I'm sure it's okay that everyone else enjoys too, right? LOL!

OMG....totally gorgeous!!! My mouth waters looking at this!

And Bon - know you're some kind of special - because in all my years here....this is the FIRST TIME Dawn has posted photo's. Thank you to Son Chris 'cuz I'm sure he helped. You know I love you, right - Earth Sister? =)

DH says he's mad cuz he can't eat the picture. ha!

Paula

Dawn, that is a very nice harvest, and such large tomatoes.

Do you try to sort the types as you can them or do you just mix them together? Also I would like to know a couple of types of tomatoes to try. Madge like a mild low acid tomato, I like a tart strong tomato.

Thanks, Larry

That is, without a doubt, tomato porn .

My goodness .............

I am so jealous, what a beautiful pile of tomatoes Dawn! Just gorgeous! Cant wait til I have more land to spread out and slowly expand my growing space! I love it, what a great photo. Please post more!! :)
Alexis

Paula, lol lol lol

I just wanted Bon to know I was thinking of her Black Mauris when I took the photo cause she had posted photos of them a couple of times recently. I grow lots of big black, pink, purple and orange fruit and thought she might enjoy seeing some of the big ones. I also thought I'd post a photo to show her what happens when a gardener's brain becomes afflicted with tomato-itis and they plant too many tomatoes. (grin) Even by my own standards (which you know means I do want a huge tomato harvest to preserve), I have far too many tomatoes this year. (Tim would say "far too many for normal people or far too many for you?" if he saw that statement.)

I do hope that everyone enjoys the photo and of course it was for Bon and everyone else as well, and even though no one has yet asked, I'll tell y'all that we counted them just for fun, and there's 493 tomatoes in the photo, although about 300 of them are the bite-sized ones in the bowls.

Yes, Chris posted the photo for me. (How well my Earth Sister knows me!!!) I did take the photo with my camera phone (usually when I attempt to do this all I get is a photo of my finger) , but you know that I do not handle technology well----I am a 19th century person living in the 21st century. I am lucky I have mastered the art of finding the right keys to post and submit a message, and heaven help me when I hit a wrong key and the computer freezes up. If Chris and Tim both are at work and I have a problem that make my computer do something crazy, I know better than to try to fix it myself because I only make it worse, and then then try to figure out what happened after they get home, and they are shaking their heads and muttering words I will not repeat here. One day Chris will teach me how to get a photo from my phone to the computer and from the computer to a post on the forum, but I am hopelessly technology-impaired, so it will have to be a day when he is full of extra patience. He got an extra technology gene but I think God forget to give him the gene for patience with a mom who is not a computer savvy person.

I finally canned the last of the tomatoes in that photo on Friday night, I think, and some of the Wed. harvest might have been in that canning batch too. Yesterday, I started in on the tomatoes from the Wednesday harvest. In the morning, I am going to harvest again, and then I will finish canning the tomatoes from the Wednesday harvest, and if time permits, I'll start canning the tomatoes from Monday's harvest. I hope to finish up canning tomatoes in the next week or two so I can devote more time to canning peppers and pickles. We are eating as many as we can, but even when I sneak them into a meal twice (like putting cherry tomatoes in pasta salad that we're eating along with our BLT sandwiches), we cannot eat them up quickly enough.

My tomato plants are going downhill fast, which is my own fault because I do not spray them with a preventive fungicide from Day 1. Early Blight has set in big time, for about the last 4 or 5 weeks now and the spider mites have grown to epic population levels, but I no longer care that the plants look like crap because they looked good until they started putting all their energy into ripening a ton of fruit, and it is the fruit that matters to me. I'm ready to start yanking out plants so I can plant something else that won't look like crap.

You must have forgotten the photo Chris posted for me in 2012. It was a lot like this one, but we took it outside with the tomatoes lined up on a folding white table set up in front of the garage. That's 2 photos in 9 years. Is that a problem? lol

If you and Ken were here, I'd send you home with a bag of tomatoes, you know. I hope you're getting yummy tomatoes from your garden...if not now, then very soon. I planted extra-early so the plants had a lot of time to set fruit this spring. We harvested our first ripe fruit the week before our last late frost. I know that must sound bizarre, but we have to deal with the weather we get, and we get crazy weather. If God is going to keep sending us late frosts 6 or 8 weeks after our average last frost date, then I'm going to keep planting early or at least on time with floating row cover so I can harvest the fruit at the same time we've always gotten them, with or without crazy late frosts. In what world is it normal to be having highs in the 80s (and even the 90s) and then to have an occasional low around 32? It makes me nuts.

This is a holiday week and often we get a lot of fire calls around this particular holiday, so I'm working like mad to get/stay caught up on the harvesting and canning in case we get busier with fire calls this week. If I get behind on processing tomatoes, it is nearly impossible to catch up unless I stay up late canning every night. I'm still kind of behind, but the pile of tomatoes waiting to be eaten or canned is only about 1/10th the size of the pile in the photo. Our breakfast room table is buried under that pile in the photo. The current pile just takes up a little space on one shelf.

Dawn

I thought about calling the photo Tomato Porn, but was worried it would sound too racy and some of the guys might have been expecting something other than a big pile of tomatoes heaped up on the table.

Larry, Normally I mix them all together, and there is a logic in that. Some of them are very meaty and fleshy and make a thick sauce/salsa and others are more juicy and make a thinner sauce/salsa, so mixing them together gives a nice medium thickness to what I'm making. When I use slicers and beefsteaks for making salsa, I scoop out all the seeds and gel too before I chop the tomatoes, which helps make the salsa more like salsa and less like soup.

Rutgers and Sioux are two varieties that have a more tart flavor, or a 'zing', and a few others are Super Sioux, Marion, and Green Zebra. For a sweeter tomato, almost any of the pink or purple varieties would fit the bill. I like Momotaro, Odoriko, Pruden's Purple, Mortgage Lifter, Greek Rose, Dana's Dusty Rose, Caspian Pink or German Queen. The perfect blend of sweet flavor and acidic flavor might be found in Carmello or Dona.

Every now and then I like to make a fresh pasta sauce that is made either with all black varieties or all Sungold tomatoes. Either version is just superb. However, in most cases, especially when you grow a wide variety of heirloom types, you get the best flavor from mixing many varieties together.

