late blight resistant tomato seed

Does anyone have experience with late blight resistant tomatoes?

After all the problems we have had the past few years, we would like to provide our community gardeners with late blight resistant tomato seedlings next spring. I am looking into the best varieties.

I am thinking of trying these:
Defiant PhR (Johnny's Seed)
Mountain Magic (Johnny's Seed)
Plum Regal (Johnny's Seed)
Ferline (Thompson and Morgan)
Legend (Reimer Seeds)

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Labor Day red sauce

A fitting tribute to a super summer growing season, I made a big pot of red sauce today from my tomatoes! It's the first time in years that I've had enough tomatoes to do this. It included a mix of San Marzano Gigante, New Girl, Brandywine and Purple Calabash tomatoes. I added some of my onions and peppers. Also oregano, thyme and chives.

We had some of the fresh sauce on pasta tonight and it is fantastic!!!

I will freeze the rest.

I have been picking my tomatoes as soon as they turn a bit red and keeping them in a wooden box that I found at a local wine store. Today I used all of the red tomatoes, then washed and replaced the green ones to continue ripening.




So, every year, I make tomato sauce, which requires the following steps: acquire large amounts of tomatoes, peel the skin off the tomatoes, boil the tomatoes down (adding spices) until it’s sauce, then put the sauce into jars and can. Previously, I’ve blanched the tomatoes and peeled the skin off each one… a very time consuming process.

This year’s innovation

You may recall that earlier this year, I was on the local news modeling for the book Craft Activism. Also on the show was the chef from an Italian restaurant. One of the perks of following a cooking segment is that you get to eat the food cooked during the show!
The chef told me that they make all of the sauce for their restaurant. I asked if he had any tips for speedy-sauce making, and he told me that they use a food mill. I had never heard of such a thing… but it’s changed my sauce-making life!
Food mills magically remove the skin and peels from the tomatoes, and leave behind a nice, smooth sauce. What an invention!
So this year… I got a food mill! What a great investment! It wasn’t very expensive and it really sped up the process!

Making the sauce

Warning: it’s messy… but pretty fun, too! My two bushels of tomatoes (about 50 lbs) made 7 quarts of sauce. This is less than my average crop, partially because I threw in some non-sauce tomatoes.

Step 1: get tomatoes

If you have a local farmer’s market, then that’s the place you’ll want to go to get your tomatoes. Ask if they have ‘seconds’, which is code for ‘tomatoes with a bump or bruise’. They’re too damaged to be sold at full price, but they’re great for sauce!

I bought 2 bushels. Ideally, you want ‘sauce’ tomatoes (a variety with more fleshy-bits on the inside), but some of the ones I got this year were heirlooms, and they worked just fine. Non-sauce varieties taste just as yummy, they just might need some extra boiling time (when making the sauce) because of their extra water content.

Step 2: Cut out icky parts and run through food mill

Cut out any severely bruised or moldy/icky parts of the tomato… you don’t want that in your sauce! Then, cut the tomatoes into quarters (or whatever size you need to so that they fit through your mill), and start cranking!

Step 3: make sauce

So, the next thing you do is take all that sauce that’s been pouring out of the sauce chute and put it in a pot on your stove… or, if you have as many tomatoes as me, a few pots:
Add in whatever you think would be yummy. I added (pre-sauteed) garlic and onions, plus some basil, oregano and salt.
Then, just keep cooking until it’s the consistency of sauce you buy in the store!

Step 4: put sauce into cans and process

Once you have your sauce, it’s time to can it! Basically, you pour the hot sauce into the jars (leaving a little room at the top), put the lid on, and then dunk the jar in boiling water for 15 minutes. (If you’re a newbie to canning, definitely read up on detailed instructions!)

Step 5: stare proudly at your sauce!

There’s nothing I love more than looking at my beautiful jars of sauce, all lined up and waiting for winter!

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today's harvest

This is what I picked from the garden today. Lots of tomatoes.

The blight is hitting my tomato plants hard now, so I picked all of the tomatoes that were anywhere near pink. I pulled off all of the blighted leaves from the plants. The stems are nearly bare now with a bunch of green tomatoes hanging, hoping to ripen. I went ahead and sprayed again with Copper fungicide, as I have been doing weekly, even though there wasn't much there to spray.

And I was surprised by finding a bunch of broccoli shoots today. I almost pulled all of my broccoli a few weeks ago, after I picked the first, big heads. They didn't seem like they were producing any side shoots. But now, all of a sudden, I have lots of side shoots.

The two summer squashes in this harvest, a Zephyr and a Starship pattypan, will likely be my last of the season. I can't say I am sorry. I think I've eaten a million summer squashes in the past couple months. They were yummy, but I'm looking forward to moving on to another vegetable.

