You can do that with most any variety.

I have never grown any of the varieties you list but I pull and hang Rutgers, San Marzano, Big Boy and several other varieties every year. We have a big barn that is perfect for doing it. Only limitation is the room you have in a temp protected environment.

Dave

DarJones

Last year, I grew a no name long keeper. Someone gave me a "fresh" fruit in late January, and I didn't cut into it until I needed to plant the seed in early April. It was just starting to get a little spoilage.

The ones I picked in September last year are still holding it together...inside my house at room temperature. They are kept where I can keep feeling them. If they start to soften, they get eaten up.

Long keeper tomatoes have a reputation for not being very tasty. As to the ones I'm eating, I eventually decided that they taste just fine as long as I don't expect them to taste like a tomato. These taste like some kind of vegetable - just not a tomato.

So why waste the bother? Because when I'm eying the $7.99/lb. fresh heirloom tomatoes in the store, I remind myself that I have fresh tomatoes at home. But they don't taste like tomatoes. But I have many jars of tomato sauces, juices and salsas if I want tomato flavor. The upshot of my self-arguing is that I decide I really don't need to buy tomatoes at the store after all. Otherwise, those fresh heirloom toms just look too enticing, and I can spend a bundle over a whole winter.

Now I just got some seeds for a variety called Zharif. Rumor has it that it's a tastier long keeper. We'll see.

But I think I also want to get a dehydrator. I don't have a barn, my freezer is tiny, and I've heard that dried tomatoes taste fabulous - great even for snacks. We'll see.

One of my reasons for buying the dehydrator was to save freezer space. (Another is that I'm a short woman and enough of a klutz that canning is just not a good idea.)

I mostly cook with the tomatoes I dry; my mother is only interested in them as snacks.

missingtheobvious (and anyone else), how do you store your dried tomatoes? And how long can you store them before they go bad?

Yes, it's a long keeper but don't look for taste;

In the Fall I used to run out to the tomato patch when frost approached and pick all those with a tad of blush, wrap them in newspaper and let them ripen ,going through them several times a week to take out the rotten ones.

it didn't take me too many years before I gave up on that,that's for sure.

Below I've linked toTania's page of longkeepers and Glenn at Sandhill lists some other ones as well.

Yes, it was common to hang what are called the small winter ones in the rafters years ago, in both Italy and Spain, one can find the Italian ones easily, but not so easy to find theSpanish ones.

And it's also good to remember tha tthis was done many years ago b'c there was no refrigeration back then so perishable fruits were pickeled and/or dried

Carolyn

I have. Principe Borghese is really a drying tomato; in Italy, (southern) they grow it, pull the entire plant and hang it outside to dry. Around here [I used to grow them in Massachusetts] the fruit will hold on the vine for a very long time. Obviously you do not dry them outside in Massachusetts, but a warm oven does a pretty good job with them.

The inverno is a large red cherry (maybe 2 ounces), holds well on the plant, and this is one of those plants that you pull, bring into your cantina (which most Americans do not have) and it will hold until well after Christmas.

I had the best luck with the Ponderosa sel Oro. The plant produces an enormous quantity of 2 ounce or so yellowish fruit. They will store for months. By November/December, they tasted pretty darned good.

The photo is a bunch of Ponderosa sel Oro tomatoes.

Bill McKay