Last Batch 2013

[Salsacharley]

Here's a shot of my last batch of fresh tomatoes for this year before they become salsa.

They include Brandywine Sudduth, Mortgage Lifter, Martino's Roma, All Meat, Tommy Toe, Pork Chop, Michael Pollan, Super Snow White, Yellow Pear, Celebrity, Oxheart, and my own accidental cross that I'm calling Black Velvet F1 (Green Velvet x Black Cherry).

It will be weeks before I seen enough production to make another batch.

Charley

[ginger2778]

Gorgeous!

Marsha

[luigiwu]

That is so beautiful!!! This was my first time making salsa and the recipe I used, required you to drain a lot of the liquids. It felt like a waste and I wondered if there are better tomatoes suited for such a thing.

This is totally a newbie question but if you plant all those species next to each other, you can't really save seeds from them as they might be crossed, correct? And you won't know if they've crossed until you plant the seeds, right?

[Cole_Robbie]

10% chance of cross-pollination is what I was thinking, but apparently it can be higher.

http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/t...852004159.html

Under normal conditions, most tomatoes have a natural cross-pollination rate of about 2 to 5%. Under some conditions though, this can be much higher - maybe as high as 50%. The incidence depends on the types of insects active in the area, the existence and types of inter-planted crops, the wind, the blossom structure, and the blossom timing of the varieties involved.

[spacetogrow]

Beautiful bowl of tomatoes, Salsacharley!

Luigiwu, I like my tomato juice much thinner than the kind sold in the store so that's how I use the juice drained off during salsa preparation. You can also use it as stock for soups, stews, etc. I don't see why you couldn't use it for cooking rice, quinoa, etc. unless you don't like the final color.

[habitat_gardener]

Originally Posted by spacetogrow

Beautiful bowl of tomatoes, Salsacharley!

Luigiwu, I like my tomato juice much thinner than the kind sold in the store so that's how I use the juice drained off during salsa preparation. You can also use it as stock for soups, stews, etc. I don't see why you couldn't use it for cooking rice, quinoa, etc. unless you don't like the final color.

I drained off the juice and seeds when I was preparing tomatoes for the dehydrator, then I froze them to use later in lentil stews. (Or I saved the juice to drink later that day.) Last year, I used frozen tomato pieces/juice as the only liquid for lentil stews -- put in a pot, simmer until defrosted/liquid enough, add other vegetables and lentils, cook slowly. Red lentils take hardly any time to cook and were the easiest. The more common green-brown lentils took more time to cook and required more attention to the amount of liquids and cooking time.

[Salsacharley]

If I make salsa without skin and seeds I run it through a Victorio strainer. This produces a lot of liquid. I then cook off the excess water which leaves all the tomato flavor, and if the tomatoes were big on juice and I'd lose too much volume by cooking down, I add xanthan gum or corn starch to thicken the salsa to the consistency I desire.

If I am making uncooked salsa (pico de gallo) I either drain off some liquid or just have runny stuff. I really like raw tomato/pepper/onion/garlic/celantro flavor.