Tomatoes are coming at a stead rate 13 lbs today.

[Gary350]

Harvest is a little bit larger every day and coming at a steady rate every day. Today harvest was 13 lbs. The largest tomato 1 lb 4.6 oz. These are Big Beef, Beef Master and 5 unknown volunteer plants. 13 lbs of tomatoes today.

[applestar]

Sweet! Looks like you are off to a good start for your canning season

[Gary350]

Alice said, you don't have tomato plants, you have tomato trees. LOL. Well I guess they are a bit tall some are 8 feet if I had taller cages they would be 25 ft tall by Halloween. Tops will soon turn and grow down to the ground then across the garden like vines. Interesting thing about tomatoes new growth has all the new tomatoes. Old growth will stop making tomatoes.

[ElizabethB]

Nice!

My spring crop is already coming to an end. Too hot. I need to get my seeds started for a fall crop ASAP. DITTO cucumbers. My dill went to seed and needs replacing . The Basil is hanging in there but I have to pinch them back daily. As soon as my eggplants ripen I need to replace the plants. IDK what happened to my peppers. I usually have more than I can handle. Not this year.

George was going to build another table height box for me but the poor dear broke the 5th metatarsal on his left foot. He is hobbling around on crutches with a boot. We see the orthopedic surgeon tomorrow. He will need surgery. Scheduling is always a problem because he has to get off of Coumadin before any surgical procedure. I hope this does not interfere with his bariatric surgery scheduled for 8/7.

[Gary350]

I canned 9 pints of tomatoes today. I rinsed the dust out of the jars that were in storage, inspected them, they are ready to fill with tomatoes. No need to sterilize jars in boiling water you can not kill germs twice.

I rinsed the tomatoes, sliced and dices them with the skins on the tomatoes. I am not removing skins or seeds, the skins have more flavor than the tomato. Sometimes I run tomatoes in the kitchen blender on high 60 seconds to turn skins and seeds to liquid.

No need to add, vinegar, lemon juice or anything to tomatoes it is rare to have a jar go bad in the pantry, I have not had a bad jar in 45 years. If you CAN low acid tomatoes pressure cook them at 15 psi you still don't need to add, vinegar or lemon juice.

I put on the seals & rings then put the jars in my 9 jar water bath Caner. My pressure cooker holds 2 more jars than the water pot so I am using it for water bath canning. I filled Caner with water 1/2" above the jars then turned on the heat. This new glass top stove barely gets hot enough to boil water it took an 1 hr 15 min to get hot enough to boil. 25 minutes of boiling I turned it off. It will be over an hour before I can remove jars from the water so I returned about 2 hours later. All the germs and bacteria will be dead after that, that is why jars do not need to be sterilized in boiling water waste of time.

Tomorrow I will rinse and dry the jars, put dates on the top. 9 new jars for the pantry.

[Gary350]

Another 14 lbs of tomatoes. Hot weather is not slow down production. I think planting my tomatoes under a shade tree worked better than expected. It was 97 degrees today, no rain in a week. Suppose to be 98 tomorrow. I never water my garden no matter how hot and dry it gets.

[Gary350]

7 more pints of canned tomatoes yesterday. We don't need anymore tomatoes we have 73 pints in the pantry.

[Gary350]

More tomatoes 15 lbs yesterday and 12 lbs today..

[Gary350]

This 95 degree weather does not seem to be hurting my tomato crop they just keep on comin.

[Gary350]

Can you see 33 tomatoes on this plant.

[JayPoc]

I'm just now "getting in the game". Had been onesy-twosy up till now..... BLT pizza here I come....

[jeff84]

dry hot weather actually improves the flavor. it causes the sugar concentration in the fruits to be higher. and a tomato plants root system is huge, they are still getting water even when the top ft of earth is dry as a bone.

[KitchenGardener]

That's why "dry farmed" tomatoes often go for a premium, because they have such concentrated flavor. Its bizarre though, to go to a tomato farm around here (Northern California) where they dry farm. There is typically no rain from April through November, so they are really dry farmed, lol. The farmers let the plants sprawl on the ground, so they look even more pathetic, but man, is the fruit great!

[Gary350]

That's why "dry farmed" tomatoes often go for a premium, because they have such concentrated flavor. Its bizarre though, to go to a tomato farm around here (Northern California) where they dry farm. There is typically no rain from April through November, so they are really dry farmed, lol. The farmers let the plants sprawl on the ground, so they look even more pathetic, but man, is the fruit great!

