The Spring Tomatoes are Officially Done

This afternoon I cut down the twine support from our Florida Weave Trellis that supports our tomatoes and pulled up the t-posts that anchor the trellising system.The tomatoes were about done.  I stacked up the cut vines and I'll compost them.  First, I threw the remaining tomatoes that were ravaged by stink bugs to the chickens.  They gobbled them up with the quickness.

Overall, we had a really nice crop this year.  If I had a "do-over" I would have transplanted them into the garden a couple of weeks earlier.  Early tomatoes don't have to deal with the heat and bug pressure, but you run the risk of frost damage. We ate plenty of tomatoes sliced.  We made lots of pico de gallo.  We made Italian tomato salad. We put up many pints of stewed tomatoes.  We put up many quarts of salsa.  Here's a few other things we did with the tomato crop:

We cut up the tomatoes, sprinkle with kosher salt and fresh rosemary, and put on the dehydrator overnight.  Here is a post that explains how to do it step by step either in the oven or in a food dehydrator.

The flavor is concentrated and the rosemary adds a nice flavor to the dried toms. They are almost like candy.  We store them in either pint jars or Zip Loc bags and snack on them all the time.

I almost forgot to mention that we also made tomato sauce.  It is a pretty easy task that involves blanching the tomatoes, removing the skins, coring out the stem and any blemishes and then cooking them down.  We use an immersion blender to puree the tomatoes once they've cooked for a while.

We let the tomatoes continue to simmer for hours until its reached the consistency we're looking for, then it is time to put them in jars, top with salt and a tablespoon of lemon juice and then process in a water bath processor.

In most canned tomato sauces they must run the tomato sauce through a sieve to remove the seeds, but we always skip that step and can it with the seeds.

We finished up with a nice little batch of tomato sauce and this should build up our inventory in the pantry and hold us over until the fall tomatoes come in.

Now that the rows of tomatoes are pulled up, I'm thinking about what to plant in that space.  Right now, purple hull peas seem like the logical choice.  It's almost time to plant the fall crop of tomatoes!