Hundreds Of Pounds Of Tomatoes

All pictures are taken by me in my Oregon Gardens

I know I am holding an apple, but it is also apple harvesting time as well. This apple is from a volunteer apple tree that was growing by our back garden. I pruned the tree and fertilized the trees with some of our compost pile full year old chicken poop and watered the trees every day with my gardens.

I am such a thrifty person with money I made my own seed pots from old telephone books and the dirt was from my compost pile, which I sterilized before using by starting a burn pile of brush over my compost. That killed all all those nasty little flies and added some nice ash to the mix. I tried sterilizing my seedling dirt in the oven but it stunk up the house. My husband had such a pained look on his face, bless his heart he puts up with all my experiments like a saint!

Tomato seeds are easy to start. I let the seeds sit in some water over night and plant the moistened seeds in fine dirt .5 inches deep and keep the dirt moist but not dripping wet because the seed will rot and you will attract fungus and mold. Especially if you don't have air circulating around the little paper pots.

The seedlings are at least 3 to 4 inches tall and ready to transplant.

I prepped my garden dirt. First digging up my dirt and adding compost the previous fall and let sit all winter with the chickens cleaning out all the weeds and bugs. The dirt was easy to dig up with a shovel and hoe to ready the dirt for my tomato seedlings

After the seedlings reached 12 inches tall I pruned off the first 2 bottom stems and added straw to keep the dirt soft and retain moisture.

There isn't much to do except tie the tomatoes up or stake them out as they grow. There are 2 types of tomatoes indeterminate which grows very tall, I use this kind of tomato along my garden fence, which is 10 foot tall. There is the determinate tomato plant, which is the bush type and I cage these tomatoes to support fruit branches. Never prune a determinate type tomato, I prune the first stems near the roots on all my tomatoes, it keeps the leaves off the ground, increases air circulation, which helps prevent diseases.

You can see tomatoes, which in areas with strong sunlight sunscald, these plants are partially in the shade during the afternoon and I didn't have a problem. I did have a problem with dirt born diseases that cause black spots and yellowing leaves. I had to prune the plants to keep their foliage off the ground and drip water to avoid splashing dirt and disease onto the plant. I had a record crop. I planted over 200 plants and harvested hundreds of pounds of tomatoes. I gave half of my harvest to our community center. The other half was made into tomato sauce, stewed tomatoes, and salsa

The last tomatoes of the season, I had to pull off all the remaining tomatoes from my plants and ripen in my mudroom.

I turn my folding table into a processing center for my unripe last of the season tomatoes. As the tomatoes ripen I can them as soon as I get six quarts. My water-bath caner takes 7 quart jars at a time. I don't pressure can my tomatoes as they are acidic enough for water-bath method which you cook your tomatoes, de-skin, de-seed, turn into puree or cut into small portions for stewed tomatoes.

Clean tomatoes ready to dip in boiling water for a couple seconds and dump in cold water, which shocks the skin loose and makes it very easy to peel.

Tomato dumped in scalding water for a couple seconds and then dumped in ice cold water which shocks the skin away from the tomato flesh and makes it easy to peel of skin before canning.

You can see in this photo I am water-bath canning green salsa made from our tomatillo harvest and tomato salsa.

We also eat a lot of fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, and melons. One of my favorite kind of meals.

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