Tomato Powder

Tomato Powder?  That sounds strange.  Never heard of it.  We'll talk a little about it tonight.  The tomato harvest was so plentiful this season, we ran out of jars!  They are still coming in and we are making and eating pico de gallo and many other tomato dishes as fast as we can, but they are still piling up.

Tricia is making a lot of dehydrated tomatoes with sea salt and rosemary and that gave her an idea.  She decided that we would dehydrate tomatoes and then blend into a powder and can it up.  First we had to purchase some additional trays for the dehydrator.  The silicone liners came in and Tricia made up a big batch of tomato sauce on the stove top.

This time instead of water bath canning the tomato sauce in jars, she poured into the new trays on the dehydrator and turned it on.  After a while, the tomato sauce looked like this:

I'm picking it up and it is dry.  The consistency is like that of Fruit Roll ups or fruit "leather."

The tomato "leather" was broken up and put in a blender where it turned into a rich, aromatic powder!

Here is a closer look at it:

What shall we do with tomato powder?  Well this table tells us:

If you mix equal parts powder and water, you get tomato paste.  1 part powder to 3 parts water, and you get tomato sauce.  You can also make soup and juice.  We are canning tomato powder up as well.  

A Fresh Garden Lunch

I'm picking a 2 gallon bucket of tomatoes every afternoon, trying really hard to stay ahead of the miserable stink bugs.  I wish Noah would have stomped on the two stink bugs when they boarded the ark.  When I bring them inside, I place them on platters on the island and let them finish ripening.  When they hit perfection, we eat them.  I'll show some of the other ways we use the tomatoes later this week.  We grow numerous varieties of heirloom tomatoes, so there is a wide assortment of shapes, sizes, and colors.

On Saturday Tricia decided to make BLT's for lunch.  She checked with me to see if it would be okay since for some strange reason, I cannot make myself enjoy eating raw tomatoes.   Each year I try.  She sliced big slabs of tomatoes that resembled steaks and got everything ready.

BLT - Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomatoes

I put a lot of Creole mustard on the bottom slice of bread and began assembling the ingredients to build the perfect sandwich.  A little yellow mustard on the top slice of bread and some salt and pepper to top it off.

I still don't like raw tomatoes by themselves, BUT this sandwich was just doggone good!  So simple and yet so delicious.  We'll eat more of these before the tomato crop comes to an end.

Lagniappe Seeds

"The best things in life are free.  The second best things are very, very expensive." -Coco Chanel

Lagniappe.  That means, "a little something extra or a bonus."  Who doesn't like getting free stuff?  I know I do.  Except the other day I got an email from Tractor Supply Company telling me that I could go by the store and get a free suet cake for Mother's Day.  I didn't go get my free suet cake to give to my mom or wife.  I think that is something for the birds.  It was a nice thought, but it didn't really pull me into the store.  I would have been there with the quickness if they had free feed.

In past years we would purchase our baby chicks from Murray McMurray Hatchery.  They would throw in a free "mystery breed" chick.  You wouldn't know what it was until it grew up.  It was always fun to try to figure out what it was.  We purchase many of our heirloom seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company.  With an order, they typically will throw in a packet or two of free seeds.  It is a great opportunity to try growing something that you would have never, ever grown before.  More on that in a minute...

Each afternoon I've been going out to pick fresh tomatoes.  We have been picking so many and have been eating a bunch.  Today Tricia put up 10 pints of stewed tomatoes.  We'll be doing that a lot.  I have noticed an increasing amount of stink bugs, however.  We'll see how the tomatoes fare against this formidable foe.

Back to the free seeds.  Last year I got a free packet of tomato seeds.  The label said "Black Vernissage Tomato."  Vernissage is a French word that originally meant 'varnishing,' but became known as a preview of an art exhibition or a private showing before it is opened to the general public.

So here is our "private showing" of just seven of the MANY Black Vernissage tomatoes we've been picking:

The Black Vernissage tomato is about the size of a golf ball.  Although the photo above that I took in the fluorescent light betrays its true color, it is a dark tomato with deep green stripes.  It is an indeterminate tomato and is a prolific producer.  It seems to thrive in the hot, humid weather and is not as susceptible to blossom end rot as my Amish Paste tomatoes are.  They are meaty and supposedly very good in sauces. 