Alexis, Just for you I'll try to remember to take a photo after I harvest tomorrow. Chris works tomorrow so it won't get posted until Tuesday at the earliest because I don't know how to do anything on a computer that is more complicated than posting a message. I haven't harvested since last Wed so don't know what the fruit will look like. Usually I harvest daily or every other day but I got so bogged down in trying to catch up on canning that something had to go. Finding myself having to choose between sleeping or harvesting, I decided to sleep and let the harvesting slide for a few days.

I thought of you today, by the way. The latest issue of Texas Gardener magazine has an article about extending the harvest and one of the products they featured was Proteknet, which I think is the netting sold in Johnny's Select Seeds' catalog this year that you asked about a couple of months ago and that I thought was incredibly expensive for a home gardener to invest money in. They did mention tulle being a less expensive option, and they had photos of both over low tunnels/hoops, including one with rebar bent into hoops. Whoever is willing to spend time bending rebar into hoops is more devoted to their garden than I am. It would take me a year to bend a piece of rebar like that. They also showed a photo where burlap was used for shade instead of shade cloth and I thought that was a great idea because burlap is so much less pricey than shade cloth.

You know, if Proteknet would keep spider mites off my plants, I'd buy it in a heartbeat, but they are so small that I doubt it could exclude them. I am a spider mite farmer, and I base that on the appearance of the tomato plants, which had spider mites in April.

Larry, One more thing about separating tomatoes: I pick them all together just like you see them mixed on the tables, except the bite-sized ones go into their own bucket so they don't get crushed by the big ones. Because they are mixed together, sometimes I forget which one is which, so when I have a variety that is new to me, and I want to be sure I try it and get to taste it on its own before I mix it in with a bunch of tomatoes in sauce or salsa, I'll label the tomato with the initials of the variety so I can try it before I can them all. It is easy for a new-to-us variety to get lost in the crowd otherwise. I use a non-toxic marker like a Sharpie. I'm probably the only one who can look at a tomato in our kitchen and know that DP means Dolly Parton or DWR means Dr. Wyche's Red, but it does help ensure that I know what a new-to-us variety tastes like. And, even though I use a non-toxic marker, I still cut off the part of the tomato peel with the initials so I don't have to explain to anyone why I am writing on my tomatoes.

My favorite new one this year may be Jumbo Jim Orange, but we're also really enjoying Brad's Black Heart. It isn't new to us. I have grown it most years since 2011, but this is the first time it has made a huge harvest, and some of the fruit have been doubles. The biggest one weighed almost a pound and a half and it made incredibly good BLT sandwiches. Most hearts don't grow well here, so to find one that produces well in the heat like Brad's Black Heart does is a really big deal.

The favorite tomato of the grasshoppers is also Brad's Black Heart. They have stripped off almost every single leaf and I don't think the plants will produce any more fruit because of that. They also have nibbled a couple of the fruit. I am not sure why they focused on that plant so much as it looked perfectly fine and healthy until they started eating it.

Y'all can understand from looking at the photo that we are tomato-a-holics here at our house.

Dawn

Okay. I'll share the enjoyment. A little.

There ain't nuthin that matches waking up and seeing a pile of rich home-grown 'maters!

Dawn, drain the pool and fill it with yer 'maters. I'll take a dive and eat my way through!!!

I finally have some normal sized tomato fruit growing (Cherokee Purple) since I shook the vines like you suggested. The BM and Romas are starting to turn quickly, now.

Larry, thanks for asking that question. I as wondering, too, but I'm no where near the canning stage, yet. when it comes to tasting and getting them in the kitchen for sauces I have a feeling it'll become second nature. I cannot wait to mix in the BM with the Roma paste!

bon

bon

oh wow dawn. No that is a harvest. I finally had a few ripe ones over the weekend and made my first BLT, hold the T substitute the B for turkey B, of the season.

mike

Dawn, Al wants to know the name of the one that produced the red can and if you have a diet Dr. Pepper one? Men!!!!!

At my house I have about 7 or 8 plants that are taller than I am that I planted early and covered with 5 gallon water bottles. The plants look beautiful but don't have a heavy fruit load. I planted late at the farm and didn't even get them staked. They look awful and are sprawled all over the place and are covered with fruit. We are just beginning to get ripe fruit in the last week. I only brought one tomato plant home from the fling and it had the first tomato. It was one of yours with a long foreign name and made a red tomato about the size if a Cluster Goliath. I took it because it was new to me, but now don't recall the name. This has not been a normal garden year for me so I don't have much.

Now Dawn - that pictures is just flat rubbin' salt in the wound of us who have no tomatoes! Dang it woman, you are going to be busy.....did you eat your Wheaties this morning for breakfast? When I was younger and had more energy, that picture reminds me of harvests I use to have.

That is really a great picture, Dawn. I just have to pick on you....

Mary

PS - I do have a fantastic crop of weeds and a couple of vines that I have no clue what they are that are growing in the windbreak rows.

My fall. Rearing seedlings is my toughest challenge. I'm a bit more confident now. I tried some in spring but they didn't make it. So, I changed my game. We'll see if they survive me....

Sm Red Cherry
Black Cherry
Eva's Yellow Pear
Cherokee Black
Ace 55
Homestead 24
Cherokee Green
San Marzano
Bettery Boy
Pink Brandywine
Flor de baladra - The Flower Baladre tomato is a native variety of Murcia which is almost extinct from the garden. It was an expensive tomato, their rarity and difficult to maintain at the facility had pests destroy him. At present and from what I've seen on the net, there are only seeds experimentally in certain places. Was or is a fleshy, round, sweet tomato and scratched an ugly look. For here's Corner Seca (Murcia), say the old place has not been like a tomato flower Baladre

Hope I don't kill that last one before the bugs have a chance. Thank you for sending me a rare one, George. No pressure, eh? LOL

bon

Bon, When you mentioned filling a pool all I could picture in my mind was the "I Love Lucy" episode where she and Ethel were stomping grapes in Italy, only you and I were standing in a pool of tomatoes.

