First Big Fruit Pull

[z_willus_d]

I got back from a week long work trip to find a large number of ripe tomatoes (those the birds left me) hanging on my dilapidated vines. I expect this will be my penultimate harvest with these poor plants, but I'll at least get another good load in before they croak, I believe. Holding a 3/4 full paper grocery bag, I had the dual thoughts: (1) wow this is a lot of beautiful looking fruit; and (2) Hmm, I've heard a heathy tomato plant can produce well over 20lb in a season and that's around what I've got here in this bag. So, yes, bitter sweet knowing that my plants are on course for producing closer to 4-6lb per. But that's ok. The maters are tasting great!

And that's despite the fact that most are cracking. Here's what happened. I have this nice irrigation setup with 6" of redwood bark mulch. It's great. The irrigation spreads out evenly from above using a large number of micro-sprayers. I can introduce enough water for the week in around 10-15 minutes depending on how hot it's going to be. Well, I got side tracked a couple weeks back and forgot to turn the water off. It was on for more like eight hours. After that, beside the $60 increase to my water bill, which I just payed minutes ago, I also noted that nearly every tomato (save the cherries - sungold) were cracking. I hadn't watered in over 2 weeks when I harvested these tomatoes.

The first two pics I posted below show about half of the tomatoes I harvested, which I kept to eat on BLTs, sandwiches, salads, etc. I have a number of mysteries in there, a PBTD, Pink BW, BrandyBoy, Red BW, NAR, three Dwarfs (PP, YQ, IR), Cher P, Wes, Casino, Costaluto Gen, and several other varieties. Standouts for taste so far have been Goose Creek and KBX, the latter of which you may view as the orange in my pics below. It was delicious and large! The Goose creek pumps out a large number of fruit, some with BER, while the KBX only managed three. Disease and pest pressure are huge problems in my garden this year.

The other half of tomatoes from the harvest (not shown) where milled down and reduced into the sauce you see in the final pics. It's well thickened and smells amazing. I haven't yet tasted it. I'll be canning most of it for future consumption.

So in summary, while this year has been a huge disappointment in a number of ways (example, I pulled out 14 plants at my work garden that had trunks like a large sappling's), I can't deny the exuberance of enjoying the perfection of that KBX on our Turkey-burger sandwiches the other night. It almost makes all the work and monetary "investment" worth it. I'm guessing with this sauce on our next pizza, I'll get there.

Best to all-
--naysen

[jerryinfla]

Nice haul naysen! Now that's some THICK sauce! Bet it tastes great too .

[gardenfrog]

Congrats! Great looking fruit!

[Mlm1]

Those are some beautiful tomatoes and your sauce looks delicious. That's nice you had a good harvest to come home to. I bet you enjoy every bite.
Marla

[Crandrew]

OH MAN...Congrats!!! I wish I was turning out that much right now.

[z_willus_d]

All thanks for the kind words and encouragement. Yes, the sauce is great. I can't wait to use it in our pasta dish tonight. I had it reducing on the lowest heat overnight. I usually use Lurley's spontaneous decompression method, which helps to reduce the total reduction time. I wonder if the reduced time exposed to air and on heat might improve freshness as well. Whatever the case, this sauce tastes intense. There's nothing added, salt, herbs, etc., so it should only get tastier on final preparation.

I've posted a couple pics of the finished, "canned" product. It's amazing how so many tomatos can reduce to just 5 and 1/2 pint sized jars. I grabbed a few more slightly blushing tomatoes today before watering the beds, as shown in the first pics. I didn't want any water dilution to depreciate the goods.

Marla, how are you 100 or so plants producing now?

-naysen

[Father'sDaughter]

Looking good! Hopefully you get some more before the plants call it a day. Enjoy them!

[Mlm1]

Naysen, my plants are a little behind yours. They are just starting to really get going. I'll try to get another picture of the garden this week. Hope you enjoyed your sauce tonight.

Marla

[Heritage]

Congratulations Naysen, you deserve it! A beautiful harvest!

But... where's the tomato wine?

Steve

[z_willus_d]

Marla, we enjoyed the sauce with some shrimp, homegrown eggplants, and ground turkey. Honestly, the sauce alone with some nice olive oil and maybe a dash of fine Romano cheese would have been better, purer. I also couldn't bring myself to use up half of my product in one setting, so I settled for one jar mixed with the cans of chopped tomatoes one can find at Trader Joes. That dilution certainly took it down a notch too. All that said, the meal was a treat and far better than any (well most) pasta I've found around these parts. I just need lots and lots more tomatoes so I don't have to make those hard trade-offs on quality/quantity. Same for the wine Steve. I'd definitely get to fermenting had I enough spare tomatoes lying about. That would be fantastic!

