We’ve had it busy here the last few weeks. It has been warm and the work has been a bit exhausting. Exhausting but rewarding as the toms begin making their dramatic entrance upon the harvest stage. It was time for a little harvest All the toms are doing alright with the timely feedings, heat protection, watering regimen, suckering and liberal pruning. Everything going according to plan except the San Marzanos. On the other side of the greenhouse, the Money Makers, the Marmande and the Mountain Rogue are doing fine. Back over with the San Marzanos, the Romas are also fine and dandy. It brings me back to the conundrum of the green collar San Marzanos. The thing is that back weeks ago when we had that drought and excessive period of heat, there were no toms on the plant. Some plants had flowers and some did not have flowers at all yet. How can this happen? It is something that I will have to look into this winter. We had a long day processing the first batch of toms and a mess of beans. It was only right that the late lunch could have been nothing other than this:
Seeing this just gave me the urge to start planting tomato seeds. So I can have them sun dried later!
@Sjoerd, I'm kind of stunned! Those tomatoes are beautiful. What a bountiful crop! They look delicious! I don't know what to make of those San Marzanos. Maybe the seeds in that seed packet weren't true to type? That has happened to me. Regardless, your crop must give you a lot of pride!
Daniel—I hope that you are right about the Sam Marzanos. Perhaps it is the seeds, but if it isn’t, then I have learned something about the effects of heat on forming flour buds. —the eventual fruit can be damaged before it is even formed! Who’dah thought. Interestingly, there was something similar going on with my strawbs this spring. there was a hard freeze when the flower buds were just forming. The flowers buds did not die and went on to open up, but had black faces— damaged by the cold. Those black-faced flowers did not form fruits. I had never seen this before. Well, at least it is only the San Marzanos that are behaving badly, all the rest are textbook. Hoorah.
Great harvest Sjoerd! When I finally cut my tomatoes yesterday I found that some of them had more flesh than seed. I don't remember buying any paste tomatoes last year, but maybe.
It is always welcome to see, Willow. I like fleshy toms, for I can use them different ways, not just for pasting.
This is our favorite, and very easy, pasta sauce recipe for those paste tomatoes. It's good on pasta or rice. ---------------- Cut about 10 sauce tomatoes and layer on bottom of oiled casserole dish. Add one big minced garlic clove. Add 1/2 chopped medium onion. Add 3 sliced Jalapeños. Dust with salt and pepper and some pepper flakes. Drizzle with 1/4 cup olive oil. Repeat with another layer of sliced tomatoes, minced garlic, chopped onion, sliced Jalapeños, and the salt, pepper, pepper flakes and olive oil. Bake at 350 without covering, 50 min. --------------- The recipe was from my late friend. The jalapeños were my addition, because you can never have too many jalapeños.
