Here They Come
The heirloom tomatoes are coming in hot & heavy. The ‘Ten Fingers of Naples’ have been the MVP of the season. I’m super impressed with the vines, the fruit, and the harvest.
The heirloom beefsteaks are coming in strong, I have multiple varieties ripening daily. I’m happily gifting them to friends and gobbling them up at every meal. My favorite way to eat them is sliced with a little sprinkle of sea salt.
This year I also grew a wide variety of small cherry type tomatoes. The most beautiful ones are the Bumblebee varieties, there are three of them: ‘Sunrise’, ‘Purple’, and ‘Pink’. They’re lovely little beauties with great flavor and good production.
Now the race begins to preserve the bounty. I don’t do much canning at all, but I always make a batch or two of tomato soup for the pantry and some jars of whole tomatoes. My ‘Principe Borghese’ tomatoes get dried in the oven like sun dried tomatoes. I love using them throughout the winter, their intense tomatoey flavor is perfection! Overall, the tomato season has been wonderful this year. I’m hoping to get out to get a few more photos of the different varieties I’m growing to give you a full report, right now getting all these lovelies into jars take priority.
What’s your favorite kind of tomato to grow?
Filed under Around the Garden, harvest | Comments (5)
We ended up with a beautiful mix of tomato plants this summer, and as always the small cherry/pear tomatoes have set a ton of fruit. My favorite is a black cherry tomato (variety name unknown) that has a wonderful flavor, almost as though it’s been pre-salted. These are being eaten raw, but also being slow-roasted in the oven with some garlic and herbs to be tucked into the freezer for the long winter.
to JJ's comment
Those bumblebees are so cute! My new varieties this year are indigo rose (I like them okay) and black prince (which I LOVE, and are replacing cherokee purple from here on out). Thanks to you I now grow the principe’s every year and dry a ton of them. My favorite paste this year is the speckled roman, they are super prolific, very nice deep red flesh with orange stripes (so pretty in a salad), and while they are kind of thick-skinned it makes them easy to peel for canning projects.
to S's comment
How do you dry tomatoes in your oven….could you do a tutorial?
to Susan Ingle's comment
I’ve grown, among many others, Jetsetters for several years. The flavor is good but I grow them mainly because they are so reliable. No matter the weather, they always come through. I love Juliet, a large grape tomato, for slicing on salads, adding to my large tomatoes for canning because they are so meaty, or just for snacking. I LOVE Sunsugar, a golden cherry that my family eats like candy because they are so sweet. And another favorite is Polish Linguisa, an heirloom paste tomato. It’s a homely tomato, the shoulders crack and turn an ugly yellow or just stay green, and the vines are very prone to septoria leaf spot. But, it is meaty without being mushy, juicy and sweet. They are perfect for topping bruschetta (“tomatoes and toast” as my husband calls it!), canning, roasting, or my favorite, sliced with a sprinkle of sea salt!
to Tonya's comment
This year I grew Green Zebra (not a favorite), Costoluto Genovese (awesome, heavily ribbed with a sweet/tart flavor. Good for sauces/fresh eating) and Coppia.
Now, the coppia blew me away. It’s a big, meaty orange tom with red stripes. I pulled one the other day that was a pound and a half – just a big mother of a tomato. And it’s gorgeous to look at, and amazing in flavor. I’ll grow the Genovese and Coppia next year along with a common paste tomato for sauces and sundried.
This is my favorite time, you know? Pulling toms and making sauce (I use Margaret Roach’s recipe from A Way To Garden). I eat out of the garden all summer into fall, but when the toms are ripe, I feel like a read gardener. :-)
Happy Tomato Season!
to Lindsey @ HerbandFlowerSoapCo's comment