Paste tomatoes

[Smart Red]

Amish paste is what I grew here this year. The summer has been good to them and I have more than enough for sharing.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

DD got a package of seeds from I think Italy from her sister-in-law who was traveling, so we started them this spring. The package called them San Marzano, but they did not look like my San Marzano. They look like a Roma, but had a million of them. In this bowl there are San Marzano and the other foreign San Marzano.

 

[seedcorn]

Marzano are shaped like a Roma. I'd describe them as a Roma selected for taste.

 

[Crazy Gardner]

Anxious to see what the garden produces late this summer. I may have gone a bit overboard when I planted 80 or more tomatoes. I did a few varieties including:
About 10 or 15 Big Mama's
15 or more San Marzano's
3 or 4 early girl
2 or 3 Big Boys
5 or so Better Boy
Some Independence Day
Some Canadian version of independence day called Manitoba, about 5 of them.
10 or 15 Roma

I did 2 rows spacing 2' apart with marigolds in between for pest control. This was July 8th and was weeded shortly after this pic was taken, sorry for the mess.
Dad is up at our camp now, I won't be back for 10 days or so, but I have pruned heavily taking a lot of suckers, and tied them up to the fence. My first year becoming tomato crazy, and I realize I have overdone it by at least a factor of 4. What i would like to know is for anyone growing Roma, San Marzano's and big Mama's - how many lbs do you get per plant on a good year? How many people would I need helping to process 800+ lbs of tomatoes if it comes through?

 

[canesisters]

Romas are still my fav. Have tried a few different ones but romas still out preform for size, solid-ness, ease of peeling.

 

[flowerbug]

Anxious to see what the garden produces late this summer. I may have gone a bit overboard when I planted 80 or more tomatoes. I did a few varieties including:
About 10 or 15 Big Mama's
15 or more San Marzano's
3 or 4 early girl
2 or 3 Big Boys
5 or so Better Boy
Some Independence Day
Some Canadian version of independence day called Manitoba, about 5 of them.
10 or 15 Roma

I did 2 rows spacing 2' apart with marigolds in between for pest control. This was July 8th and was weeded shortly after this pic was taken, sorry for the mess.
Dad is up at our camp now, I won't be back for 10 days or so, but I have pruned heavily taking a lot of suckers, and tied them up to the fence. My first year becoming tomato crazy, and I realize I have overdone it by at least a factor of 4. What i would like to know is for anyone growing Roma, San Marzano's and big Mama's - how many lbs do you get per plant on a good year? How many people would I need helping to process 800+ lbs if tomatoes if it comes through?

we've grown roma's a few times and they produce here about the same as the beefsteaks. so that means between 20-40lbs per plant. i don't know what your local conditions are like or what you normally get or how long your season is. when we had 30-40 plants it was too much and we gave a lot of canned tomatoes away. this year we are growing 15 plants of a new variety and not sure how well they're going to do with this weather and all. they look ok so far. as a rough conversion for lbs of fruit per quart canned we get about 7-8 quarts of tomato chunks per bucket of tomatoes. i can put up 20-30 quarts of tomatoes in 2-3 hours time (the condition of the fruit can change this quite a bit). juicing takes a little longer if we're doing that (we haven't been the past few years).

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don't have a clue how many pounds per plant I average. I never weight them plus the varieties i recognize that you planted are indeterminate, they should keep producing over a long period of time, depending on your growing season. That makes it hard to keep up with weighing. The same variety can produce much better for me some years than other years. I have no idea how much you will have to process, other than a lot.

How you process them can make a big difference in how long it takes or ho much help you might need, whether that is canned tomatoes, juice, spaghetti sauce, salsa, or something else. You can spend a lot of time cooking them down into sauce, let alone prepping them like coring or peeling them. The size of your equipment can make a big difference too, how many pints or quarts can you can at a time?

I can't give you any numbers but i think you will be real busy with tomatoes once they get started and some help will probably be appreciated.

If I don't see another of your posts, welcome to the forum. Planting like that i think you will fit in.

 

[Crazy Gardner]

Thanks for the replies. I had intentions of a few different options for the tomatoes, including salsa, and making sauce. I went all out last winter and got a .5 horse power tomato squeezer, and 2 big stainless pots 60 quart and 30 quart. Have yet to get some trays etc, but also collected nearly 800 or more mason jars for the canning. Need to find a good deal on lids next. I planted 3.5 rows of onions as well as just over 200 peppers of about 8 different varieties. Jalapenos, habaneros, hot & sweet banana, California bell, Thai chili, and likely more. The onions I planted in pods of 4, watched a video recommending that, and so far they look great.

The peppers account for about 1/4 of the 75'x64' garden space, and though they had a rough start, they are really picking up the pace with the warmer weather.

They were still struggling in this pic from a few weeks ago, but are coming along nicely now.

 

[seedcorn]

I am envious of such a nice, weed free garden. You should certainly be busy canning with that many plants. You must be feeding a village. Or a football team or two...

 

[Crazy Gardner]

I am envious of such a nice, weed free garden. You should certainly be busy canning with that many plants. You must be feeding a village. Or a football team or two...

It was a lot of work. Though my Dad and I are keeping it up, I did all the tilling, stone/boulder removal(which was a considerable task, last year I removed about 8 or 10k lbs of all sizes and shapes rocks and boulders). My Dad's cousin has a beef farm not far and gave my dad a bucket load of really well composted manure that I was able to spread and till in. That has likely made a big difference. My family went down with me the 2nd weekend of July for 4 days and it was pretty much all out for 3 days. One of the first time my kids and even my wife helped with weeding. That gave me the time I needed to prune and tie up the bulk of the tomato plants, and top trimmed the peppers. I waited all winter, and now that summer is here, it has breezed by so quickly that I'm not sure I'm enjoying how fast time is flying by., I think next year I will scale it down and try to do less, but it's a hard thing to do for me.
We did a lot this year though, my Dad and I setup 2 bee hives, planted 10 fruit trees, got the garden going, and did a bunch of work on the camp, so I should look back at the pics on my phone to remind myself of all that we accomplished.