Tomato disasters and successes

If you recall, we harvested two beds – upwards of 130 pounds – of a type of meaty paste tomato called Federle.

Because the vast majority of these tomatoes were green when we harvested them just ahead of the first frost, I layered them in boxes with a banana on each layer to provide ethylene gas. This would allow them to ripen. We set these boxes on a layer of plastic (to protect the carpet) and wrapped them in mosquito netting (to keep the fruit flies out).

However I got busy during the interim while they were ripening. Among much else, I took that fast trip south to see my parents and Younger Daughter. By the time I got around to cracking open the boxes, well ... let's just say many of the tomatoes had progressed beyond ripe into rotten. Grrrr.

The top layers were in great shape.

But the farther down I went, the worse it got.

I was so mad at myself for wasting so many tomatoes. In the end, the best I could do was pluck out the tomatoes that were still usable, and put them in a tub.

As for the rest ... well, we had to use towels and tubs and other emergency procedures to get those soaked and falling-apart boxes out of the house and into the yard. I was VERY glad I had put down plastic beneath the boxes to protect the carpet, which emerged unscathed.

I spent days beating myself up for this debacle. So many tomatoes, wasted!

The rotten tomatoes went into the waste pile.

I turned my attention back to the usable tomatoes. Because so many of them had been covered in mushy tomato slime, I actually washed them all.

After washing them, I re-packed the tomatoes back into the tub, but lined it with towels to absorb moisture.

Then I had to fetch down my food strainer from where it had been stored in the barn. I haven't used the strainer in a long time – certainly not since we moved – so it was predictably filthy. I gave it a good washing.

Also – knowing I would need it – I washed a large bucket.

Then I set up the food strainer.

Part of this set-up included putting a towel on the floor beneath. I learned from experience this is critical.

Straining tomatoes is messy work.

But there's no finer way to make a beautiful purée. Here the tomatoes are in the hopper...

...and here is the resulting purée.

Periodically I dumped the container of purée into the large bucket.

By the time all the tomatoes were processed, the kitchen was a mess. Such is life.

The next step was to bag up and freeze the purée.

I filled five gallon bags with purée, though the actual volume was probably more like four gallons.

I laid the bags of purée flat in the chest freezer until they froze, and then I stacked them more neatly.

After all was said and done, my apron was a disaster. I am brutally hard on aprons.

I laid the apron flat and sprayed it thoroughly with stain remover, then washed it, which helped a lot.

The next step in the tomato journey will be to make tomato sauce out of the purée, something I usually do in January or February. This consists of putting the purée in a large pot nested double-boiler-style into a larger pot, and cooking it down into sauce (the process usually takes about three days per batch). After it's thick enough for my satisfaction, I'll can it up.

So that's a summary of my tomato disasters and successes. Let's hope I'm a little more attentive to our unripe tomatoes next year.

Harvesting tomatoes

I got a late start on tomatoes this year. Between the trip south to see my parents early in the spring and the time it took to get the garden deer-proofed early in the summer, I didn't even get seeds planted (indoors) until late April.

Among the seeds I planted was a type of paste tomato I'd never tried before called Federle. This variety came to my attention after I did a search for the meatiest type of heirloom paste tomato available. I found the seeds from a place called Tim's Tomatoes.

Due to various neglect issues on my part (ahem) as well as some hungry insects in the garden, hardly any of my original seedlings survived the transplant process with the exception of about six of these Federle paste tomatoes. They were so small and spindly, in fact, that I had no hope the ones I transplanted would survive.

Well, not only did they survive, they thrived and grew huge.

And my goodness, did they put out tomatoes. These weren't cute Roma-shaped tomatoes either, but big honkin' misshaped monsters that looked more like sausages or peppers than tomatoes.

It's not at all unusual in our neck of the woods to have the vast majority of tomatoes still green when the first frost hits. We kept the tomatoes on the vine for as long as we could, but finally the weather promised a drop to 29F, so Don and I hustled to strip the plants bare.

The oak tree gave a dramatic backdrop to our labors. It was a cold and blustery day as we picked. Despite the sunshine on one side, you can see some dark rain clouds in the back, which skirted around us.

I had only two beds of tomatoes (on the right), so Don and I each took a bed and started stripping the plants.

The first thing we discovered was the plants were insanely productive. Among those few plants that initially survived transplanting early in the summer, we got two full tubs of (mostly) green tomatoes.

We also pulled up the volunteer cherry tomato plants.

This was the afternoon's haul.

We pulled the tubs into the kitchen for the night and covered them with mosquito netting to keep fruit flies away. (We always seem to get fruit fly infestations this time of year, no matter how many jars of apple cider vinegar mixed with soap we put out.)

The next day I set the tomatoes up for ripening in the house. I started by laying the mosquito netting on the floor, then put down a flat (unopened) plastic garbage bag. This works to keep any moisture from damaging the carpet underneath.

Before storing the tomatoes, however, I wanted to see how much they weighed. One tub weighed 70 lbs.;  the other tub weighed almost 60 lbs.

That's nearly 130 lbs. of tomatoes from two garden beds. Yowza.

I set up a large cardboard box on the plastic, then started layering tomatoes. In most (but not all) of the layers, I added a banana, which exudes ethylene gas and helps ripen the tomatoes faster.

Between layers, I put sheets of newspaper.

Some of the tomatoes were huge. (Banana, as they say, for scale.)

