This page may contain affiliate links, which means if you purchase something through one of the links on this page, I may earn a small commission. This is at no extra cost to you, and helps me continue doing what I love.
Today I was able to can 7 quarts and 4 pints of tomatoes. It probably doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s more than I thought it would be. It was quite the surprise to discover that there was enough for a double batch instead of the single I anticipated. This particular recipe is from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving book I mentioned in a previous post. It’s tomatoes with mixed vegetables. We really like the combination of veggies in it (tomatoes, celery, onion, and green pepper), and it was nice to be able to can more this year. Our tomatoes haven’t been going crazy yet like they have in the past, but they’re still doing well.
In the past, we’ve always grown a hybrid variety like Better Boy. This year we grew almost all heirloom varieties. The one we grew the most of was called Rutgers – I wanted Brandywine tomatoes but we couldn’t find them. We also grew Yellow Pear (they look really strange – I’ll have to pick some and take a picture) and Mr. Stripey. The Yellow Pear have good flavor but are more of a salad tomato since they’re so small. The Mr. Stripey tomatoes are some of the biggest I’ve ever seen, but we haven’t gotten many off that plant at all. My favorite this year though was the Sweet 100 – it’s not heirloom but those tomatoes are so sweet. They’re marble-sized and I eat them right off the vine when I’m in the garden. They taste amazing. Those are definitely on my list to grow again next year.
Usually we just buy half a flat or so of the same variety, but this year we changed things around quite a bit. We followed the garden in a day plan so Samuel could have his own garden, and let him pick what tomatoes he wanted (he picked Better Boy and Sweet 100). For mine I picked Yellow Pear and Better Boy because Samuel wanted another one. That raised bed garden (we doubled the garden’s size and then split it) did really well and was fun to plant.
The majority of our canning tomatoes are in the main garden with everything else. We changed that around too – we’ve been reading and experimenting with intensive gardening and raised beds. We are absolutely thrilled with the results. Our garden isn’t much to look at this year, but we’re getting more produce out of the same amount of space as before. What a blessing!
I didn’t do a garden at all this year. I’m glad you were able to get some tomatoes to can!
If Stephen weren’t here to do so much of the work, I wouldn’t have been able to do the garden either. 🙂
I love hearing about your garden. I really want to get one going we live in a small city so not alot of space…do ya’ll do a fall garden? And if so what do you grow?
Have a blessed day!!
Christie
We haven’t done a fall garden in the past, though we usually get to harvest pretty late in the season depending on what we planted. We talked about it this year – we wanted to do broccoli, some lettuces (or at least just spinach), and another planting of beans and/or limas. That said, we haven’t gotten anything else into the ground yet so it may be too late. I’m not really sure.
For the space issue, take a look at The Backyard Homestead. There’s a lot of good information in there that you can use for small spaces. We experimented with raised beds and concentrated plantings within wide rows, and it worked great. If we were to ever have a smaller plot to work with, that is definitely how we’d do it.