I Need You to Talk Sense Into Me About Tomatoes

 

I have to ask myself, why did I plant to many tomato plants again this year? I did cut back considerably from last year in which I ended up planting over 70 tomato plants. Two dozen of those were due to my mother-in-law getting carried away and planting a whole packet of seeds. The rest were due to a friend of ours who plants a community garden who over ordered and was having a hard time finding homes for all of them.

Flash forward to this year, I planted an entire package of seeds and planned on giving away most of the extras. I did give away quite a bit but ended up with 16 plants remaining, 13 which I stuck in the garden and three which my MIL adopted. One of those adopted three were stuck in the dirt outside the greenhouse and quickly died and two more were stuck in small pots on the deck where they have been starved and have produced only two or three fifty cent sized fruits. I tried to impart that tomatoes don't like small containers that get their roots warm and dry out quickly but the language barrier didn't allow for those pearls of wisdom to translate. 

I felt good about the 13 in the garden right until the took over the entire west side of our garden, growing taller than I am and reaching out many feed beyond the fence that I put to keep the deer out. When the green tomatoes started forming, I knew it had been too many again. I quickly filled up many jars with salsa and tomato soup, both of which we were running low on. Then I started giving them away to others who desire our tomatoes for their own salsa preserves. I gave them as many five-gallon buckets full of tomatoes as they desired but eventually they both said no more.

Our church entrance is often a place where people bring excess garden veggies and place on the tile floor in cardboard boxes for those without to sort through and take home with them. I thought I would get rid of another bucket full so I saved a big enough cardboard box and loaded it full of a lot of nice plump tomatoes, a couple double handful of Japanese peppers and a few excess Japanese style eggplants. But when I carried it in the church, there were four other boxes full of tomatoes. After church, the peppers and eggplant were gone but only one box of tomatoes had been taken and it wasn't the one I brought in.

What do do now?

We still have some old tomato sauce canned a few years back but it was some that I had done before I bought my tomato mill and has lots of seeds in it. Since we give away a fair amount of what we can every year, including the soup and salsa, I thought perhaps I should do some more sauce, this time without seeds so we can add that to our giving list. We don't mind the seeds but I have found most others prefer their sauce seedless. However, I think I have maybe four pint jars that are empty. So I made a trip to the grocery store across town and they did happen to have four cases of pint jars left on their shelves, unusual for this time of the year. They now have none.

The next two days are supposed to be nearly 100 F outside with heat indexes approaching 120 F so I'm not going to pick tomatoes or be doing any canning. But as you read this post, it is forecasted to maybe in the low 70's at dawn so I might pick a couple more buckets and turn them into sauce. After that, I plan to rip out most of the plants and compost them and just leave two or three for fresh eating and perhaps some fried green tomato pie right before the first killing frost. 

Because Amish Paste tomatoes are self pollinating, and Kevin over at An English Homestead inspired me, I am going to save seeds from some of the best looking tomatoes, cure them a few days and then dry them for use next year. I've read that doing so will make them able to plant and germinate for the next five years without issue. But please if I am musing on how many to plant next year, remind me of this post and tell me to plant a lot less!

Tomato soup to be given away around Christmas time