Mike, BLTs are our favorite go-to meal during tomato season, which typically runs from the last week of April here through the end of November or even earliest December. We never tire of them, and we've made them with standard bacon, peppered bacon, turkey bacon and jalapeno-flavored bacon. Tim turns the BLTs into BOLTS (that is a sandwich with a manly name, isn't it?) by adding onions, and last week he made himself one using an artisan bread with slices of jalapeno peppers baked into the bread. A JBOLT?

Carol, Tell Al the plant that produced the red can-shaped one is a Georgia Cola. I do have one that produces Dr. Pepper shaped fruit too. I'll use one of those the next time I take a photo. They are from the Texas Dr Pepper variety.

I am sure your plants will provide a bountiful harvest for y'all---just a little bit later than usual, perhaps. Remember that I put the first round of plants in the ground in March, so my harvest was early accordingly. That's also why there are so many big ones---they set on the plants in April and had lots of time to grow and get huge. The later fruit on those plants are not nearly as big as the earlier ones are, but that is normal since the later fruit are forming when the plants have a huge load of fruit and must compete more for water and nutrients than the earliest fruit had to.

Sprawled plants may look awful to someone who is used to neatly caged or trellised plants, but they still will produce a lot of fruit. It is just that it can be harder to keep the fruit from rotting in a wet year, especially if they are lying on the ground or on mulch.

The red one that you got from me at the swap that had a sort of foreign name could have been Carmello or Thessaloniki? I think all the other ones I had that have names that might sound foreign produce either larger fruit, paste tomatoes or tomatoes that are not red. The other foreign-sounding contenders are San Marzano Redorta, Schiavone Italian Paste, Seache's Italian, Speckled Roman, Carmello, Gary O Senna, German Giant, Greek Rose, Momotaro, or Orange Minsk.

Some years just aren't normal and we have to be happy with what we get. Sometimes real life gets in the way and other years the weather just will not cooperate with us gardeners.

Mary, I am a tomato addict. Not only do I grow them and eat them, but I also can, dehydrate and freeze them. To me, having tomatoes put up for future meals is kinda like having money in the bank. I always try to put up 2 or 3 years' worth of tomatoes every year (if the harvest is large enough to make that possible), as a hedge against a crop failure the following year.

The way it ought to work is that we'll have tons of preserved tomatoes in reserve and so I can grow fewer the next year just for fresh eating and focus more on something other than tomatoes for canning. However, because I am a tomato addict, I still plant just as many the following year no matter how many we still have in the pantry in jars and in the freezer. It is all Tim's fault, really.That is my story and I am sticking to it, and here's why:

After I started making/canning Annie's Salsa, we started giving it to family members and friends, and then he decided he wanted to give salsa at Christmas time to all the cops who work for him on his shift. That sounded simple and I said "OK" and planted more plants and canned more salsa. I knew I needed to plan for 25 more jars of salsa to cover the officers who worked for him. Right? So, after I sent him off to work with 25, he needed more (gotta give it to the other supervisors that do the same job he does cause they are his peer work group right?) and more (gotta give it to the chief and assistant chiefs) and more (the director's secretary, the folks in communication/dispatch), etc. etc. etc. No matter how much I canned, he wanted more. What about his buddies from his police academy class 30-something years ago? What about his retired friends who drop by the station every Christmas to see everyone? As near as I can tell, the extra 25 jars of salsa he said he needed for Christmas presents a few years ago now has morphed into 125-150 extra jars. Honestly, it does not matter how many jars I can and set aside for him to include in the Christmas gift bags, he always will want more. Sometimes I think he is roaming the halls and passing out jars of salsa to everyone who crosses his path, whether he knows them or not. lol. So, when y'all think that I have lost my mind and am growing and canning tomatoes like a wild fiend, blame it on my dear husband. (grin) I don't mind it, but it took me a few years to really understand that "25" meant "125". Now that I know that and plan accordingly, it is a piece of cake, except that from mid-June to mid-July, at our house, no extra tomato can go uncanned, except the ones I stash away to eat fresh daily. Now you know why I am a mad canning maniac for a month or two or three every summer, and just wait until Habanero Gold jelly time arrives!

I not only grow tomatoes, but also grow a pretty mean crop of weeds as well. I think I grow weeds better than anything else, and half the time I don't know the name of the lovely weeds I'm cultivating, nor do I care to know their names. I just know that they need to go and they need to go now. The garden looks kinda bare when you yank out all the weeds, you know.

Bon, That's a nice list. I'm not planning many for fall. Maybe 6 or 8 plants for fresh eating. With us being in Extreme Drought, very little rainfall actually occurring here no matter how much rainfall is in the forecast, and a bumper crop of grasshoppers and spider mites destroying all the current crop, it seems foolish for me to expend much energy (or water) trying to grow a fall crop. The grasshoppers are merciless and show no fear. They sit there on the fruit chomping away with me standing right there staring at them. They know that by the time I make a move to grab them, snip them in half with the scissors or spray them with something, they'll make one hop and be gone, able to return again in a few minutes and eat all the tomato plants and tomatoes they want.

I finally got all of last week's crop canned (or we ate them) and then I picked a lot more yesterday. I haven't canned any of yesterday's yet, but am planning a big canning day for tomorrow and the next day. Of course, before I start canning tomorrow, I'll do another round of harvesting early in the morning. I only picked tomatoes for 4 hours Monday, and really needed to stay out there and harvest for another hour or two, but it had hit 95 degrees here by noon, with a heat index a few degrees higher, and I just couldn't take it any more. I'll get outside really early tomorrow in order to beat the heat.

I also picked peppers, so the whole 4 hours was not just about picking tomatoes, and I checked the watermelons and have two that are ready, but I'm leaving them on the vines another couple of days because I always tend to be overly eager and harvest the first watermelons of the season a touch too early. I used to be happy to have ripe watermelons by mid-July, but now push hard to have the first ripe ones by July 4th, and it generally works out that way as long as I choose varieties with the right DTMs.

I have canned 138 pints of tomatoes so far, so there's still a lot more I want to do. The cukes are blooming now though, so I am going to have to start finding time for pickle-making as well. You can tell it is prime canning time here in our area because the stores are having a hard time keeping some canning supplies on the store shelves.

Dawn

This post was edited by okiedawn on Tue, Jul 1, 14 at 20:57

That description is of a salsa manufacturing plant. And, here, I'm feeling lucky to identify when my silly 2" long tomato is fully ripe. LOL

Bon, If only it was mechanized like a manufacturing plant and I could just push a button and have machines do it all. I love canning but some days the pile of tomatoes to be canned is just so huge and I am so tired......it's worth it though.