For a free seed, this has turned out to be a very good deal.  This is an open-pollinated variety, so I'll be saving some of the seed for next year.  Maybe next year, I'll get a new free seed to try.

The Dreaded Tomato Hornworm

Jonah 4:7  But God appointed a worm when dawn came the next day and it attacked the plant and it withered.

The context of the verse above is that Jonah was sent to the city of Nineveh to tell the people to repent of their wickedness or their city would be destroyed.  When the inhabitants of Nineveh turned from their wicked ways and repented, God spared the city.  This angered Jonah.

Jonah found a plant (not a tomato plant, but a castor oil plant) and sat under it. This plant provided shade for Jonah and he enjoyed it.  Then comes the verse highlighted above.  Without the plant, Jonah was in great discomfort and longed for death.

God spoke to Jonah and questioned why Jonah could muster compassion for a mere plant that he did not tend nor cause to grow, but he could not show compassion for 120,000 people that God created, loved and desired His best for their lives?

The chapter ends there.  How could Jonah answer that?  Yes people are far more important than plants.

The photo above is one I took yesterday of a tomato hornworm.  He looks pretty ferocious, doesn't he?  He is about as big around and as long as your index finger, with "V" shaped markings along his side and with a scary looking spike on his rear end.  He has an appetite as ferocious as his appearance, too.  He is able to eat all the upper leaves off of a tomato plant faster than poop through a goose.  His coloration camouflages him so that he can do his dirty work for a while. Pretty soon, though, the leafless tomato plant, along with big caterpillar poop on the leaves below, alerts you to yet another nemesis in the garden.

I just pull them off with my fingers.  They aren't easy to pry off the tomato vine.  It is as if they have suction cups on their feet.  Finally, I pull him free from the fence and toss him over the fence to 100 hens waiting with bated breath for the fat, juicy, tomato nourished, delicious morsel.  The early bird does indeed get the worm and scurries off to try to gobble the caterpillar down without having to share it with another hen.  If I would have allowed him to grow, he would have eventually turned into a hawkmoth, but if I did that, I wouldn't have much of a tomato plant left, would I?  I pulled 3 off yesterday and another two the day prior.  One must be vigilant with caterpillars around, not to mention the squirrels we mentioned yesterday.

I have tended for the tomato plants since January of this year.  Right now I am battling squirrels, tomato hornworms, and stink bugs for a harvest.  It is not easy.  I do have compassion for the tomato plant (and contempt for the squirrels, hornworms, and stink bugs).  But it is just a plant.  People need compassion and need grace extended.  Just like Jonah at the end of Chapter 4, I need to examine my heart.

Transplanting Tomatoes into bigger pots

In this earlier post we shared an update on our tomato, pepper, and eggplant seedlings that we planted in little seed pots.  We planted 12 varieties of tomatoes and seven varieties of peppers.  They sprouted on top of the freezer in the utility room as I've discovered that the heat from the top of the freezer keeps the soil warm and allows a great growing area for seeds.  Once they sprout, though, the seedlings need light.  At that point I remove the four foot fluorescent light fixture that hangs above my work bench in the garage and bring it inside.

I have found that the very top of the cabinet in the utility room is a good place for raising young plants for several reasons.  First, hot air rises and it is warm up there. Next, the area is a perfectly sized space for the amount of plants I start indoors. Although there's no place to hang the light from, I carefully balance the light fixture atop some canned goods stacked on top of each other.  Finally, the cabinet top is out of the way.  I simply use a stool to climb up and stand on top of the washer and dryer to water and care for the little plants.

Tomato Seedlings under the grow light

Well, the plants are growing and look pretty good.  We had a few casualties, but that is to be expected.  The survivors have outgrown the little seed pots that served them well up to this point. There's not enough dirt in the seed pots to sustain a growing seedling that is pulling in the amount of water that a growing seedling takes in from the soil.  In the past few days, I've come home to wilted tomato plants from lack of water.  We can't have that.

