tomatoes

[Gfish]

Some health food guru, ona radio program the other day, said if you want the high nutrient value stuff from tomatos, the best source is from 1) tomato paste, 2) tomato sauce. Ok, but what about the excessive salt concentration...

YES! Golden State! Champs again!
Gfish

[Jim Fujitani]

Any true health food guru would have said to avoid commercially canned tomato sauces or pastes, altogether.  Besides the addition of sodium, there are the government approved levels of non-food materials in our commercially canned food products. 

My mother hated the appearance of tomato horn worms.  Yet, she worked every summer for years grading tomatoes on harvesters in the Sacramento region.  She knew that horn worms and other debris find their way mixed in with the tomatoes during the commercial canning process.  She would only use her home-canned tomato sauces.  Granted, the final commercial sauce and paste product has been cooked and sterile canned, my mother still would not have had commercially canned products in her food if she could avoid it.

Even spaghetti sauce!!  I got no Ragu until I went away to Humboldt.  (No control over the canned products used in "dime-a-dip", spaghetti feeds, or other benefit meals.)

[mo65]

   Looky here folks...a few ripe tomatoes already! These are Sun Sugar cherry tomatoes and the peppers are Gypsies. Those Candy onions are doing well too. 

[Rancanfish]

Mo, I just have a feeling you might be the guy to enjoy this....

When I was a kid working in a paper mill, I spent many a graveyard shift with an old black guy that turned me on to it.

You take a saltine cracker, lay a slice of sweet white onion on it, put a bunch of  tiny shrimp on there, then a slice of your freshest tomato. Top it with another saltine and crunch away.  Simple but tasty as heck.

If you use the canned shrimp you can take the whole lot fishing for an easy lunch.  Take more than you think, it's kind of addicting.  Just don't breathe on anybody.   

[Alto Mare]

Looking good Mo! I believe my plants grew another 6" in the past couple of days, the weather has been very hot and humid here, a good combination. I did see some tomatoes emerging...it won't be long.

I'll do that snack Randy, sunds good!

[sdlehr]

Last season I spent over $200 purchasing tomatoes plants, this year I was determined not to purchase any.
Sal

Sal, looks like about 30 tomato plants... Roma? Down here in S FL we can't garden in the summer.... well, we can grow native plants, but food stuff is grown in the winter when we have to water (it's our dry season) but the sun is a little lower in the sky. We close our upstairs deck from Memorial Day to Labor Day - it's just too hot to use - but the rest of the year it's like heaven up there. I may grow some tomatoes next winter. I have done so in the past, but this past winter I couldn't get tomato plants to grow. I do so in containers, there's nematodes in the ground that like to eat roots.

Sid

[Alto Mare]

Last season I spent over $200 purchasing tomatoes plants, this year I was determined not to purchase any.
Sal

Sal, looks like about 30 tomato plants... Roma? Down here in S FL we can't garden in the summer.... well, we can grow native plants, but food stuff is grown in the winter when we have to water (it's our dry season) but the sun is a little lower in the sky. We close our upstairs deck from Memorial Day to Labor Day - it's just too hot to use - but the rest of the year it's like heaven up there. I may grow some tomatoes next winter. I have done so in the past, but this past winter I couldn't get tomato plants to grow. I do so in containers, there's nematodes in the ground that like to eat roots.

Sid

Interesting Sid, i thought you could grow those all year.
Good eye, yes about 30 plants and all of the same kind, I usally mixed them up with 4 varieties.
Roma tomatoes are usually the only ones we use for jars, these were giving to me by an older gentleman about 4 years ago, I was so happy with them that I kept the seeds.
The fruit is very large and unusually mild for the size as in acid content.
Here is a pic from a couple of years back, comparing with one of my 4/0.  Sorry, that's all I could find around here to make the compare it with

These are very meety, I enjoy them diced up and fried with extra virgin olive oil and a little garlic. I would cook some spagetti al dente , toss them in the frying pan and that's about it.
Some times I'll add a dozen little necks whole, some red pepper flakes and fresh italian parsley...good stuff.

[David Hall]

I used to plant a dozen Roma plants, then slice them and dry them on a rack on top of my patio.  We would have dried to,atoms to cook with all year plus enough to give to my kids.  30 plants will produce enough for a small army.  I'm planting two plants this year just for eating fresh off the vine. Like an apple only better.

[Alto Mare]

I used to plant a dozen Roma plants, then slice them and dry them on a rack on top of my patio.  We would have dried to,atoms to cook with all year plus enough to give to my kids.  30 plants will produce enough for a small army.  I'm planting two plants this year just for eating fresh off the vine. Like an apple only better.

Not at my house Dave, 30 plants will produce enough for the summer, maybe up to early fall.

[gstours]

Thanks folks for chiming in,  I too try to grow my own tomatoes.  Butt we must use a small south facing greenhouse.  It works ok, but limits the size of your project.  I have 2 bushy early types that are now flowering, and this year, and started the seeds this year in the greenhouse.  In past years the starts are in the house untill leggy.  Sometimes we get a late frost in the late spring and it gets my zucchini plants.   Gardening in SE AK is a challenge, Butt the food is really special!    Sorry no pictures yet.   gst.

[Keta]

Dealing with 150"-200" of rain and most days overcast does make it hard to grow anything but mold in SE Alaska.

Hopefully "winter" is over here now, last week we survived 5 mornings of below freezing weather with 28 the coldest.  We had a bit of frost burn on 1 tomato plant and one pepper but the corn made it....being planted 3" below ground level in postholes helps.  Our garlic thrives with colder mornings and is now over 2' tall.  Our new "livestock" has increased our berry production and it looks like we will have surplus and our apples made it past the blossoming stage for the first time in 3 years. 

[sdlehr]

Interesting Sid, i thought you could grow those all year.

In the summer it's above 90F by 9:30am and stays that way until after 8pm, with humidity hovering around 90% most of the time. Even if we could garden in the summer we wouldn't spend much time outside unless we were wet - which happens whether you want it to or not in about a minute and a half. Even indoors the humidity creeps up to where it takes noticeably longer to dry completely after a shower. We get 8 months of heavenly weather and pay for it during the four months of summer heat. But I never have to shovel snow, and that's a bargain!

Sid

[Army_of_One]

I know I'm late to the party.    Once a week I spray an Epsom salt solution on my tomatoes and peppers.  I do 2 tablespoons to a gallon in a sprayer for 30-45 seconds per plant.  They do really well as long as I keep the slug traps full of beer.  I have cherry and grape tomatoes in hanging 5 gal buckets and and the rest in 5 gal buckets on the ground.  I don't have a large enough garden to plant them in the ground as I have a ton of other veggies growing in the beds.

[Marlinmate]

Down here in the south....a slab of cold tomato, some Duke's mayo (on both sides of white bread) and some black pepper....and it's feeding time.

I live in a county where it is illegal to fire a gun of any kind...and the deer population knows it. I'd have to have a 20ft fence around my garden.

[George6308]

Had some nice tomatoes last year in Philadelphia but the squirrels ate all of em. Down to five plants this year. They all doing fine so far.