I had to laugh on the day I made the first batch of salsa a few weeks ago. Even though we still had 4 jars left over from last year, Chris hovered in the kitchen and had to have fresh salsa right then from the first batch. He opened a jar before the salsa even had a chance to cool down. Having discovered that piping hot salsa with tortilla chips is not especially enjoyable, he filled his bowl with ice cubes. The look on Tim's face when he walked into the house and saw Chris with a bowl of salsa full of ice cubes was priceless. It is apparent that tomato insanity runs in our family. Tim and I were more restrained and waited a whole day before we ate any of the brand-new salsa.

No matter how many cans of salsa we make, the first time we eat new salsa every year, it is like the very first batch all over again, and we feel so ridiculously pleased that our garden produced the ingredients that went into it. If growing tomatoes or canning tomatoes or eating tomatoes ever, ever, ever, stops being the best moment of the day, I'll stop doing it all.

Don't ever call your tomato a silly tomato and don't ever be anything less than joyful, happy and feeling lucky. The first ripe tomato is so special, and you never can get back that "first" moment ever again, so revel in it.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with just one step, or in tomato-ese.....the journey to your one thousandth tomato harvested, eaten and enjoyed all started with that first little 2" long Black Mauri. You'll never forget your first home-grown tomato, and you shouldn't. It is special. It always will be. Nothing changes that.

Dawn

Dawn, you are the machine. And the inspiring type!

Bon, she is the ortginal energizer bunny.

Dawn, i read your answer to Al and he said you and I really twins separated at birth. LOL

Bon, I just hope I am not inspiring tomato insanity. There are days I look at the tomatoes piling up all over the house and question my own sanity, a 'la "what was I thinking?". (grin)

Carol, I agree with you. We really and truly were separated at birth and it is time that Al agrees with you and I about that.

Because it has rained the last two days, I am pretty much caught up on the canning until I harvest tomatoes and peppers again tomorrow. Well, except for eight zip-lock freezer bags of tomatoes prepared for salsa that are now in the freezer. I thought about thawing them out today and making 8 more batches of salsa, but decided to save them for another day. After 14 hours of canning yesterday, this energizer bunny is slow and lazy today and not doing much of anything worthwhile.

Even the Energizer Bunny has to recharge its batteries once in a while.

Dawn

Dawn, a quick comment about the incredibly inspiring photo which started this thread: my daughter is currently in Ecuador, staying with a family to improve her Spanish. Apparently in Ecuador, all the tomatoes are red, and when she told her hostess that the ones we grew in Oklahoma came in different colors, the lady insisted that she must be talking about peppers, because tomatoes only came in red. I remembered your amazing photo and sent it to Rachel to show to her hostess, who was (I hope!) suitably impressed. So your photo went all the way to South America to serve as an educational tool. Please post more photos!

Flis

Flis, I'll try to get another tomato photo posted in the next day or two. Right now I'm buried up to my neck in tomatoes and canning supplies and struggling to keep my head above water, so to speak. I'm going to link a tomato seed supply company's website. Your daughter can use it to show those folks all the colors of tomatoes available, via seed, here in the USA. I think the Indigo ones will blow their minds.

I'm pretty sure that tomatoes originated in South America, by the way, and I know that there were yellow-fruited ones amongst those early plants long before plant breeders decided that all tomatoes must be red and did their breeding, hybridizing and selection with the goal being to produce red fruit.

I think this week is my peak tomato harvest week. (Last week I thought the peak was last week, but I might have been wrong about that.) Since Tim is working double shifts today and tomorrow, I'm going to start canning in a few minutes and not stop until all the ripe, harvested tomatoes are done, done, done. Sleep? I don't need no stinkin' sleep.

The current count, y'all, is 191 pint jars of salsa, which sounds ridiculous, but I have a husband who likes to give it away, so I am aiming for 240 pints. Once I hit 240 pints, I'll stop canning salsa and start canning pasta sauce, chili base, pizza sauce, etc. You'd think I'd be at the point that I cannot stand to even look at salsa, but I had it with my dinner last night. : ) I am getting tired of canning it. It isn't the tomatoes, you know, as they are easy to run through the tomato machine. It is the endless chopping of onions, green bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, cilantro and garlic. I've spend the last month just chopping, chopping, chopping.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Tomato Growers Supply Company

Sounds delicious!

Bon, I have to confess---it is very delicious. I never really was happy with any of the salsa recipes I canned until I found Annie's Salsa at the Harvest Forum. It is an amazingly perfect blend of all the right flavors, and it was tested for canning safety, so as long as a person follows the recipe and only makes allowed substitutions/changes, you cannot go wrong with it.

We give away so much of it at Christmas that it blows my mind, but it makes people happy, and we like making people happy. You wouldn't believe how many of Tim's coworkers come back to him a week or two or month or two later and either beg for more salsa or offer to buy some. Normally, all we have left after Christmas is our own family's supply, which I squirrel away in hidden nooks and crannies so Tim cannot find it and give it away, so he has to tell them "sorry, there isn't any left". What he should tell them is "sorry, we have plenty left for us, but if I give it away, my wife will kill me".

I shouldn't have posted the link to Tomato Grower's Supply. Seeing it makes we visit their website. VIsiting their website makes me want to order seeds. Ordering seeds is my favorite way to while away a hot summer afternoon. Luckily, this afternoon I only visited their website and dreamed because I was on my computer while salsa was in the canner, and then the timer rang and I had to go back to the kitchen, putting my seed dreams on hold.

I canned another 44 jars today so am getting really close to my goal. I won't be canning salsa again for a while unless I buy bell peppers because I had to go out to the garden and strip every bell pepper of any size off the plants so I could finish the last couple of batches. In fact, I am close enough to my goal that I could stop canning salsa now and I'd be okay with that.

While out in the garden today, I noticed about a trillion grasshoppers in there. They are big and they are eating everything in sight. I promised my plants I'd take a break from canning and work on weeding and grasshopper extermination for a while. I cannot believe how many are out there. They're even eating tomato fruit right in front of me while I watch. Their slogan must be "No Fear" or "She's too old and slow to catch us" or something similar. So, tomorrow I hope to be out in the garden killing grasshoppers and I have no plans to do any canning for the next week. The stove, the canner and I all need a break.