Two days ago, my sister and I used a giant zucchini and made zucchini bread. The one zucchini made about 8 cups of grated squash. I use 3 cups per my 2 loaf recipe. We made a 1x recipe, and then a 1.5x recipe, ending up with 3 loaves, 1 Bundt cake and two giant muffins. My sister took a loaf to work with her and I froze two loaves. It really came out nice and we have been enjoying it.

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canning tomatoes

I bought 25 lbs of local tomatoes at the Farmer's Market, added a few of mine and canned 11 quart jars.

Recipe:
- Peel tomatoes after scorching in boiling water 1 minute. Slit and remove seeds. Slice in food processor with 1/4 inch blade.
- Clean quart canning jars in dishwasher. Boil lids and rings in water on the stove.
- Pack tomatoes in jars to 1/2 inch of the top. (I added a small chili pepper to half of the jars.) Clean rims. Apply lids and rings. After tightening rings fully release 1/2 turn to allow pressure to escape.
- Place packed jars in large pot with rack so they are not sitting on the bottom of the pot. (About 5-8 jars per pot.) Fill with water to 2 inches over the top of jars. - Heat water to 190*F slowly, over 1.5 hours. Maintain heat at 190*F for 30 min.
- Remove and cool jars. Check for seal.

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tomatoes!!

The "real" tomatoes are ripening! Ahh. Can't beat this time of year.

A couple weeks ago my mom sent me a fascinating article about how supermarket tomatoes lost their flavor. Turns our the green shoulders contain chlorophyll and work to make the tomato sweet as it ripens. The great supermarket tomato advance was to remove the green shoulders and produce a perfectly red tomato - with NO TASTE. Remarkable!

Work linking tomato sweetness and green shoulders was published June 28, 2012 in the journal Science: How Tomatoes Lost their Taste.

A nice article is at The Salt (NPR food blog): How The Taste Of Tomatoes Went Bad (And Kept On Going).

My first three real tomatoes are a Pink Beauty, a Purple Calabash and a Brandywine.

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comparing tomato planting dates from previous years

Yesterday I transplanted 6 tomato seedlings to my side yard garden. Its been so warm this spring that it seems like tomato planting time already to me. Temperatures the past 2 weeks have been in the 70s and 80s, nighttime lows staying up near 50*F. The forecast is for a week of rainy weather in the 60's - perfect for tomato roots to take hold and grow. I plan to plant another 6 plants out at my community plot. I will try to wait until mid May to be safe as this big open space can get late frosts.

I compared this tomato transplant date with previous years. For the past 6 years, I have transplanted tomatoes out from May 3 to May 30. One year that I tried planting out in April with wall-o-water protectors and the plants did not do well.

2012: April 21 and TBD

2011, May 30: Last spring was very cold and damp. I planted tomato seeds late, around April 25, then transplanted seedlings out to my community plot on May 30. I never really got many tomatoes from these plants. I think my mistake was to plant them right next to my dense corn patch (just to the north of it), and I planted too many tomato plants too close together. I had lots of fungal problems - fortunately no late blight, but seemingly every other fungi (post). I pulled the plants in August and gave up.

2010, April 7 and May 16: I planted a few tomato seeds very early, Feb ?, and the rest right on schedule, March 23, 6 weeks before our usual last frost date of around May 4. I tried Wall-O-Water and transplanted the early (Beaver Lodge) plants to my side yard garden on April 7 (posts). But cold weather stayed late and I couldn't remove the covers til the first week of May. Most of the plants in them died from fungi as there is no air flow inside the units. I did my regular tomato transplanting on May 16 (post).

2009, May 3: I sowed tomato seeds Feb 21 and April 2, then transplanted the seedlings to the garden on May 3. This was the year that Late Blight wiped out almost every tomato in New England. Mine were no exception.

2008, May 22: This was a year of super tomatoes (post). Not many plants, but beautiful tomatoes (post). It was also my first year in my community plot. Here's a photo of transplanting tomatoes (with Amelia) on May 22 in my brand new plot (post). I planted my tomato seeds on April 6.

2007, May 20: I had an enormous crop this year!!

2006, May 23: Another super year for tomatoes.

I wish I had a chart for each year to see when certain flowers bloomed and birds arrived and nested. My sense is the season is at least 2 weeks early here this year. My early rhododendron blossoms have come and gone, the purple iris is blooming and tree peony buds are about to open. Oak leaves are bigger than squirrels ears and the robins are nesting. The activity at our community garden is amazing and everyone is enjoying the warm spring.

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tomato spots

I have every type of spot on my tomatoes this year - except late blight, thank goodness. Big spots, small ones, orange and brown and black. The damage is pretty much limited to the fruits and is not on the leaves or stems of the plants.



Its been perfect weather for fungi this summer - hot and humid. But I think much of my problem is that I planted my tomato plants too dense and between tall popcorn and sunflowers that reduce airflow. Other gardeners in our community garden have nice tomatoes that they planted with lot of airflow. Next year I will do this too....

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