Tag Archives: tomatoes

Indoor Plant Starts

Here are my indoor plant starts for this year. The front row of cups are beef steak tomatoes that I saved the heirloom seeds from last year’s plants. I am so excited that they germinated so well. You can read more about saving tomato seeds here. The seeds were planted 12 days ago and many sprouted within just a few days.

On the back row on the left is a zucchini start. I planted two seeds in the cup but so far only one has sprouted but I had that happen last year too. Sometimes the seeds take extra time to come up.

The other two back row cups are cherry tomato plants that I started from store bought seeds.

As it is still cold at night here, these plant starts will continue to grow in my kitchen window until things warm up more. I will be transfering them into some bigger pots soon so the plants can have more room to grow. Then I will be hardening them off outside during the day until I can plant them in the garden outside.

Homemade Tomato Sauce Ideas

I had an abundance of tomatoes this year from my garden. I have made sauce, salsa, and frozen cut-up pieces of tomatoes. I decided that I was going to try a new idea where I processed the tomatoes and then froze the sauce in ice cube trays.
Tomato Sauce in Ice Cube Tray

First I cut up a big pot of tomatoes and cooked them for about 45 minutes.

Once the pot cooked down, next I put the tomato pulp through a food mill. The food mill removes most of the skins and seeds as shown in this picture.

I cooked the remaining tomato juice along with a bit of salt, pepper, sugar, and a few other spices (season as you desire) for about another hour. I cooked it over medium low on the stove top. This allows the juice to thicken up and now you can either put it in a jar or put it in an ice cube tray for freezing. The handy thing about freezing the tomato sauce into ice cubes is that you can add a few as needed to any recipe that you are making.

After freezing the tomato sauce in the trays, I did have to let it unthaw a little so I could get them out. Then I moved the frozen tomato cubes to a ziplock freezer bag to keep in my freezer until needed.

These are a few useful ideas for processing your homegrown tomatoes and saving them for use later. Don’t let all those tomatoes go to waste, cut them up and get them cooking so you can enjoy your own homemade tomato sauce this winter.

Tomatoes Wintered Over

I pulled all my green tomatoes in Mid October right before it frosted real hard. I put them in a box wrapped in newspaper and put them in the basement. I have done this for several years now and this method works pretty good for preserving and saving the green tomatoes for use later.

This photo is of a few of my tomatoes that I am still pulling out of the box this week for use. Some are a bit wrinkled but they sure taste much better than those store-bought plastic tasting tomatoes that you get at the store this time of year.

A few tips if you try this wintering over idea. Check the tomatoes frequently to remove any overripe or spoiling tomatoes from your storage box or bag. I normally just cut off the bad part if any and use the remaining tomato in making sauces or condiments. Also make sure you keep the box or bag in a cool, dry and dark basement or area for storage. I found this works best. This year I used long, low boxes which I found worked out very well for the tomatoes to be stored. If you stack tomatoes on top of each other they tend to spoil faster in my opinion. Use newspaper to wrap them separately as this helps extend the wintering over process.

It truly is enjoyable to eat my own fresh tomatoes in January from last year’s garden. I plan to expand on this wintered over tomato idea again this year.

Roasted Tomatoes

I had many green tomatoes still when it was time to pull up the tomatoes plants for the season. Just like last year, I saved all the green tomatoes and wrapped them in newspaper for ripening. You can read about those tips here. This idea works well and given a little time, the green tomatoes turn red while stored in a bag.

But on with this post and how I roasted some tomatoes that were ripe and needing processed. I have frozen tomatoes, made salsa and tomato sauce and used many of my tomatoes already this year. But I hadn’t tried roasting in the oven yet.

First I washed and cut up the tomatoes in about quarters. I placed them on a baking sheet that had just a bit of olive oil spread over it. I sprinkled the tomatoes with a dash of garlic, salt, pepper, and oregano. You can use any spices that you like to season your roasted tomatoes. I dribble a little more olive oil over the tomatoes and tossed them a bit to cover them with all the seasoning and oil.

Here is my pan ready for the oven.

Bake at 400 F degrees for about 30-40 minutes. Just check them at 30 to make sure them aren’t burning or overdone. I think mine took Continue Reading →

Garden Update

I haven’t posted in awhile and thought I’d share a garden update. It has been a challenging year with many of my seeds not wanting to grow very well. I had trouble with green onion seeds from two different companies that did not sprout. Then my tomato seedlings did not want to grow much after about an inch or two of development.

But I am having success with my zucchini plants. See photo above of the big one which I have already harvested several zucchinis from already. There is another little one on the upper right which is hidden somewhat. I planted this one later so to stagger my crop. I love zucchini and what to be able to have an on-going crop so I planted one early and another seed was started recently.

Next I want to share an interesting development that happened in a old wheelbarrow that I keep for composting in the garden. I just throw all sorts of composting material like coffee grounds, egg shells, veggie trimmings, and whatever else I might have to toss. Well about a month ago I threw in some cantaloupe rinds and seed pulp into this wheelbarrow. Guess what, I have several wild cantaloupes growing now. I cleaned up the area around the plants and have been watering them faithfully. Check out the photo below.

I have never grown cantaloupe and not sure if it’s very conducive to growing in our climate but I’m giving it a go. I can’t wait to see how this experiment turns out.

Here are a few more photos of my tomato plants. The one tomato plant in the distance was started from some later seeds so it is smaller. I hope it will have enough time to development. But the big one closest to the camera already has many green tomatoes on it. Continue Reading →

Stages of Ripening Tomatoes

As I wrote in my last post, I have lots of tomatoes ripening in various stages. I thought it might be fun to post a photo of the different stages of my ripening tomatoes. As you can see, I have very green tomatoes, to yellow, to orange, and finally to red.
Stages of Ripening Tomatoes

Here is my ripening green tomatoes post with some helpful tips on ripening any leftover tomatoes you may have from this year’s garden. Many of my stored green tomatoes have ripened. We will be enjoying homegrown tomatoes well into November from my stockpile of green stored tomatoes.

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