I only harvested 70 or 80 tomatoes today and all of them are pretty much only at breaker stage, because the grasshoppers are eating anything that was any riper than the breakers. Since it takes them a few days to finish ripening indoors, I get a bit of a break from canning. That will give me a chance to catch up on weeding and to attempt to do something about the hoppers.

I have a couple of new tomato canning recipes I want to try next week, or the week after. I don't know if I can get enthused about making any more salsa. I'm just really on salsa overload. I'm even starting to hit the point where I'm tired of tomatoes. That's just because all I have done for the last month is harvest them, eat them, preserve them...over and over again. I told Tim that if all my tomato plants were dead tomorrow, I'd be okay with that. He just laughs at me, especially when I say "next year I am not going to plant so many" because he knows that next year I'll plant the same number of tomato plants, or I'll plant more of them.

When I get really tired of dealing with them, I just pick them, wash them and, once they are fully ripe, I toss them into freezer zip-lock bags and freeze them. Then I can use them for cooking whenever I want. Or, I go ahead and process them as if I was going to can them, but then freeze them instead.

I'm surprised at what a great tomato year it has been here despite the drought. I think planting early and covering them up with frost blankets really made a huge difference. I'm through letting the late cold nights dictate planting dates to me. From now on, when the soil is warm enough, I'm planting, and then I'll just deal with the late cold spells with the frost blankets. Our weather has gotten so weird, with all the late cold nights occurring 6 to 7 weeks after our average last frost date.......I think the only way to cope with that is to plant as if we are having normal weather and then cover up the plants. I get tired of waiting for the late cold nights to stop occurring. Once they stop, we're hot in the blink of an eye. I miss having long, leisurely, mild spring weather without all those late cold nights. I want another 2012 again. Our last freeze was in early March, like it used to be in the 1990s and early 2000s. Some years I think it is a wonder we get any tomato harvest at all.

Dawn

I'll try to rig something next spring for the tomatoes. I certainly don't have enough tomatoes and the cherokee purple setting fruit isn't getting much of a chance in the heat!

So much work canning tomatoes! And so few would even contemplate, much less perform it. But in the old days, it was all they had for food. And they didn't have machines. Instead, family came together and did those jobs together for the sake of timing. What a blessing to live in a time when it is a treasure or treat for others and, then, to gain it from you and Tim's kindness.

I've always been the same with Tabouli and Hummus. Only, I usually couldn't afford the veggies so I'd say "If you buy the groceries, I'll make it." I'd come home from work to find a grocery bag with lemons and cans of garbanzo beans or bags full of tomatoes and cukes hanging on my fence post. LOL On this forum, lots already can make it themselves, but the rest couldn't get it until recent years. I run out of Tahini and am forced to buy store-bought hummus. The Tahini at the local stores is just crappy. So, that part must come via cash and we just don't always have it. So, last week I bought store-bought hummus and my son, as always, stated "It's not as good as yours. I like yours better."

People recognize fresh when they get it. Once they get it, they want more. I believe it's all we're going to have before too long. I'm so sore, today. Today is my day of rest and I'm so glad. I can be lazy in a guilt-free way. But I will be drawn to it, to at least stroll and take a look. In fact, Saturday's is when I usually do most inspections because I move so slowly during chores I don't have much time to stop and look. But I'll be back at it again Sunday morning weeding and moving soil around.

I've been watching the stock market. The more I see it go up, the faster I move, the longer my to do list and my personal deadlines move up. I even broke down and bought some potting soil for seed germination. Gotta get moving faster! Bill is working in isolation cages for the rabbits and, hopefully, we'll get some more cages in. I need more fertilizer! But I noticed the isolation cages that are very lightweight would make great plant covers with some blankets or sheets over them.

I get doubtful about my own abilities, but when I see you and others working so hard and reaping so much fruit, it's encouraging.

I made some home made manwhiches last night by mixing in ONE San Marzano I grew and one tiny Black Mauri. Normally, it takes about 5-6 store-bought Roma tomatoes to achieve the same taste!

Before I bought my tomato strainer machine (it also will do grapes, pumpkins and berries if you buy the screens for them), I processed tomatoes the old-fashioned way---dropping them into boiling water to make the skin easier to remove. It was such a messy, time-consuming process. I doubt I would have the patience to can as many tomatoes as I do if I still had to process them that way. Back then, 40-80 jars of salsa was about all I would do in a given year and it was such a slow, time-consuming process.

After the gigantic peach and plum crop of, I think, 2010....or maybe it was 2009....I had to have a tomato mill. Processing almost 400 pounds of fruit in a year that also was a great tomato and pepper year almost killed me. The canning, freezing and dehydrating I did in that year makes every other year's food preservation look minimal by comparison.

I don't buy lots of fancy gadgets or silly kitchen appliances like electric cupcake or doughnut makers or whatever, but I'll never be without a tomato mill again. I looked long and hard for one at the best price and now that I have had it and used it for several years, I feel like it is worth its weight in gold. Had I known how useful it would be, I would have bought one 25 years earlier.

Tim was joking with me last week about me needing a motor to turn the crank on the tomato strainer because I was going to wear out my arm, but I told him that we didn't have to do that....and that I thought the motor was an unnecessary expense. He was shocked to learn there actually was a motor. lol. I think this conversation scared him because now he knows there is a motor and likely fears that someday I will want to buy it. I don't think I ever will want it because I am too practical to spend that kind of money on something I'd only use a couple of months out of the year.

Long before I'd ever seen a tomato mill/strainer (I never know what to call the thing so I call it my tomato machine), I had a food mill and I remember my parents and aunts and uncles having various types of food mills back when I was a young child. Squeezo is a brand that has been around for as long as I can remember. My dad's sisters could can anything and everything, a skill they learned by helping their mom put up enough food to feed their large family in the 1920s and 1930s. I never understood my dad's family's affection for all things pickled (they would pickle anything that lived on this earth, I think) until I was an adult and understood the desperation of the Dust Bowl years. In the few photos we have of them from that era, they all were incredibly thin. My dad said in his later years (they rarely discussed their childhood because there were not a lot of happy memories) that World War II saved him and his brothers from starvation because they went into the military and ate well for the first time in practically forever. Even in our worst day in our worst year on this earth nowadays, I don't think we face anything close to what they endured in the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. We have a lot of safety nets (food banks, etc.) now that they didn't have then.

