The best of the best tomatoes

[Beekissed]

Bee, I'll have to try a batch of salsa, skin on, pulsed. It couldn't possibly get any easier than that!

It's great for fresh salsa also....makes a more smooth texture for those who don't like chunky salsa. I love chunky salsa, especially when it's fresh, but my boys don't like the chunks.

You can just pulse the blender for a more chunky consistency. Sure puts one into a fresh salsa real quick and in a hurry. I use the smaller container on my ninja for that purpose but the larger for canning large batches.

These beefsteak don't tend to have thick skins like the hybrid, smaller tomatoes, so the skin is not tough or bitter and is easily incorporated into the tomatoes.

 

[Beekissed]

A gal in our area takes the pulp, seeds and skins from her tomato processing and puts them in her dehydrator. She showed me these small 'chips'. From those chips, she buzzes them to make tomato powder that's used in soups, spaghetti sauce, where ever.
And here I thought I didn't throw anything away.

I made tomato powder like that one year but it yielded so little powder for soooo much dehydrating that I questioned the efficiency of it. I think I'd rather sun dry all of that stuff instead so as to save on electricity and still get a good yield. May do that this year if I can get my act together.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

I live pretty far south and about a gunnery years or so ago- I always direct sowed everything. Lots of tomatoes and peppers too. Then someone told me you aren’t supposed to do it that way. I wonder why I listened to them, lol. I had great gardens back then.

 

[Beekissed]

Great thread, LG!!

I have a few favorites we've planted down through the years and we still use them. Some we've used in the past and really like but tend to plant mostly the favorites.

Pink Brandywine is my all time favorite of all tomatoes~on nearly every list of top favorites for flavor, the Brandywine will always make the list. It's a beefsteak variety that yields well and the tomatoes are always wonderfully flavored. Great for slicing, canning, etc. I also love the yellow and red Brandywine....Mom particularly loves the yellow due to the extraordinary sweetness and low acidity. Some HUGE tomatoes, some medium large, but always a good producer, disease resistant and produced far up into the fall.

Yellow Stripey~another beefsteak variety we love with similar traits to the Brandywine but more like the yellow variety, very sweet, large and beautiful. Good yields, some giant fruits, some medium but still producing far up into fall.

German Giants~ another beefsteak variety that we love. Love the flavor, love the yield, love the disease resistance. Some really big fruits, some medium, all lovely for slicing, canning, etc.

Why so many beefsteak varieties, you may wonder? Because we love eating tomatoes as a meal..yes, just a big ol' tomato all by its lonesome, a little salt and pepper, a slice of sweet onion and we are set. We love how they are more meat than seed and we love their beauty, flavor and yield.

For canning up a LOT of tomatoes, as we used to when living off grid and kids still at home and living almost entirely out of the cellar, we used to have varieties like Better Boy, Big Boy, Mortgage Lifter, Jetstar, Early Girl, etc. All good growers and producers with a decent flavor and high yields.

Paste...we've always used Roma and never really tried anything else as they always gave us what we needed in that area. We don't make many sauces or pastes in our canning but this year I may can some of them whole and use them as a stewed tomato item.

Cherry, we normally like Sweet One Hundreds or Sweet Millions and they live up their name....tons of fruit, sweet as can be. We normally have way more than we can give away or use, even if we only plant one or two of these.

I've tried the Pruden's Purple here and it got blight, plus I didn't really enjoy the flavor, so won't be doing it again. I've tried other of the more popular heirloom varieties as well and they just never did well here...the beefsteak heirlooms, on the other hand, do very well in these parts, so we keep coming back to those.

Tried a New Yorker that a friend sent me last year and it did the most poorly of any tomato I've ever planted, so must do well there but not really here in WV.

 

[Lazy Gardener]

For canning up a LOT of tomatoes, as we used to when living off grid and kids still at home and living almost entirely out of the cellar, we used to have varieties like Better Boy, Big Boy, Mortgage Lifter, Jetstar, Early Girl, etc. All good growers and producers with a decent flavor and high yields.

So, If I'm hearing you correctly, you can these varieties? How do you prep them? I assume they have much more liquid than the pastes. Do you do anything to remove the "whey" before canning? Or do you simply toss them into the jar, and HWB them????

 

[Lazy Gardener]

Sounds like I'll be experimenting with some of my slicing tomatoes. I think the skin makes the finished product a bit more bitter. Even though I'm tossing a lot of nutrition with the skins, and doing more work, I prefer to do so. However, I convert the skins to eggs!

 

[Lazy Gardener]

Bee, I'll have to try a batch of salsa, skin on, pulsed. It couldn't possibly get any easier than that!

 

[Lazy Gardener]

@Marianne , that dried tomato powder must be LOADED with lycopene!

 

[sumi]

Sumi, I'd not even consider direct sowing tomatoes or peppers, even if I lived in the deep south... Too many hungry bugs. Though, giving that black and white statement a second thought... I will confess that SOMETIMES, self sowed tomatoes perform fairly well. You might do a bit of a google search on Winter Sowing. This would be perfect for you.

Thanks!

 

[Beekissed]

I've had many volunteer tomatoes come up and some I've left to see how they do...the only ones that really seemed to produce were a really pretty grape style tomato, quite large for a grape tomato, and I have no idea from whence THAT seed came, as I've never planted anything like that.