Then it was time to pick the sauce tomatoes. Actually they weren't as ripe as I like, but an animal of some sort was damaging the fruits in low-hanging clusters, so I picked them and set them in the sunroom for a few days. It left it's teeth marks in this one. Maybe an opossum or raccoon?
Most of the sauce tomatoes are Plum Regal, with a few Roma VF on top of the pile. I grew the Plum Regal because it is supposed to be blight resistant. It's also very productive. I read some taste tests on the internet that weren't very positive, but I think it's a decent flavored tomato, with a good bite that tells me it's high in acid, a good thing for a canning tomato. There's about 12 pounds here:
Sunday I canned marinara sauce for the first time. I used about 10 pounds of tomatoes, thinking that was plenty for 7 pints of sauce, which is what will fit in the boiling water canner. Well it only filled 6 pints. To get the sauce to the right consistency, a lot of water has to be boiled away.
A few beans were picked, about a pound and a half in small pickings over last week. The good news is that the beans are on the rebound from the Japanese beetles. This morning I picked a nice batch of Providers and Musica, which will go on next week's total.
And yes I'm getting zucchini again after a month's absence. This is the second one from this plant. All this went into a stir fry.
To see what other people are growing, head on over to Our Happy Acres and check it out.
8 comments:
Nice haul of tomatoes, especially Plum Regal. I'm trying it out this year (just one plant made it to transplant). I hope my results are like yours.
Fantastic harvest! Weird animal bites on that tomato. I don't think I've seen anything quite like that before.
Wow, I had to do a double take on that last picture -- is that a super long pepper, or just smallish zucchini and eggplant? A really pretty picture regardless, great positioning!
Yes, it's tomato season! When I canned last year, I also found that a lot of tomatoes were needed due to the liquid content and it took forever to cook them down. The roasted tomato sauce that I froze didn't have the same issue - it blended up nice and thick. This year I'm thinking I may do more freezing and less canning. Hopefully I don't regret that if we get an extended power outage!
I have only canned home made tomato sauce once and all I remember is just what you r found out - it take A LOT of tomatoes to boil down to make enough sauce to fill those pint jars! But those Regal Plums look fantastic. It sounds like you have found a good variety for your area.
Day, well the eggplant was 12 oz, the zucchini about a pound. It's a Jimmy Nardello sweet pepper and yes they are a long pepper, and very very delicious.
I like the looks of those Plum Regals. I'm looking for a determinate paste tomato to add to my lineup next year and that might be the one. I too found out it takes a lot of tomatoes for marinara sauce. I only wound up with 4 pints for my efforts, and next time I need to scale it up a bit.
Love the look of that aubergine... very pretty colour! Ours are only just starting to set fruit here, so am quite envious of yours
Nice looking haul of tomatoes. It hasn't been such a great tomato year here. It does take a lot of tomatoes to cook down into a thick sauce, which is why paste tomatoes are preferred, because they have less water to begin with. A crock pot, with the lid ajar is handy for the cooking down part since you can set it to low and it won't scorch overnight,. Another trick I read years ago was to freeze the puree in gallon milk jugs then let them partly thaw. the waterier part thaws first and you can pour that off then wait for the meatier part to thaw out.
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