I will admit I probably over planted tomatoes. Every year I vow to cut back. And every year I end up with oodles of tomatoes.
Reasons to Cut Back
Two people can only eat so many tomatoes. Even the chickens and the wildlife can get overwhelmed by oodles of tomatoes.
Tomatoes take a lot of water. Ozark summers are often dry and I don’t have a convenient hose.
Tomatoes are a popular sales item for both sellers and buyers at the Farmers Market. However, lots go home again.
Reasons For Growing So Many Tomatoes
My garden typically has three main types of tomatoes: red, yellow and paste. These are started from seed as I like varieties not commonly available.
There are also some purchased tomatoes as these will bear sooner. And a couple of cherry tomatoes are nice for snacks. One is by the house. The other is in the garden.
Things happen to gardens. Groundhogs. Chipmunks. Wood rats. Birds. Insects. Disease. Having a few more plants than necessary is insurance against total loss.
What To Do With Oodles of Tomatoes
All dinner menus are now planned with tomatoes included. Sliced. Salads. Enchiladas. Spaghetti.
More tomatoes end up as sauce, broth and frozen. A few years back I tried freezing plain nice tomatoes. These are great as thawing them makes the skins slide off. If I’m doing chili, I only want one or two, not a bag of sauce.
When I make tomato sauce, I read the directions to boil skinned tomatoes down for hours until they are a thick sauce. First, I’m lousy at skinning tomatoes. Second, I hate spending that much time boiling off water. (Tomatoes are 95% water, more than watermelon at 92%. See the Pumpkin Project.)
My sauce is plain tomatoes, trimmed and cut into chunks, dropped into a large pot and simmered until soft mush. Then I use a colander to separate the pulp from the liquid tomato broth.
The liquid is frozen as broth. The pulp is pureed in the blender, then frozen. When I thaw these out, I can add the appropriate herbs, spices and salt for the recipe I am making.
Even so, this is a great tomato year. My garden is happily producing oodles of tomatoes. I hope it lasts to frost and beyond stored in the pantry and freezer.
