(Many thanks to my fabulous photographers, Rylie and Ryan, for some of these shots!)
Isn't it wild that you can take a tiny start of a tomato plant, put it in the ground, water it and feed it and in a few short months it will yield an incredible amount of fruit? So much so that even if you ate salad everyday there would still be many many leftover. When our first tomato ripened back in June, the kids were so excited that Rylie picked it off the plant and ate the whole thing on the spot like an apple. Since then, the tomatoes have been rolling in daily, and her zeal has significantly waned. She is now exclusively eating the super sweet lemon cherry tomatoes, and passing on the larger, and admittedly less tasty, beefsteak tomatoes. I've been enjoying eating a tomato by itself here and there, especially the very flavorful and superbly sweet orange Kellogg Breakfast Heirloom. Our plants have grown so big and have yielded so much fruit. Ah...it makes me so very happy.
A sort of funny little side note. I had purchased 5 tomato starts at the beginning of the season, and 3 more last month. A few of the first 5 plants that went into the bed, really shot up and grew so quickly. They were as high as the garage! I had definitely not had tomatoes grow that tall before, I was also hesitant to prune them much, as my preservation instincts were keen, and I really wanted to let nature do its thing. The spot where the tomato bed lives is in the narrow passage between the back of the garage and the fence that runs along our property line. In this spot the air flow is a little less than say in the big open backyard. The limited air flow, the fast growing and bushy leafiness of the plants, and on very busy days it would be dusk before I got out to water the garden and so the soil would remain wet over the cool nights - wound up producing a bit of mildew on the leaves of one plant. Which, if you know anything about growing tomatoes, quickly spread through the whole plant and all the other neighboring plants. Oh, foolishness! I'll just have to chalk that up to learning. It's humbling, this gardening gig. Luckily, after a thorough pruning, some the leaves and all of the fruit have survived and we've still been able to enjoy a hearty harvest this year.
For the suace, in the past I've followed the recipe from the book, Canning for a New Generation, which is great and mostly all tomato, this time I used this recipe because it included lots of enticing herbs that I also had growing in the garden. It went well - I've made two batches of it now and have plenty of tomatoes left for harvesting more (even while leaving plenty to use for eating sun-warmed right of the plant.) So far, I've been freezing the quarts, but if I make much more I will be canning them to preserve the goodness for days that feel decidedly less fruitful.
And what will we make with the rest of those tomatoes? So far we've been enjoying it quite simply with pasta. I'm pretty excited about canning tomato paste, homemade salsa, and pizza sauce, and oh my the possibilities are endless, aren't they? Just from one little seed in the ground.