Last summer I massively over planted tomatoes. I made SO MUCH sauce that I thought we’d never finish it all in a year. I made ketchup. I gave away tomatoes, sauce, and tomato puree.
Yesterday, in a quick freezer survey, I realized there are exactly TWO! jars of sauce left from last year. Wow. But then it did taste ever so much better than store bought, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Heck, we hardly made pizza too, so most of it went into chili, and marinara, and the like.
I’ve got a pot on the stove right now simmering down most of this summer’s tomato harvest. After the bounty that was last summer I deliberately under planted tomatoes this year, and then with the screwed up weather we didn’t get as many per plant as usual. I figure I’ll get 5 or 6 jars of sauce from this years harvest if I’m lucky.
So I guess next summer I’m going to have to “over plant” tomatoes again. Probably want to kill myself by the time I finish processing them all, but obviously the sauce is worth it.
We’ve still not had a real frost here, though all that’s left in the garden is onions, carrots and covered hot pepper plants.
The Oxheart carrot is getting added to my regular carrot cycle.
We never did get a ripe Green Nutmeg Melon, the one I picked when the vine was dying back smelled really good, but either wasn’t as close to ripe as I’d hoped or else they don’t taste like much. I’ll have to decide if I want to try them again or not.
The White Leopard Melons are worth growing again.
I’m going to give up on the Melon Pear fruits, even cages the color change to ripe is still very subtle, and the couple I picked I wasn’t a fan of the flavor (but heck, I’m still not sure they were fully ripe).
The corn failed miserably, but I’m pretty sure that had more to do with a combination of things than anything specific. I’ll try it again, but maybe not next summer.
I was discussing with Husband the possibility of trying a variety of hot peppers again, mostly for the heck of it.
Maybe just go really basic next year. There’s a different variety of cucumber I want to try, but otherwise just do tomatoes, and hot peppers, and carrots, and a couple melons…..will have to see what catches my eye as I browse catalogs I think.
As I was putting down the plastic sheeting to smother the weeds it occurred to me that now that I have the soaker hoses for the garden watering there’s no reason I couldn’t leave the plastic in place next year and just cut holes to plant stuff in. With the soaker hose run under it the plants would get plenty of water and the plastic would do wonders to help keep the weeds down. Might have to try it.
I thought I canned too many last year, but then saw that we used all but 2 jars so I went ahead and did a little more canning this year. But sadly, it wasn’t my own tomatoes…I didn’t get nearly enough for ONE Mason jar lol…overplanting sounds good!
It was accidental last summer, omg, the number of tomatoes to process….I took to freezing them in gallon ziplocks till I had time to deal with them. My preferred tomato is the Black Plum and they’re highly prolific too, it was ALOT of tomatoes…..
I was right about this summer’s harvest though, 6.5 quart jars of sauce. Oh well.