They've outgrown the seed pots

So, it is time to re-pot them into a bigger container.  They are well past the cotyledon stage and have several true leaves that are growing upward to the grow light.  I rescued some Community Coffee cups from the trash at work.  I find that these are the perfect size pots to transplant the tomatoes into until the weather stabilizes and I can transfer them to the garden soil.  The residue remaining in the coffee cups also provides caffeine to the growing plants, giving them a solid, invigorating jolt of energy and give the tomatoes a rich, robust flavor.  I kid... I kid.

Caffeinated Tomatoes

I use a plastic fork to coax the seedling out of the seed pot, being careful not to damage the delicate roots.  Then I put the seedling with attached soil into the cup that's half filled with an organic soil mix and fill with extra soil until its full.

Carefully replanting the seedling

A liberal squirt of water will get the young plants happily growing in their new pot. I can't even think of putting these out in the garden yet.  First I'll have to harden them off for a week to get them used to the cooler temps and wind.  Then, it has been raining cats and dogs and the garden soil is saturated - way too wet for planting, not to mention the weather is still quirky and we had freezing temps as recently as last week.

Watering the newly planted tomato seedlings

One thing I'm noticing on the young plants is some yellowing of the leaves on some of the tomatoes. I think they are trying to tell me that they need some fertilizer.  I'll give them a dose of fish emulsion tomorrow.

Yellow leaves!

Tomato Seedling Update 2015

Tricia and I were discussing today how time flies.  We have two "kids" in college and our 'baby' will be starting high school in the fall.  They sure do grow up fast! Time flies by in a blur.  In addition to our kids and my waistline (from winter gumbo eating), there's something else growing - our tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant.

It was about 12 days ago in This Post where we talked about getting our seeds started and placing them above the freezer in our laundry room to sprout.  Each day I've diligently sprayed the soil with water when I get home from work.  It is nice and toasty atop the freezer.  I placed a thermometer and it is 77 degrees up there. Perfect for coaxing some slumbering seeds to awaken from their nap.  The top of the freezer is also a storage spot for our egg cartons.  Since Spring is on its way the hens have started to lay a few more eggs each day and soon all the cartons will be filled with fresh country eggs.

I listened to the weather report today about the snowfall in the northeast and I remember our trip to South Dakota a month ago with the frigid temperatures. Brrrr!  It makes me feel a little guilty to think that I'm getting a shovel to dig a bit in the garden to prepare to put in our Irish Potato crop and our neighbors to the north are using their shovels to dig their way out of the snow.

Well, here are our tomato seedlings, jumping up out of the ground with vigor.  I planted about a week and a half late and I think that they are making up for lost time.  

It's Grow Time!

It looks like the germination percentage is about 95%, except for one variety (Riesentraube), whose germination is only about 5%.  I don't know what happened there.  You can see that the tomato cotyledons (first leaves) are green and healthy. We won't transplant into larger containers until they put on their first true leaves.

Tomato cotyledons

Here is a list of the different heirloom tomato varieties we planted this year:

• Pink Brandywine
• Amish Paste
• Abu Ruwan
• Riesentraube
• Organic Beefsteak
• Black Krim
• Gypsy
• Black from Tula
• Big Rainbow
• Mortgage Lifter
• Thessaloniki
• Moneymaker

They are all open-pollinated, heirloom varieties.  Our favorite, by far, is the Black Krim!  As you can notice from the picture below, the seedlings grow toward the sunlight that floods through a window in our laundry room.  I need to pull down the shade, lest the plants get too "leggy."

Growing toward the sunlight

The peppers take a little bit longer to germinate and although we planted all of these seeds on the same day, the peppers are just now popping up.  These are the pepper varieties we planted this year:

• Buren Red Bell Pepper
• Cayenne Pepper
• Sweet Chocolate Pepper
• Purple Beauty Bell Pepper
• Anaheim Pepper
• Criolla Sella Pepper
• Jalapeno Pepper

Peppers Popping out of the soil

And finally, pulling up the rear, is the Eggplant.  If you look very closely, you can see the little seedling that is about to make its presence known.

Eggplant seedling

We'll keep a close eye on our seedlings and baby them until they are ready to transplant into a larger container.  The small seed pots they are in now don't have a lot of soil and they dry out quickly.  I normally will separate the seedlings when two or more are growing and transplant them each to one pot.  Then when the plants have grown and the risk of frost is gone, I'll replant them all directly into the garden row.