After years of moving all over the place we finally have the space and rights (a lot of times we were renting) to dig a garden! This is our first real garden, we’ve had plants in pots before but nothing in the ground and nothing this big.
For part of our garden this year we did 50+ tomato plants of various kinds. Given that we use them for salsa, sandwiches, salads and had plans for canning our own spaghetti sauce, Romas accounted for nearly half of the planted crop, with Cherokee, Yellow Pears, and others filling out the rest.
We planted them in a three straight lines, ~2 feet apart with 4" wire mesh to provide stability. (We learned this is wayyy too close as they grew so thickly we couldn’t reach the middle row!) Marigolds were also spaced around the tomatoes to provide natural bug protection.
Unfortunately our plan to mulch the garden with straw didn’t work out. Somehow everyone we talked to was out of straw for the season! We decided to go ahead with planting anyway and see what we could get from our first year.
The next problem was pretty soon after planting we left town for a couple weeks for a family reunion and a wedding. :) it was great family time, but our young garden definitely suffered from lack of attention.
When we returned from our trips, the weeds were about 4' tall!!! Nearly all the small garden plants (lettuces, kale, spinach, cabbage, beets, carrots, bush beans, peppers, etc) were choked out. However, despite our lack of weeding, the tomatoes thrived. They are a bit spindly, and had to be tied to the mesh later since we weren't there to guide them through the fencing, but they are giving a good enough yield that we are enjoying garden fresh tomatoes regularly!
As more and more tomatoes ripen, and half our numbers are gone for another family trip, we decided to put off the adventure of learning to can until next year (or at least later in the fall when everyone is home) and try freezing the tomatoes for now.
If this smaller experiment works out, we're planning to grow a lot more tomatoes in 2018, and hopefully fill our food storage needs for the year with some to share!
I would like to try growing tomatoes on what we've dubbed the 'squash arch' next year to hopefully provide better support, and make harvesting much easier. It’s worked like a dream for the squash this year, keeping it off the ground so it’s all nicely shaped and away from the bugs! If we do so, the current arch (10' long) will have to expand at least 10 fold!
Despite the empirical evidence that we still have a good amount of learning to do with growing tomatoes, we now have some in the freezer with more on the way! We still have a lot to learn but already our plans for next year's garden are falling into place.
~The Process ~
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| Grow the tomatoes! Provide plenty of support, sun, water, and bug protection. |
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| Roma tomatoes slated for tonight's processing |
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| Rinse the tomatoes, and then boil for 1 minute |
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| Give them an ice bath |
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| Skin and quarter / segment them |
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| Since we don't have a vacuum sealer, we just used freezer bags and sucked the air out. We ended up sucking some of the juice out - garden fresh tomato juice is quite tasty! |
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| And just because I didn't think you can ever get too many goat pictures, here is Buttercup letting one of the teenage chickens rest on her back. |