They lost their parents when all the kids still were pretty young so their oldest sister filled a motherly role in the lives of the younger children like my dad. My aunt had a huge garden (it had to have been at least 2 acres) and canned everything under the sun. She never wanted for her family to be dependent on grocery stores for food because she remembered what it was like to be low on food and not have money to buy groceries. She even taught me how to make my own brown sugar---her reasoning was that there was no reason to buy brown sugar when you could brown it in a skillet yourself. I think she was right, but sometimes I buy brown sugar anyhow because I am lazier than she was.

I believe fresh is best, but home-preserved is next best after that. I like knowing what is (and isn't) in the food we have canned, frozen or dehydrated. There's so many additives in so many processed foods you buy nowadays and I don't want to eat all that junk.

Now, becauses it is likely somebody will see this post and wonder what kind of tomato mill I am talking about, I'll find one like mine and link it here. This thing saves me tons of time (as does my food processor, although you still have to cut up the fruit or veggie, core it, etc. to run it through the food processor).

Grocery store prices are scary and going up constantly. I've noticed this year that the produce shelves at Wal-Mart are half-empty all the time, which I think has a lot to do with the California drought. I've only been able to find cilantro in a Wal-Mart store twice this year, so usually have to make a side trip to Tom Thumb to find cilantro when I'm planning to make/can salsa. I could just skip the cilantro and not even miss it, but Tim is a cilantro maniac and cannot bear the thought of canning salsa without cilantro.

When your grow some of your own food, you give your food budget a break and also ensure you'll have the kinds of food you and your family like best, but I am glad that we don't have to rely only on our garden to supply us with produce. That would be a lot of pressure on the gardener.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tomato Strainer/Sauce Maker

Your poor arm!! Bill has the mind to pull a motor off ... something ... and hook it up! LOL

Brown sugar in a skillet? While we were In NC a friend of mine traveled from Hawaii and stayed with us. He was familiar with paying high prices on "special" brown sugar from the grocery store. He sweetened his coffee with it. Going organic and healthy, doncha know. He ran out of his supply and stood sulking one morning with a cup of unsweetened coffee in his hand.

I whipped the molasses out of the cabinet and mixed it in with regular sugar, put it in a special bag and handed it to him. Then, I explained to him that many of these pricey so-called brown sugars are actually derivatives of the refining process - usually the less desirable ones. Not all, of course. And he was probably paying for something that wasn't any more healthy than what I just mixed. "It's the molasses, silly. Molasses is a wonder cure for soils, vegetation and the human body. Sugar? It's bad. Always bad for the body." He was shocked. I'm certain there's more to the refining of sugar that I am unaware, but I'm like she is: Why buy?

Now, I don't want to go into politics. But I want to share my perspective since I'm at the bottom of the food chains. What I know: Oklahomans are kind. No child should suffer and adults should not starve, but they better be working. Our voting decisions reveal this kindness. And churches are so very kind, too, always thinking of the impoverished.

It has been a couple years since I've been to a food bank. But I know folks who go. And there are folks who go even after getting food stamps. I don't understand that part. Leave it for those who need it the most. But they give out cheap canned ham, boxes of macaroni and cheese, canned goods and a lot of things that are not very healthy and cannot be stretched. Creativity still applies in the cooking area, but you understand. There was a bag of pinto beans in some. What I see is major corporations using the supply line as a tax write-off. Even some of these boxes are sold for $25.00 a box. And that's okay, but where's the flour? The rice? We had a dry spell about a month ago and we were starting to get hungry, but not a whole lot to worry about. All I would have needed was a bag of flour and a bag of rice and we would have been eating better than the neighbors again. I had stock of everything else. Of course, things worked out for us. (Bill starts a new job on Monday, in fact!)

The lines at the food bank are long and supplies are limited. And that supply is getting stretched. Donations help, but less and less good folks have the money to spare. The current system is designed to help people out until they get jobs and re established. Things aren't going that way.

Federal funding to assist the poor with utilities via agencies such as United Way are depleted within 2 days and, sometimes, within hours. And these donations are only available once per family every 24 months. Two years! Churches are exhausted from donating supplies and money over and above what United Way and other agencies provide. Utilities are so expensive in Cushing that it often takes three different agencies to supply enough funds for one bill. And Cushing does not allow payments. These are just ONE bill. And they bundle the water in with the utilities so no one can try to live within their means. They effectively strong-arm the locals into paying all of the utilities before food, before medicines or medical care. (It's a municipality). After all the utilities they are forced to rely on donations. And to kick the community in the ribs, they force the churches to pay taxes. We dropped off that list of needy by making changes at home through rationing of utilities, water supply (yeah, sucks for bathing) and relying on indoor and out door wood burning. For hundreds of gallons of irrigation someone isn't getting a bath. We're working on potential grey water irrigation to help.

Department of Human Services is cracking down on food stamp recipients. No. Nobody is robbing them. They're doing everything they can to weed out the less needy. Funding is getting tighter all the time. Paperwork is worse than an IRS audit. These decisions are, ultimately, discretionary and made by unseen individuals. The process is confusing and unclear - especially for those without education. Those I worry about the most! Because this system has been abused by the department (not the receiving) they set up a permanent liaison for disputes that involve the local representative office. I've had to call the state on them, before. They don't like self-employed people. Apparently, the DHS personnel are not well educated on business and assuming anyone with a business is hiding money. Here I will add that being self employed automatically is discriminated against. We are, sometimes, because we can and we want to do whatever we can to survive. It's the right thing to do, but the current environment is hostile to anyone not receiving a paycheck from a well-established business. We are book binders. We no longer repair Bibles and books for people because that type of work is what DHS discriminated over. They couldn't handle not having control. Our "clients" were not to happy being forced to sign a piece of paper for the state to verify they actually paid to have it done. We even took pictures. But I digress....

One group of people is growing a garden because it's a fad and a political statement against whatever establishment is forcing genetically modified foods down their throats. Another group, like you, just knows and has been doing it for a long time. And, yet, another group is forced to grow their gardens because the last decade has proven an economic blight that isn't getting any better. The last group is usually based upon demographics more than anything else. That'd be those like me.