--naysen

[lakelady]

Naysen! I am so jealous!!! Those tomatoes look beautiful and delicious ! Congratuations!

I am impatiently waiting to get any red tomatoes so far. 6' plants, no idea if I should top them or not yet, and many green tomatoes. The waiting is killing me and worse each time I go foodshopping and see the pretty red (tasteless) tomatoes they sell. I make tomato sauce pretty much weekly in this house (traditional Sunday dinner except on the hot humid summer days) and its depressing opening cans to do so when I have a yard full of tomato plants.

I am growing all new to me varieties so I'm really anxious to taste each and every one. I figure even if half only give me one or two to taste, at least I will know if they are worth growing again personally. Some of mine are in shadier spots and I know are not going to produce too much.

Enjoy the harvest!

[z_willus_d]

A-

I've found that without manual vibration of the tomato flowers, my bees just aren't getting the job done here. I've been among the plants for many many hours, and so far only encountered one large black bee buzzing at the flowers. That's not to say I don't have bumble bee traffic. I do. They just seem to prefer the wild weed flowers and lavender. I half way wonder whether the vines would get more action were I to pull out the large lavender installations and force them to their seconds. I mention it in case you might be dealing with something similar. I noticed a similar condition at the large shared garden space at my work place. It seems like the bees just aren't getting involved this year. I try and go around with my vibrating toothbrush to help along the plants of those folks I like and get along with

I'm sure you'll be ripening the green ones soon. Best of luck.
-naysen

[raindrops27]

Naysen, I've seen some of your post about the trouble you've had growing the tomatoes, I'm happy you were able to get so many fruits!

Question, how many plants did those ripe fruit come from, and are you saying all the tomatoes shown, only made 5 quarts and a half of sauce?

I will be canning sauce for the first time, and only have 30 plants growing now. I was estimating, I would at least get 15-20 quarts, of sauce, and raw packed tomatoes. With numerous lush blt's to boot, but maybe my estimation is off.

[z_willus_d]

Raindrops, fair questions.

I harvested the tomatoes from my pictures above from my main beds. They've been hit with severe condition(s) that I've yet to fully identify. I had 14 plants in my work garden that were even more afflicted, and I opted to pull them and plant corn, so 0% ROI on the work vines. I also have a number of vines growing in 1/2 55-gal wine barrels made out of food grade plastics, which I painted. They aren't producing yet, nor do they look to produce so much as the main bed plants. However, the container plants aren't as diseased, which I own to having used a large portion of new FoxFarms grow media in filling them. Then I have several EarthTainers that are just now starting to set some fruit. They are even less diseased than the tomatoes in the wine barrels on my hillside, and I figure that because they got 100% new grow media. I have three InnTainers, and they must have had "corrupted" grow media, as the six dwarfs I planted there are all nearly dead from something, perhaps the same stuff as nailed my work and main bed vines. (I only mixed in some new with the old from my Winter indoor grow project.) Now back to the main beds, I have around 40 plants crammed in there. I want to reduce that number to something closer to 28-30 next season. Again, it was from these vines that I harvested my bag full of tomatoes this past weekend. For their first 2-3 months, these were the most healthy robust tomato plants I had ever grown. They were truly beautiful, and I only wish I had taken the time to snap some photos of them to share and record. I think it was because they had such sterling starts that these now afflicted plants were able to ripen such decent fruit. Since their affliction took hold, I haven' had much new growth nor new tomato sets (maybe just a few here and there). Anyway, that's the long and short of it.

What you see in my pictures pretty well matches the amount of tomato stuff that I used to make those five and a half pint (not quart) sized jars of sauce. I didn't snap pictures of the tomatoes I used in the sauce, so those I show in the second set of pics is what I was left with after saucing for the most part. I'll put it this way. I used a victorio tomato juicer to remove skins and seeds. After processing, I was left with enough juice and pulp to fill that blue Le Creuset Dutch Oven to the brim. It took around 10 hours of low heat reduction to get it down to what's shown in my pictures. I'd say it reduced by two-thirds.

I wish you the best with your saucing experience. It's some work, but the results and satisfaction of making your own foodstuff are well worth it.
-naysen

[PA_Julia]

Fantastic haul!!!!