Thoughts on Tomatoes

I've been growing tomatoes for a few years.  I've had a variety of problems at times, but usually gotten a decent crop.  Some years (like this one) I get a very good one.  As I mentioned in July, I dehydrate most tomatoes, but also can them sometimes, too.  This year I had enough at one time to can, but I went ahead and dehydrated the lot.

I usually have blight problems--generally early blight.  This year the blight is more limited.  Generally my tomatoes are pretty well done by now, but then they get a second wind in September and I end up with some green ones at the time of first frost.  This year I'm still getting tomatoes in mid-August and will dehydrate them, as well.


 I've never had too much trouble with blossom end rot, which can be attributed to calcium and / or dry growing conditions as the tomatoes are developing.  Sometimes my tomatoes get mushy while developing and I toss them; occasionally I get severe bug damage.  There are usually a few stink bugs on them when I go out to the garden, but the damage they have caused is limited.

Last year--for the first and only time ever--I had some tobacco hornworms and saw one that had been turned into a host by parasitical wasps.  Very gruesome, but I was happy to help the biological controls work.  Otherwise, the hornworms haven't been a major problem, either.

I've become convinced that there are subtle variations in growing conditions that influence what varieties do well.  I always grow at least two or three types--almost always heirlooms--and individual types seldom do well in two consecutive years.  Cherokee Purple is an exception; it has usually performed very well but this year my two plants have been duds.  One year Amish Paste was worthless, yielding one tomato from one plant all year; another year it produced abundantly.  I used the same package of seeds to start plants both years.  One year some heirloom start from Home Depot whose name I can't remember produced about 60% of what I got off of five plants.  This year Mortgage Lifter has done okay but it usually flops for me.  Homestead is doing well this year; it might be the unknown Home Depot plant from a few years ago or it might be new (you can tell my record-keeping is not 100% of what it needs to be).  I tried Nebraska Wedding, a yellow determinate variety, never worked for me despite trying two or three years.  I never got a single tomato.  One of my favorites for flavor:  Frankenstein Black.  I started it from seed a couple of years and it produced a decent amount.

It might be there there are other factors: seeds and starts (I've done both) are variable, so that might be what accounts for the problems rather than growing conditions. I don't know--it may be a combination of things, some observable and others not.  In a practical sense, it doesn't matter: the solution is the same.  Plant several varieties and at least one will probably do well.

Preserving Tomatoes

I grow mostly indeterminate tomatoes.  The darker ones, like Black Prince and Cherokee Purple, are my favorites.  A couple of years I grew Frankenstein Black and liked them very much.  At any rate, some years my tomato harvest is a bust.  Deer will eat the plants but don't seem to go for them very often, and stink bugs can be found on them but do not seem to do too much damage.  Even in good years the best I get a slow, steady level of production that is very drawn out over a period of weeks.  I pick them as they ripen (or a little before, then let them ripen indoors).

I do two things with tomatoes (well, three, counting tomato sandwiches).  One is dehydrate them, the other is can them following the NCHFP's recipe for crushed tomatoes.  I then use the tomatoes for a sort of spaghetti sauce that ends up being somewhat runny and very chunky once I add the onions. It's not like Prego, but I still like it. Normally I don't grow paste tomatoes (though I did like the Amish Paste ones I raised one year), so the end product is pretty watery (see below).

Canning requires peeling the tomatoes, which I'm definitely not a fan of (I also hate peeling peaches).  So it's not my first choice, and I find that when I can them, it takes me a while to use them.  I'll use them, but slowly. And, btw, I wouldn't characterize the peeling process as "slip[ping]  off [the] skins."

I haven't done them for a few years, and the last time I did I failed to note the raw amount I needed for the canner load I processed.  So the NCHFP guidelines are probably as good as any.  This can require stocking them in the refrigerator for a few days to build up enough supply to make canning worthwhile.  I'm not going to go through all that work for two or three pints.  I've heard that some don't like refrigerating tomatoes, but it has worked out okay for me.

Dehydrating is another matter.  It's easy to process the tomatoes in small batches as they come in.  Then I just cut the tops off, cut them into 4-8 radial slices, and thrown them in the dehydrator.  They dry down quickly, in 24-48 hours (at 135 degrees; using a cooler temp would extend the time).

Dehydrating them is a little problematic for other reasons: I eat them too fast.  I like the end result very much and down them as snack food.  I think they could be rehydrated, put on pizza, or otherwise used in recipes, but so far I've just eaten them about as fast as I produce them (that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much).

My tomatoes usually stop producing in August or so, then start blooming and producing again with the cooler temperatures of late summer and early fall.  I always have green tomatoes on the vine at the time of the first frost.  There's a recipe for pickled green tomatoes that looks appealing but that I have never made.  I usually try to ripen them, then end up tossing them when that doesn't happen.  Maybe this year...