I wouldn't change it for the world, though. Personally, I'm never going back.

The changes are micro-economic more than macro. Because of this one group isn't seeing the changes in the other group. Cushing is a perfect example of demographic and governmental (in this case, the city) influence on these changes.

Now that we are more self-sufficient I'm a bit more forgiving on Cushing, btw. After all, there's decent soil here. LOL

I hope I didn't offend anyone with that last post. I'm just rambling, again. "No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously."
-- Dave Berry, "25 Things I Have Learned in 50 Years"

Now, I've been wanting to post a funny since the beginning of this thread. You know how they say "If you want to be the best, then mimic the best." ? Okay. Here I go:

lol lol lol at the photo. That is too cute. I am thrilled to see your harvest is increasing.

Maybe you were rambling, but I enjoyed reading it.

In the last decade I have been stunned by how many folks need help just feeding their families. Everything is so expensive nowadays, and often by the time people pay for housing and other essentials, there's not many dollars left for groceries.

About a decade ago, one of the few major employers (the cookie factory) in Marietta announced it was closing. Concerned citizens, mindful that several hundred people would suddenly lose their jobs, started a food bank. It was awesome to see how quickly they got it up and running. Folks in Love County are that way---they see a problem or a need and they take care of it, they fix it, they do whatever they can do to solve the problem or fill the need. It is such an awesome community that we have here. Back then, I think everybody in the general public sort of had this idea in the back of their mind that the new food bank was a temporary solution to a problem caused by the loss of a major employer. I don't mean that the people who set it up didn't intend for it to be permanent if needed, but it was more along the lines that we'd do this project to help people through a tough time, and the folks would find jobs and the local economy would recover and everything would be okay again and then there wouldn't be much of a demand for the services of a food bank. Of course, that isn't what happened at all. What happened is everyone discovered just how many families were struggling to put food on the table on a regular basis---and not just the folks who suddenly, through no fault of their own, found themselves unemployed. Over a decade old now, the food bank is busier than ever and supplies a limited amount of food to a staggering number of families every month. I know that they do the best they can with what they've got, but I am surprised how little each family is able to get on a monthly basis. Still, every little bit helps. I'm so proud of what our community has accomplished with the food bank, but it makes me kinda sad that we even need such a thing.

It bothers me that more people don't even try to grow their own food, but then again, I am not walking in their shoes and I have no idea of the challenges they face. Getting started in gardening is not exactly cheap. For families struggling to stretch their food budget, investing some grocery money in a garden that may or may not produce a worthwhile yield is risky. Lots of folks work 2 or more jobs to pay the bills---so when exactly would they have the time to raise some of their own food? Too many people think that in order to raise an edible garden, you just rototill the ground, rake out all the plant matter and roots, sow seeds, water a little bit and then sit back and wait for the produce to come rolling into the house----truckloads and truckloads of it. We all know that real life isn't like that!

Exactly, Dawn!

Dawn I just got home from a great time in Ft worth and saw this amazing tomato picture, just beautiful. Should be on the cover of a magazine.
I however will not be posting yet as my gorgeous sungolds, a plant I received at the fling, are the only ones breaking color right now . I ate one before I left and it was really good. I was shocked it wasn't mushy feeling.
I was gone 10 days and my son picked quite a few to share at work, and has been picking beans . I haven't fully checked out the garden yet but definitely looking forward to it.
kim

Kim, I'm glad you had a great time in my hometown.

The one constant in our life is that at our house, for all of June and at least half of July, we will be on tomato overload to the point of getting sick of tomatoes, merely because that's our peak harvest time here....and somebody at our house is really, really, really guilty of planting too many tomatoes. I need to have a talk with her about that.

Sungolds can get mushy during heavy rainfall and can exhibit a lot of cracking, but once the rainy period has passed, they are as wonderful as ever. SunSugar is very, very similar but has a lot less cracking. When I grow them side by side you cannot tell them apart visually or even by flavor, except that SunSugar will be the one that isn't cracking.

Our garden still is marvelously productive, but also filled with a huge number of grasshoppers. Our free-range chickens and the wild birds eat them all day long, but barely make a dent in them. More just fly in anyhow. It probably is not a bad as 2003, but it is close.

Most winters I check the APHIS rangeland grasshopper forecast to see what it shows for our area. I forgot to check it this year, until just the other day when I started wondering if they had predicted this year's huge onslaught of hoppers, and of course, they had. This year's hoppers are eating a lot of stuff---almost everything, but have shown a definite preference for herbs (catnip, lemon balm, lemon basil, Genovese basil, fennel, Florence fennel, dill, bronze fennel and borage) and tomato plants. This is the first year in a long time we've had grasshoppers eating tomato plants right down to naked stems. It is a good thing we had our tomato harvest early, but there won't be one for too many more weeks at the rate the grasshoppers are devouring the plants.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: APHIS 2014 Rangeland Grasshopper Forecast

Grasshoppers don't have a chance here with all the pesticides used around me. But that also means the beneficials have to sneak in too.
Dawn I have a tomato picker that will make short work of your harvesting. He never misses a tomato unless they are green..

Kim, looks like you have a top-notch helper there! Such a cutie - I think he's a keeper.

Mary

Kim, Around 2000 and 2003 when the hoppers were so bad, most all the ranchers and farmers sprayed like mad. I am not sure what all they were spraying, but I know some of them sprayed Malathion and others sprayed Dimlin. Those pesticides decreased the hopper population for a while but more hoppers just flew in so they sprayed again. It was a vicious cycle....

Your little tomato picking helper sure is a hard worker. He is just so adorable too! He might have a little trouble picking the fruit on the higher limbs. I think he'd need a ladder to reach them. He's going to grow up loving gardening because it will be in his blood since he started out so young.

We have a dog who likes to pick tomatoes if you let him into the garden. He picks the ones that are green and are round like a tennis ball. He doesn't want to eat them---he wants me to throw the "ball" so he can retrieve it and bring it back. So, he's pretty much banned from the garden just about 100% of the time.

Dawn

How adorable!

