This is the time of year gardeners wait twelve months for.

This is the time gardeners walk out to the tomato vines on a bright, warm summer morning and look through the leafy vines for the first ripe tomato.

And there it is -- bright, red, perfectly shaped, hidden securely among the heavy foliage. What a temptation to take the first bite and taste the sum-warmed flavor of a real tomato--not one which has come via the grocery store from some commercial patch. It is one of the greatest pleasures of a real dirt gardener.

Every tomato grower desires a vine fruit by July 4th. Dorotha Strack at Sunny Hill Gardens reported a customer brought in the first of the season on June 6. Although there was not a contest this year, as there has been in past years, this was the very first. It was the Early Girl variety, and the customer reported he had purchased the plant when the tomato had a good start. Anyway, that is quite early for a garden fresh tomato.

The best of all gardeners, Henry Ochs, shared one of his special Millionaires, which is the best tomato ever. He has had them producing for more than a week now. Also, he says his Big Beef is all the Ladybug said that it would be.

With this productive season, and gardens growing lush produce, many Fourth of July picnics will feature home grown tomatoes.

The tomato has become the Number 1 plant in our gardens today, says Ortho's popular book, "All About Tomatoes", which relates "there are still a few things in the world you cannot buy, one of them is the incomparable taste of truly fresh tomatoes."

Many people have made this taste discovery and started their own tomato gardens. Of 33 million gardening households in this country 93% grow tomatoes.

Could it be that part of the distinctive flavor of home grown tomatoes may be because everything tastes better when you raise it yourself?

When tomatoes are shipped in, even from Arkansas, they are picked green, processed and loaded into trucks to make the trip to the retail store. As trucks bump along the highways, the ripening process begins. Commercially grown tomatoes are bred with thick skins to withstand this treatment and still be appealing to the customer.

Once we went to an Illinois farm which grew tomatoes for marketing. They were perfectly shaped, a beautiful color and we proudly selected some to bring home. We could not eat them as there was absolutely no taste. Even the tomato juice made from them had no flavor and we could not drink it.

There is only one way to get that delicious, vine-ripened flavor and that is to have your own tomatoes or secure them locally. To the tomato producer there is no such thing as too many tomatoes, especially when there is a good cook in the kitchen.

Tomatoes are ideal for stewing, making juice, catsup, soup, gazpacho, marinating for salads, baked with pasta, fried green tomatoes, sauces, vegetable medley, plain sliced tomatoes and countless other recipes.

Many cooks still prefer to freeze or can their tomatoes and make their own sauce, salsa, and catsup, jam or preserves.

To retain the flavor of home grown tomatoes, do not put them in the refrigerator. This was impressed on us many years ago by an excellent cook, the late Bess Owenbey, who impressed it strongly upon her helpers, in the kitchen of First Presbyterian Church. "Tomatoes are more flavorful when they have not been refrigerated," she said.

Many years ago when we were attending a Garden Writers' meeting in Mobile, Ala., we were asked to write an article about growing tomatoes in our area, along with five others, who came from different areas of the country.

"Growing Tomatoes Coast to Coast" was the title of the article for the little magazine, Gardener's Companion for 1981. Six gardeners discussed the problems and secrets of raising tomatoes in their region. The following is from the article:

"It takes no magic hand to grow tomatoes in the Midwest. They will come up almost anywhere--in clay soil, sandy soil, loamy soil, even in the rockiest soil, so long as they have at least six or seven hours of sunlight a day.

"And what's more even a child can grow them--and that's not such a bad idea for gardening parents who want to point their children in the right direction.

"In the Midwest planting time outside ranges from March 1 to 15 in the south to late May or early June in the northern border. Some gardeners like to get an early edge on the neighbors for the first ripe tomato of the season. This competition is often fierce.

"These early birds put caps over their tomatoes if the temperature is going to drop. As a matter of fact, however, plants put in after and sometimes better than those started earlier."

The article goes on to list early varieties, those for midseason and later, blossom end rot, refusing to set blooms, stress and other problems.