Canning tomatoes, varieties and help!

[Bettacreek]

So, I know that amish paste was recommended for canning. I have a few more specifics this time around, now that it's actually time to get my seeds started. I need one that I can get seeds from to restart next year, as well as to trade. I also want a prolific one, one that I can get a good harvest from, obviously. Also, I just read about indeterminate vs. determinate, and I think I want determinate ones (ones that you don't really have to stake, and produce fruits all in one go). Any help or advice would be appreciated. Does the amish paste fit the bill? Any others that would fit it better? A yellow tomater might be interesting as well.

 

[vfem]

Maybe stupice? Or Park's Whooper?

 

[old fashioned]

I haven't tried Amish Paste but I do know they are heirloom and should be great for seed saving with no trouble. According to Baker Creek description, it says they (Amish Paste) are a Roma type.
I grew one Roma plant last year along with 4 Pink Brandywine, 1 Black Krim, 1 Mortgage Lifter, 2 Siletz, 4 Heartland (hybrid-not so good for seed). Roma's and their types are determinates, great for canning because all or most of the fruit will ripen within a few days if you leave them alone. The ripe fruit holds well on the vine while waiting for the less ripe to catch up, without being soft/overripe. Other types (like those above-I grew for fresh eating) usually need picked regularly or they get mushy.
What I'm trying to say is that I got more harvest off the one Roma plant than all the others combined-in one picking! Definately got more fruit than plant.
As for the plant growth, it (Roma) did some sprawl but nothing compared to the tomato jungle I had with the others. Mostly plants that took over everything within 3-4 ft with a few fruits at any one time.
Good canners are the ones with more meat than juicy seed pockets and are longer than they are around and that usually means a plum type like Amish Paste, Roma, San Marzano (doing these this year), etc. But when I'm canning, I'll throw in all tomatoes available no matter the variety to fill the canner.
I'm thinking you'd get what you're looking for in any of these paste varieties.
Hope this info helps. Happy planting! :happy_flower

 

[patandchickens]

Any tomato cans just fine if you are not fussy about how watery the product is. If you don't mind, use whatever you feel like growing - I suppose Stupice or Whopper would be fine although they seem like slightly odd choices. But then there is nothing wrong with canning odd choices if that's what you like to grow - my mother does all the jars of stewed tomatoes that she puts up using Early Girl and Better Boy, which are not exactly the usual suspects for canning

However, if you are really serious about getting the densest product (e.g. very solid whole-pack tomatoes, or the thickest tomato sauce with the least amount of simmering-down required), stick with something from the paste tomato family. I would suggest picking a variety that you are pretty sure you have easily PLENTY length of season to get maturing, because IME if use one that crops too late in your season, you don't get a very productive harvest.

As far as wanting something determinate, though... do you have a freezer? Cuz if you have a freezer you do not need a lot of tomatoes all at once. (And quite frankly, IME even determinate tomatoes don't produce all-at-once enough to avoid doing either a lot of small batch canning or a lot of freezing). Tomatoes can wonderfully from the freezer. As a plus, you don't have to boil them to slip the skins, the skins come right off as the tomato thaws

So, particularly if you want something non-paste to put up (like yellow tomatoes), you may very well be able to use a normal indeterminate variety after all

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Ridgerunner]

There are all kinds of different tomato varieties out there. I think it is important to find out which grows well in your area that is the type you want for your purposes. I grow a lot of different types but I have a lot of different purposes. I can tomatoes, tomato paste, pizza sauce, tomato puree, and vegetable soup mixes. I slice tomatoes for sandwiches, eat them on salads, chop fresh ones to cook with, or just pick them to eat fresh from the garden. I grow mostly indeterminate but will have Sweet Tangerine and Rutgers (thanks, BrokeDownRanch) in my mix. I grow red, yellow, black, purple, and occasionally orange. I grow paste, plum, slicers, beefsteaks cherries, juicers, a wide variety. They all can well and make good sauce, but yes they have different qualities and consistencies.

My determinates do not all totally produce only one time but will continue producing, just not as prolifically. I find it beneficial to stake my determinates for a couple of reasons, both due to disease. If you stake them, they can breathe a little better at ground level, letting them dry out so they are not as disease prone. Getting them up of the ground also reduces the chance that they will get the blight. (I also heavily, strongly, emphatically believe in mulching to keep the rain from splashing blight spores up on the plants. I probably should emphasize the mulching more. Oh, well.) I do not prune the determinates but do the indeterminates. Different growth habit. Different people do different things.

I use two versions of Pat's freezer method. I wash and let dry all the tomatoes that I am going to freeze. The "perfect" ones I put in zip lock bags and freeze them. When I thaw them out to use, the skin slips off extremely easily. However, for the "not perfect" ones, the ones that have flaws I do not want to go into whatever I am canning or cooking, I cut out the flaws, including the stem end, put them in the zip locks, and freeze them. When they thaw, they are so soft and mushy I cannot remove the flaws orth eskin off these. For the ones I cut up before freezing, I always use these for sauce or puree, something that goes through the food mill. I can remove most of the skins while cooking them (they tend to separate and float to the top and I'm stirring it a lot to keep it from sticking anyway) and the rest come out in the food mill.

We all do things differently for different reasons. Just thought I'd share some of mine. My ways are not necessarily any more right than anybody else's. They are just the way I do it.

Good luck. Experiment and have fun!!!

 

[Rosalind]

I tried the old standby San Marzanos for a few years. They are good, work well enough, make a very nice pizza/pasta/soup tomato, quite productive. Amish paste also good.

But honestly, the very best canned tomatoes I've made, I used all sorts of odds and ends of whatever tomatoes were available. Couple of garlic cloves, couple of basil leaves, 1/2 tsp. salt per quart. Run half through the food mill, fill up the can with whole tomatoes and seasonings, top up with the milled tomato goop, can as usual. That's it, came out fabulous. I can go through about 50 quarts of tomatoes per year, no problem, and that's, what, a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes till all is said and done--for two adults who eat pizza or pasta about once a week.

So I'd say, get whatever you like and can grow easily. You'll use more than you think.