Tomatoes and Salsa

The growing season is nearing it's end. We have had a great year, filled with learning experiences. We have made plans for the future on how to expand our growing space. We have had successes and failures, and look forward to the rest that winter will bring as we prepare for next spring. 

Rather than try to write a long post detailing all our crops, we are going to focus a post on each individual type. This way we can give a more detailed picture of our experiences. 

Today we would like to review one of our favorite crops, Tomatoes. 

We learned a lot about tomatoes this growing season, despite having grown them many times in years past. This is the first year that we have been able to successfully start our plants from seedlings. We also learned the substantial benefits of investing in a grow light. 

As we transferred our plants outside We discovered that it is possible for plants to come back from a late freeze, though this was quite a setback for our growing season. We also used a different method of support for our plants, a wooden frame with cecil twine strung down to hold the plants. 

We learned pruning techniques, and a lot about tomato horn worms and the moths they become. After finding several on our plants we brought some in and placed them in an old bee cage to observe their life cycle. We will document this in a later post. 

When it came time to start preserving our tomatoes we were concerned that our plants had not produced as many as we had planned. A local farmer, and family friend, helped us there. We were able to purchase several batches of tomatoes from Clyde Acres Farm. 

We skinned, diced, and froze them as we waited until we were ready to make salsa. It was a lot of work, but we enjoyed working together on this project. After prepareing about 5 gallons we decided to do the rest as simply jars of diced tomatoes. We put up two batches of diced tomatoes, and ended up with 25 quarts. 

After processing the diced tomatoes we finally were ready to make salsa. We were lucky enough to have family visiting, due to the birth of our 6th child, and they provided a great amount of help to us. We chopped onions and peppers, mixed in all the spices, cilantro and garlic, and ended up with two very large stockpots full of salsa. The salsa came out very well, and filled 47 pint jars.  We will post the salsa recipe separately. With all the tomatoes and salsa we have processed, we are hoping that they will last us until next year.