Thursday, August 28, 2014

Last Tomato Haul

I thought this would be it for The Year of The Tomato, but alas, I have another tub exactly like this sitting in the garage waiting to be made into something. Last week, we hauled 40 lbs of beautifully ripe tomatoes from our patch. We are now over 200 lbs harvested this year!


Of all that we grew, our favorite by far has been Brandywine Sudduth Strain. This tomato is the epitome of the perfect balance between sweet, savory, and acidity. To me, this tomato is what a fresh tomato should taste like. A few plants made it from my winter sowing experiment and it was enough to convince me to only grow tomatoes for eating next year.


All other canning tomatoes will be purchased from the farmer's market next year. I'll admit, the sauce I made for canning did taste a little better using a mixture of all the different tomatoes I had, but it wasn't enough to convince me to do again next year. Of course, I say this now, but I might change my mind again next year. Other contenders for flavor were Early Girl and Druzba. Early Girl was pretty close to Brandywine, but they were small tangerine-sized tomatoes, and Druzba was candy-sweet. We also grew Black From Tula, which had an almost smoky flavor, but it was prone to cracking and splitting on the vine. Nope....Brandywine is my girl for this year. 

For now, I picked the last of the ripened and green tomatoes yesterday and the tomato patch will be put to rest (blight has set in). The other 40 lb tub of green and ripened tomatoes will be made into a green salsa verde. I think I'm set with canned tomatoes till next summer!
 

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