300 °C·dThe heat budget it must accumulate before it is ready to pick. |
| Comfortable range | 15–30°CWhere it grows without stress. |
| Frost damage below | 2°CLeaves start taking frost damage below this low. |
| Killed below | 0°CBelow this it does not come back. |
| Heat stress above | 33°CAbove this the plant slows down and stops setting fruit well. |
| Typical time to harvest | 75–95 days |
| Yield per bed | 25 tomatoes |
Things worth knowing
- Botanically a fruit — but in 1893 the US Supreme Court ruled it a vegetable for tariffs.
- Native to the Andes; Europeans grew it for 200 years as an ornamental, afraid to eat it.
Where and when to sow Tomato
Pick your city to see the months when Tomato scores well against that city's real climate records: