Tomatoes for 2025

[Branching Out]

I was reading an Eliot Coleman book, and in it he mentioned that they space their tomato seedlings out a bit once their leaves begin to overhang adjacent plants. Otherwise it creates shade, forcing the seedlings stretch and get tall as they search for light. A bit of extra room to grow seemed like a good idea, so I moved around my collection of dwarf tomatoes to permit each one to have more light. There are three plants each of Uralskiy Ranniy, Alenka, and Honey Nail. (I don't think Honey Nail is actually a true 'dwarf'; it's more like a short, sparse, determinate).

 

[ducks4you]

@digitS' you wrote on Amkuska's 2025 Thread,

Amkuska's 2025 Garden

By "Audrey's" – is that a reference to the kid's teevee cartoon, @ducks4you ? Audrey as a name choice must be starting over. They seemed to be all older than me. "Karen," I'm disappointed that it has come to have negatively entangled. I like that name. DW and I were overwhelmed with just 8...

www.theeasygarden.com

"DW and I were overwhelmed with just 8 tomato plants in 2024 with 1 of the 8, a volunteer cherry. They all came on late so there was only a short time to enjoy them fresh. Too much wind, some were even damaged by being beaten around.

Then, the plants recovered — boy, did they! Anyway, the freezer filled up."

I am trying to make sense of WHY my 2024 tomatoes Which, bc of my bad knee last year, I got transplanted at the Last possible week to get fruit, ended up producing the BIGGEST tomatoes I have ever grown, many of them filled my whole hand.
I have Never had tomatoes that big before, and they didn’t taste waterlogged, either.
Any thoughts as to why these happy accidents happened to both of us?

 

[digitS']

Any thoughts as to why these happy accidents happened to both of us?

The SIZE of the Kellogg's Breakfast FRUIT were the largest that they had ever been. I had only grown the KB a few times before and then, only in the distant garden. It is a late variety and not trusted to produce much but in 2024, I needed fresh seed and so, grew it here at home.

Yes, it turned into a vigorous plant but so did others. Smaller fruit size in the distant, I attributed to it having to struggle a bit more in the distant garden because of exposure. So, wind was an all-season problem. Here at home, wind is seldom much of a problem, the collection of board fences, garage, carport, greenhouse, chicken coop, and house, not to mention the structures in the neighbor's yard a few feet away, all protects against the wind.

An additional idea is that the windstorms early in the 2024 season delayed growth and fruit set so that when the plants took off, aided by the protected environment, they were not hindered by fruit development. I don't know how sound this idea was but they sure did a lot of growing before the fruit began to show up. We were impatient for fresh and ripe but it just trickled in, mostly from the cherries. Still, those cherries produced heavily.

Steve

 

[ducks4you]

Has anybody grown Ponderosa Red Beefsteak Tomato? I am expecting a sampler pack next week and it looks like a meaty tomato with fewer seeds.
I like meaty tomatoes for canning. Thx!

 

[flowerbug]

it really depends upon variety of tomato and then the weather. with us growing mostly beefsteak varieties if you get plenty of moisture plus sunshine the plants can produce a lot. for us and our gardens an average year is about 40lbs of tomatoes per plant but we've had some years where it has been over 60-70lbs.

just as one example last year we canned over 150 quarts of tomatoes from 12 plants, it normally comes out about 3lbs per quart finished so 450 lbs per plant in what we canned and that doesn't count all the tomatoes we ate fresh or gave away (easily several hundred lbs) plus all those i buried at the end of the season that we didn't bother picking because they were small or didn't get picked soon enough so there were damage or blemishes we didn't want to work around. they just go back into the garden anyways as i bury everything and it can be food for future crops. so that comes out to about 63lbs per plant last year and we easily beat that the previous year.

 

[Branching Out]

That is an incredible amount of tomatoes flowerbug! I have canned lots of jam over the years, but I have yet to muster the courage to try canning tomatoes. Do you add citric acid to each jar? And do you start by cooking up the tomatoes for a few minutes before packing them hot in jars?

 

[flowerbug]

That is an incredible amount of tomatoes flowerbug! I have canned lots of jam over the years, but I have yet to muster the courage to try canning tomatoes. Do you add citric acid to each jar? And do you start by cooking up the tomatoes for a few minutes before packing them hot in jars?

we don't add anything to the tomatoes when canning them as they are a variety which is already acidic enough. if you want to be sure you'd need to get pH test kit, but we've never had problems.

after we've dunked the tomatoes to get the skin loose enough for removing then we cut the tomatoes into chunks and put them in big pans and i do warm them up before packing them into the jars before they are put into the oven for sealing up.

oven canning is not recommended at all any longer but we are so familiar with it and it is so much easier than dealing with a BWB...

when warming up the tomatoes i'm stirring and checking for bits of skins or perhaps other issues that Mom or i may have missed. between the two of us we can get between 20-30 quarts done in a few hours and it takes us a half hour to an hour to pick them and about that same amount of time to dunk them.

we used to make some into tomato juice but that takes a little more time and we don't really mind using the chunks for everything so we've stopped making juice.

my days of doing 50 - 70 quarts in a day are long gone now. that's too hard on my lower and middle back standing at the counter that long - but we did have some seasons where we put up over 300 quarts. now 100 - 150 are plenty enough for how much cooking Mom wants to do.

 

[ducks4you]

I am Thrilled to discover how useful the dehydrated tomatoes that I made a few months ago have become!
I Heartily recommend dehydrating them!
You could freeze them in bags if you like, or store in canning jars, which is what I did.
When I put them in a crock pot with a roast they end up dissolving and flavoring, even the seeds dissolved, which bowled me over!

 

[Dahlia]

I am Thrilled to discover how useful the dehydrated tomatoes that I made a few months ago have become!
I Heartily recommend dehydrating them!
You could freeze them in bags if you like, or store in canning jars, which is what I did.
When I put them in a crock pot with a roast they end up dissolving and flavoring, even the seeds dissolved, which bowled me over!

I am interested in the dehydrated tomatoes! Those sound handy to keep around!