Those that grow for sauce making in northern zones

[disneynut1977]

Hi,

I was wondering about how much fruit you get from each plant in a good year? I know each year is different as the plant and soil it's grown in, but I'm trying to pre-figure out how many quarts I may be able to get from each plant. I'm pretty limited in my space for tomatoes. I don't think I could get enough to eat for the whole year, but I am hoping I can get enough to suppliment for 1/2 canned and 1 /2 my garden grown to make sauce with during next winter.

So what 1's do you grow for sauce (name and growth habit) and what is the ball park amount you may get from each plant in a good year?


I do have seed for Romeo Roma, basic roma and am expecting a trade for a family paste from another grower in Canada.

Plus I have seed for slicer's, but I think I would prefer to grow mostly drier tomatoes to put up, so I don't have to cook the sauce all day. I spent 4 hrs cooking the sauce I just made from cans. That was OK for me..........Or I could just get a splatter screen for my pots. I had to keep the lid on my pot just cracked so I wouldn't get tomato dots all over my kitchen. It probably would have cooked down quicker with the top off




Thanks
Melissa1977

[darwinslair]

Laurer, san marzano, amish paste, juliet, roma (indeterminate) and czech bush (like a little tree)

In a good year I will get well over 10 pounds per plant. Best years over 20 pounds per plant.

Tom

[yotetrapper]

I hate little bitty tomatoes like romas so i'm looking into bigger ones for sauces this year, hearts mainly. I can't wait to try Ludmilla's pink heart and red plum.

[darwinslair]

san marzono is a nice large roma. plants produce a ton too. if mine had not frozen out I would have had near 30# per plant. a lot froze on the plants beginning of october

[disneynut1977]

Darwinslair,

What strain of San Marzano do you grow? How long is your growing season?





Melissa1977

[camochef]

Melissa,
I almost hate to give figures, but... the first year Igrew Cowlick's Brandywine I got over 100 lbs of vine ripened tomatoes off one plant. The past two years production has dropped from Cowlick's, but it still outproduces everything else I grew.
It's a slicer, that does very well as a sauce tomato too. Probably the best tasting sauce we make, but some of the black/purple tomatoes make pretty tasty sauces too.
We use large pots, 8 qt-20 qt, to simmer sauce as we run tomatoes through the victorio strainer and just keep adding to the pot. No lid, as that defeats the purpose of cooking off the liquids.
Most years I grow Opalka's and Marzano's for paste tomatoes. This year I didn't have much luck with either, as the weather was much cooler and wetter than normal. Allowing them to get bland tasting and very watery. I did get lucky with Wessel's Purple Pride (Cherokee Sausage), which did much better, and the production was very good! Not as good as Cowlick Brandywine but more than satisfactory.
For the most part, I use the same tomatoes for slicing and for sauces. I also quit growing Roma's a few years ago, as they have a tendency to get BER rather easily early in the season, and I find their taste to be inconsistant at best.
I hope you find some that do well for you and that you have a great seson ahead!
Camo

[eyolf]

Tomatoes for fresh use can be pretty variable in taste, but as they're canned and cooked into a nice, thick sauce, the differences seem to fade.

Sauce? We put up plenty of canned tomatoes, and even occasionally just eat a bowl of them. Just like canned plums!

BUt a few years ago we bought a tomatoe mill from Spremy. A huge pile of tomatoes gets turned into a huge bucket of tomatoe juice and a little pile of skins, seeds, and hard bits. Then the juice is cooked down to a nice thick sauce outside on the burner for a turkey frier. Finally this cooked sauce is canned in mason jars. The beauty of this system is that every tomatoe is used, from minuscule cherries to massive blobby beefsteaks.

In my garden, I find little difference between most of the "paste" types. I grow Belle Star, a plum-shaped canner mostly because I got seeds for it from a seed trade and it helps to remember. Bred in Canada for early production, Its a small plant and only needs about 1 square foot per plant for reasonable production.

[oc tony]

A lot of people like Olpaka both fresh and sauced. Another one from your area is Martinos Roma. Here are two that are good fresh and for sauce, Prue and Speckled Roman.

[darwinslair]

I have two San Marzano tomatoes, quite by accident. one is a large roma one, the other is round. Taste the same, but some years ago when I ordered a packet of seed from Italy I got a plant which gave me a round one, and the rest were standard roma shape.

So, I have whatever a san marzano seed packet from Italy gives you.

This last summer I planted those on June 1st and they froze out the first weekend of October. We had a cold summer. I missed about 30 days worth of tomatoes just because most of them produced much more slowly, and then on top of that we had an early freeze. Other than freezing out with a ton of tomatoes on the plants the San Marzano seemed to be unaffected by the cold....until it snowed and was suddenly 24 degrees.

Tom

[darwinslair]

I am trying Opalka and Sheboyagan this year as well. Always trying something new.

Tom

[RiverRat]

I usually put in thirty to forty tomato plants of all different varieties, mostly slicers, and towards the end of the summer when the production is at its peak I pick several baskets of them, quarter the big ones, cook them down a bit, and then put them through the antique tomato machine that DH's Italian family always used. It's a lot like the Victoria but it's all metal. I've seen ads that indicate that you don't need to cook them down first, but I've never been able to bring myself to do that since it doesn't seem as though they'd separate as well raw. After we have a thin puree, we reduce it to about half and then I cool it and freeze it, unseasoned, in flat quart bags. Each one holds about a pound. Those store easily in my freezer. Some years I get a lot; last year the weather was so unpropitious that I never froze any at all!

Anyway, I don't think anyone can tell you how many tomato plants you need to make yourself a winter's supply of red sauce. But as far as space goes, some people here do amazing things with pots and planters on apartment balconies, so you could always supplement that way. Still, if space is a problem, you might want to stick with the paste or heart-shaped varieties that have thicker pulp and less juice, and will get you more puree per fruit.

[Mischka]

In no particular order:

Martino's Roma
Grandma Mary's Paste
Heinz 1370
Opalka
Costoluto Genovese

Five varieties that I grow and are outstanding for making authentic tomato gravy.

[RiverRat]

Make that red gravy, Mischka! That's what my DH's Italian-American family called it, anyway.

[catwabbit]

Being a Philly girl, I always thought the "gravy" thing was a South Philly thing... boy I loved visiting the Italian Market.

[brokenbar]

Like Mischka...Costoluto Genovese. This is the only plant I use for sauce...it comes through the tomato mill practicaly finished sauce. Both sweet and tart and very robust flavor. I plant 15 plants of these and that is my sauce row. I processed about 200 to 250 pounds last year and that gave me approximately 36 finished quarts of marinara and then I froze another 20 quarts of marinara. also gave away processed sauce. I will add that these are just kind of "ho hum" for fresh eating. Something about the cooking wakes up all the flavor.

If I had to choose others, I would choose "Chinese" and "Federle"...both have great flavor, are the largest of all the long-pointy tomatoes and both are dry with few seeds. I grow both Federle and CHinese for drying and CHinese has been an incredible producer and much larger for me than the typical fruit description. Federle is almost as productive but ripens later in my Wyoming garden.