Thanks yall
he is vertically challenged but a good climber too. Last night we picked carrots, beets, and swiss chard for dinner and zinnias for the table. I let him fix the flowers in the vase and he could not wait to "tell" daddy all about it. What a joy to have a sweet companion in the garden. He calls all plants nice babies.
Dawn
while over at Collinsville I was saddened by how many grasshoppers my father in law has. The fig tree was loaded with figs again but will never reach maturity. The tomatoes and pea patches are swarming with them. It is just awful.
I am going back down the 20th and will get all the green tomatoes I can find for relish. Once they break over to light pink the hoppers get them. I told him to pray for seagulls!
kim

Your little guy won't stay vertically challenged for long. I love that he calls all plants nice babies. That is so adorable.

I imagine your father in law has about the same numbers of hoppers we have. It is terrible. What is really frustrating is that I used Semaspore and it worked. Little hoppers kept hatching and I kept using it and it kept killing them...and then more would hatch and it would kill them. I used 5 lbs. this spring/early summer, and put out the last bit around the end of June. So, while we did have little holes in plant leaves from little hoppers chewing on them, the damage never advanced very far because the Semaspore would kill the hoppers while they were pretty small. Then, all of a sudden, the big ones flew in and began eating everything in sight very quickly. One day I went out there and had to throw away 15 huge tomatoes they were munching on. Luckily it wasn't as tragic as it sounds since I always plant too many tomatoes, but I still wasn't happy to lose the fruit.

Yesterday I scattered EcoBran in the veggie garden, in the grass around the garden's perimeter and across the driveway along the property line to its south. It likely will help. They do eat it and they do die. I just don't know if it will kill them fast enough to save the garden. Since more always move in to fill a void, it seems like it will be a long, hard battle. With the drought being so deeply entrenched and the hot temperatures in place, I doubt their population will start dropping until sometime in August.

I've been going out every morning this week and picking every tomato the minute it reaches breaker stage. For the last couple of weeks, I had fallen behind on the harvesting because I was so busy canning and that is when the little devils started feasting on tomatoes. Now that I'm back out picking daily, they aren't getting as many tomatoes as they were because I pick them before they pink up enough to interest the hoppers. So, the hoppers held a meeting and decided to start eating melon and pepper plants instead. It's always something, and there isn't much that the grasshoppers will not eat.

Something has been taking bites out of my low tomatoes. To me it looks like somethong with teeth has been taking a bite. Could be birds. What does the danage on tomato fruit look like. I have not seen many, knock wood.

Dawn, do you use a salsa screen for your salsa? Does it make it "chunkier"? I guess the difference between a food mill and this tomato mill is that the skin, etc is ejected? I have a food mill I have never used. DH loves kitchen gadgets and bought it at Atwoods I think. I have never done salsa or sauce because I don't think we have had quite enough tomatoes. I have dehydrated a few and oven roasted most of what we had excess of last year. But, the garden keeps getting bigger.

Amy if is low on the tomato, at least in our garden, it likely would be a turtle. I have bug-eating turtles that occasionally eat low-hanging tomatoes. I don't mind since they generally eat lots of pests otherwise. It also might be a squirrel, rabbit, or any other kind of shorter animal. Often they are more after the water than the fruit itself and you can stop them by leaving shallow pans or bowls of water in the garden for them to drink. You can google and find animal or bird bite marks on the internet. Their appearance will vary a lot because sometimes you find a tomato with just a small area bitten or pecked, and other times you'll find a tomato that has been devoured so much that not much is left except the core hanging from the stem.

It could be birds, but they tend to peck fruit higher on the plant since they aren't restricted only to the lower-hanging fruit.

Grasshoppers sit and nibble away all day. Once they've eaten enough, it is hard to tell the difference between the damage they've done and damage done by something else like a hornworm or even an animal. One grasshopper alone doesn't do much damage but put a dozen or two dozen on one plant eating all day long and you can end up with tomatoes that are just completely chewed up. I only 'assume' it is grasshopper damage when I catch them on the fruit eating, which has been happening a lot lately. Sometimes, once one creature or another has begun eating a tomato, others join in and help them devour it.

My tomato mill does have a salsa screen and it does give you a thicker, chunkier processed tomato with the skins ejected into the waste pile. If I use the sauce screen I get a much thinner puree that you quickly can turn into perfect pasta sauce. To make Annie's Salsa you only need 8 cups of chopped tomatoes, so I think that is doable even with a relatively small garden. So, I'll link my favorite copy of the recipe. It is one with all the notes about which changes are allowable and approved. My favorite change is the ability to use ReaLemon or ReaLime instead of vinegar. Sometimes I use 50% ReaLemon Juice and 50% ReaLime Juice, and other times I use 33.3% vinegar, 33.3% ReaLemon and 33.3% ReaLime. It is great either way. It wasn't bad with all vinegar, but my one complaint (always and forever with any salsa recipe I've ever canned) has been that the vinegar is stronger or more noticeable in home-canned salsa than in commercially produced salsa. So, when the use of ReaLemon and ReaLime in this recipe was approved, I was thrilled. I like the salsa so much more without the vinegary flavor.

Also, there are some small batch canning recipes that produce as little as 3 jars of finished product. There's a whole canning recipe book available of small batch canning recipes.

Gardens do just keep getting bigger, a trend I love! Someday I 'll get too old to tend my ever-growing garden and I'll have to shrink it down to a smaller size, but until that day comes, bigger is better.

Today I harvested the first cucumbers, so salsa and sauce canning are about to end and I'll start making pickles. The first habanero peppers are about halfway orange, so as soon as they color up fully, I'll start making habanero gold. At our house, the transition from tomatoes to cukes to peppers is as regular as clockwork every summer. When I start canning tomatoes, it feels like an endless summer lies ahead. By the time I'm making pickles, summer is half over, and when I start making Habanero Gold, which usually is in late July, the worst summer weather is about to hit. Calendar? We don't need no stinkin' calendar on the kitchen wall.....we have the real life canning calendar that tells us what month it is.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Annie's Salsa Thread With Notes

Thanks I have saved the recipe. I canned 5 pints of bread and butter pickles yesterday. I want to make some fermented dills. I have always been a little afraid of canning tomatoes. But I suspect salsa wouldn't last long in this house! I have tomatoes about ready to go crazy, but the peppers are not doing much.