HILLSBOROUGH: Competition tomatoes go to homeless shelter

   Two Hillsborough residents were among the Somerset County employees who put their green thumbs to good use and donated their first Tomato Grow Off harvest to a local nonprofit organization.
   Pittstown’s Scott Gordon of the county’s Engineering Division was named the winner of the employee competition with a garden tomato weighing 2.325 pounds.
   County employees were invited to participate in the Tomato Grow Off sponsored by the in-house Wellness Committee. To be eligible, employees registered in early June and had the choice of growing a regular garden tomato or a container tomato.
   Originally there were 12 registrants, but, due to reasons ranging from critter interference to family members eating impossible-to-resist tomatoes, the final contest was a laid-back competition among six employees.
   The weigh-in was done by Dave Dombey of the Weights and Measures Division on a state-certified scale.
   In second and third were Hillsborough’s Chris Melick of the Engineering Division and Xiomara Piercey of the Consumer Protection Division, with entries at 1.04 and .95 pounds, respectively.
   The employees gave four shopping bags of tomatoes to the Volunteers of America Agapé House, a shelter in Somerville that provides temporary housing and counseling for the homeless.