When the first tub of tomatoes was layered in the box...

...I cut the box down and loosely sealed it closed.

Then I set up a second box and repeated the process with the second tub of tomatoes. The boxes are large enough that I could fit all the tomatoes in one box, but I didn't want to do this for two reasons. One, I didn't want the bottom tomatoes to get squashed; and two, periodically I'll be pawing through all the layers and removing ripe tomatoes, so it's better to have two boxes with fewer layers than one box with lots of layers.

After the second tub of tomatoes was packed away, I turned to the cherry tomatoes and separated the ripe from the unripe. I put the ripe tomatoes into the fridge for immediate use, and the green tomatoes got tossed onto the top layer in one of the boxes.

The very last thing I did was wrap the boxes in the mosquito netting. Kept away from fruit flies (which accelerates rotting), the tomatoes will ripen slowly over the next two or three months.

The plan is to check the boxes about once every 10 days or so and remove the ripe tomatoes, which I'll run through our food strainer and then freeze the pulp. When all the tomatoes have been puréed, I'll defrost the purée and cook it down slowly on the stove into tomato sauce, which I'll then can up.

These are seriously meaty paste tomatoes, so it will be interesting to find out how long it takes to cook them down compared to "regular" paste tomatoes like Romas or Amish Paste.

Another autumn chore, done.

Garden update

Since we've deer-proofed our garden by installing 10-1/2-foot-high nuclear deer fencing, some readers have asked for an update on what's growing.

Unfortunately we completed the fencing too late to plant some of the things we wanted to plant (notably corn), and we also didn't get the full number of raised beds installed. Bottom line, only about three-quarters of the potential space is currently planted, and some of the planted beds aren't thriving. Nor is the drip irrigation system yet hooked up, though at least the underground infrastructure is in place.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's a wide shot of the garden as it currently looks:

In the foreground are five beds of garlic. Another two weeks or so, and they will be ready to harvest.

Interspersed in several of the garlic beds are volunteer potatoes (guess what I planted there last year?). I seldom remove volunteers. They're too much fun.

Not counting the volunteers, I planted eight beds of potatoes. Last year I had planted six beds, and the deer ate the leaves down to nubbins. Discouraged, I stopped watering – and yet still managed to harvest about sixty pounds of medium-sized potatoes (i.e., about ten pounds per bed, an abysmal return). This year, with the vegetation undisturbed and with regular watering, I'll be interested in seeing how much we harvest.

I planted two beds of onions...

...and one bed of green (bunching) onions. The bunching onions got a hard start because I didn't get around to weeding out the wheat (which grows from the straw mulch) until quite late, so most of the plants are still playing catch-up.

I have four beds of strawberries.

I'm picking a bowl of strawberries every few days. Two of the beds are Fort Laramie berries, and two are Ozark Beauty.

I had a bunch of tomato plants I grew from seed that had been sitting on the deck until the garden was fenced. As a result, they were stunted when I transplanted them. They're growing, but they're not very big. I photographed this bed before I weeded out the wheat grass.

They looked happier after I weeded.

The broccoli, which I also started from seed, has fared worst of all. As with the tomatoes, they were stunted from the start.

Then, to make things worse, the poor plants came down with a massive infestation of flea beetles, tiny jumping beetles that suck all the juices out of the leaves.

I'm starting to get the flea beetles under control, but it's too late to expect much (if anything) from the plants. In fact, I don't think they'll survive, which is a shame since broccoli is my favorite vegetable.

I have a volunteer sunflower growing in one of the potato beds. No doubt a seed from our winter bird feed was dropped here.

I've had volunteer sunflowers grow before, but always the deer got to them. This time it will be fun to watch it mature.

I also have a couple of volunteer tomatoes growing in yet another potato bed, the one in which I had grown (or tried to grow) tomatoes last year. As always, despite being cloched with deer netting, the deer got the tomatoes.

Last year I grew cherry, paste, and beefsteak tomatoes. I have no idea what kind these volunteers may be.

By far the most successful plants are the spaghetti squash.

I've never grown spaghetti squash before, and I made a grave error when planting. I planted twelve seeds in one bed, forgetting one critical factor: Spaghetti squash are related to zucchini, which of course is famously productive. Imagine planting twelve zucchini plants, and you'll start to understand the scope of the issue. I have huge numbers of spaghetti squashes coming in.

And with many flowers still blooming, I can expect more.

And then, comically, I even have a volunteer spaghetti squash growing in one of the potato beds.

(If you're wondering how I can get a volunteer squash from something I've never planted before, it's because in the fall, when I empty the compost tumbler, I bury the compost in the garden beds. A seed from a squash we had once eaten for lunch sprouted.)

As you can see, there is room for one more row of nine beds (two of which are in place but unplanted).

Clearly the game-changer in the garden is the installation of the deer fencing. Next year, we'll get the rest of the garden beds installed and the drip irrigation system hooked up. I'll be able to plant early and, hopefully, realize the full potential of this growing space.

The maximum this garden can hold is 35 beds (three rows of nine beds, one row of eight beds). However we've designed it that, should the need arise, we can expand and double the capacity to 70+ beds by extending the garden length-wise. We have enough drip irrigation supplies to accommodate that possibility as well.

Obviously getting a garden installed has been a multi-year project, and many other projects have taken precedence. Still, it's nice to have a proper garden at last.