Tomatoes for canning?

[Bettacreek]

I want to try my hand at canning this year, but I'm wondering, what are good tomatoes for canning? I'd probably want to can big chunks for chili, s'ghetti, and possibly make my own s'ghetti sauce. Any tips or anything would be appreciated. Also, how many plants should I plant for each jar that I want to can?

 

[patandchickens]

You can perfectly well can ANY kind of tomato but most eating-type tomatoes end up awfully watery.

Paste tomatoes will give you more 'meaty chunks' and less watery liquid and seed goo. Roma (probably your highest yielder) or San Marzano are good, I've heard good things about Opalka and Amish Paste but never tried them myself. To some extent it depends on your season length - the reason I've never tried the latter two is that I doubt I could get many to ripen in a typical year here

One thing to bear in mind is that it is most efficient to can a lot all at once, meaning that for the home gardener you are likely to have to either freeze a bunch til you have enough (inefficient) or can smaller batches (inefficient). Honestly the *easiest* thing for you, if the point is simply to put up a buncha tomato product, is to buy a bushel at the farmer's market. Of course if you want to grow them yourself that is obviously fine too , I'm just saying, you will have to put up with a certain amount of inefficiency that way.

I totally don't remember expected yield per plant but it varies so much with weather that I think you should just plant however many plants you feel like Worst comes to worst, chickens like tomatoes

Have fun,

Pat

 

[Kricket]

I planted 20+ tomato plants for my canning and eating fresh last year. I tried amish paste last year for my canning. They were bigger than my romas. I liked those. Some romas tend to be small and time consuming. IMO you want a meater tomato (such as the AP and romas) for sauces. I think using the other tomatos (juicier) takes longer to cook down to a thick consistency. If I'm just canning whole or crushed tomatos, I use whatever I have on hand. I canned over 200 quarts and pints of misc. sauces and such. I hope this will help. If someone else has a better opinion, hopefull they will speak up so you can try different things this year and know for sure what to do next year. Good luck!

 

[the-metal-peddler]

I can a lot of veggies as well as freeze them. We are a huge sauce family, so romas are my choice. I also use them for my salsa. I tried the heirlooms, my first choice for stewed tomatoe products with a 25-40% roma mix, but heirlooms by themselves ended up like pat said, very watery.

 

[Rosalind]

Hmm. I think I planted about 25 plants last year, and between slugs, rabbits and raccoons I got about ten quarts of canned. However, if I had been diligent about trellising and doing the wall-o-water things or mulched and fussed over the plants more, I am certain I would have gotten more like 20 quarts. Bear in mind, this is in a northerly climate where the growing season is short. And I got another quart or two of green tomatoes that went into chutney in the fall.

This year I'm planting 60 tomato plants. I used up those 10 quarts pretty quick, since we eat a lot of pasta, chili and tomato soup. Plus I want some for fresh eating and for juice.

 

[farmerlor]

I can lots and lots of tomatoes so I plant about 60 paste tomatoes and another 25 regular tomatoes for salads and slicers though they often end up in my canning as well. My favorite pastes are Mom's Paste, Opalka, Amish Paste, Polish Linguisa and Roma in that order.