My Grandfather tough me to never water the garden make the plants grow large roots in search of water by the time it stops raining the roots will be down deep enough plants will have their own water supply. That is why I never have grass and weeds in my garden I keep them out with very little work until rain stops then it is impossible for weeds to grow back with the top 3" of soil dry as desert. Once you start watering plants your watering weeds too, garden plants become dependent and weeds become a nightmare. Concentrated tomato flavor is amazing like you said you can not buy tomatoes like this in the store. I do all the plants in my garden the same way, no water mostly because that makes the garden very close to zero maintenance.

When I lived in Phoenix area my best garden was planted in November irrigation was needed to get plants started because the top 4" of soil was dry dust with wet soil below. Once roots had grown deep I turned irrigation off until 90 degree April, May was 100 degrees too hot for plant, June to Aug 114 degrees plants were dead no matter how much water they got.

[Gary350]

I picked a 5 gallon bucket of tomatoes today. Close to 40 lbs.

[applestar]

That looks beautiful!

[Gary350]

How much Chili will 47 lbs of tomatoes make? LOL. My wife closed her eyes and said, I don't want to see anymore tomatoes. LOL. I have given all the neighbors and friend and family so many tomatoes no one wants anymore tomatoes. Even the homeless shelter won't take anymore tomatoes. LOL. Our pantry is full of tomatoes we don't need anymore tomatoes either.

I have not kept a very accurate account of how many tomatoes I have harvested this year but, starting about Jul 10th 12 lbs per day for about 2 week, about 20 lbs per day for 2 weeks, now 40 to 45 lbs every other day for a week. About 500 lbs total.

Dilemma now is what to do with more tomatoes? I sure hate to pull up 21 perfectly good tomatoes plants. Next week we are going to start camping again and may go to Michigan again for 2 weeks and plan to spend about 2 weeks in Colorado. Maybe we leave and let all the tomatoes fall on the ground. We still want to have a minimum of 1 ripe tomato every day until Christmas day. I am also ready to till the garden so I can plant a winter crop, 30 ft rows of, Napa, Kale, Garlic, Chard, Bok Choy, Beets, Peas.

This year my tomatoes did much better being planted under a shade tree. They got morning Sun until 12 noon by the clock. Sun is straight up at 1:10 pm.

[JayPoc]

Do you have a local mom and pop type grocery store? I bet you could work out a deal with the produce manager to sell some or swap them for other stuff. You could also put up a little table on the street...put out some maters and a coffee can and let people pay what they want or take what they want if they're hungry...

[Gary350]

Do you have a local mom and pop type grocery store? I bet you could work out a deal with the produce manager to sell some or swap them for other stuff. You could also put up a little table on the street...put out some maters and a coffee can and let people pay what they want or take what they want if they're hungry...

We have a farmers market 2 times every week. They charge $15 to sell there. If is spend the day selling $15 worth of tomatoes I wasted my time. I would rather give the tomatoes away free. WE love tomatoes we can't get enough they are good in lots of foods. Most people like tomatoes too but soon they are Over Dosed with too many tomatoes.

[Gary350]

Hot summer heat has put the slow down on the tomato plants they look 95% dead as they usually do this time of the year. I usually do nothing if most of the plants die I don't care all we really want is 2 ripe tomatoes every day until Christmas day. This year I did something different, I cut off everything that looked dead leaving the main stump of the tomato plant. I tilled all the dead stuff into the soil. Now the stump has grown new leaves and in a few more weeks it will have ripe tomatoes. With cooler weather on the way tomato plants will start producing lots of tomatoes again until we start having 40 degree temperatures at night. My whole garden is the compose I throw dead stuff down where every it happens to be then till in into the soil that is much less work than a compose pile, been there done that.

[ElizabethB]

Jealous

[Gary350]

I cut all my tomato plants back so they are only 3 ft tall they grew new leaves very quick. Now they will turn into a bush and have a lot more tomatoes. They have several blossoms and 1 plant has 1 golf ball size tomato already.

[Gary350]

August I planted new tomato plants from seeds. Fresh seeds from the ripe tomato germinate and make tiny plants in 3 days. I sprinkle seeds directly in the garden soil they need to be watered in August to grow. I had to water the plants for about 2 weeks for them to grow a good root system then they no longer need me to water them. 2 months later these plants are making tomatoes.

The tomato plants I planted in April suffered very bad this year in hot weather 98 degree heat some plants died. The remaining plants are making tomatoes again.

Tomato harvest from both old and new plants are small but all we want is 1 or 2 tomatoes for the kitchen table every day if possible. We had tomatoes for Thanksgiving dinner last year and Christmas dinner too. Maybe we will have tomatoes for Christmas this year.

[Gary350]

Pictures do not stay on Facebook very long that is why they are all gone. Here are last years tomatoes.