Hope you don't mind if I just C&P an answer from one of the previous discussions here on siphoning and its causes. NCHFP has a good table on the causes of siphoning/loss of liquid that may help (Carol linked that). One of the main causes is skipping the 10 min wait between removing the weight and removing the lid. Did you do that? You also want to wait several more min after removing the lid before removing the jars. Adjusting the heat source too much is also a common cause. Better to let it run a little high than to adjust too much trying to keep it pegged. Also check out the NCHFP How-To Use a Pressure Canner guide for step-by step instructions. Canner manuals are usually outdated on this info. Dave PS: NCHFP is also a better source of recipes as all there are tested and approved. Some the recipes at the source you used are not.

Jeff: I didn't mean to criticize you for deleting the post, I meant to complain about how the Houz version of the site is different from the old Garden Web. In answer to your question about what happens next, it takes about 6-8 weeks from the time a flower forms until it becomes a ripe fruit under ideal garden conditions. It's not unusual for the first flowers that form to fall off without forming fruits. Early girls can ripen a little sooner than beefsteak type tomatoes. Also, I would encourage you to stop worrying about a few bugs. Ants and grasshoppers won't hurt your plants, but too much hot sauce or dish liquid might hurt them. As someone said earlier, you're more likely to have problems with diseases than insects, and home made insecticides can make your plants more likely to get diseases by damaging the leaves.

San Marzano is indeterminate so yes will need caging/trellising. How is the bed situated? You can put them along the north side if that's the long side and make a trellis of EMT with rebar driven into the ground and conduit slipped over it, then clamped to the outside of the bed. You will need to prune them to get 8 plants in 16ft. If you have true Romas (a lot of mislabeling of any type of paste/plum shape as "Roma" out there) then they are determinates and could go along the south side of the same bed, I'd say 1ft in so good 3ft between them and the SM but if you have an unused bed that gets full day sun I think your tomatoes would do better if you split them between the beds to get more than 2ft between them. I plant mine 2ft apart but have very deep raised beds - 2ft deep of amended soil, 2-3 ft wide and a single row of tomatoes. I just built a new area with a 4ft wide center bed 2ft deep of composted manure (no native soil mixed in it at all) and am planting staggered rows of indeterminates app 18-20" apart as an experiment this year since my dad grows in a few inches of the same over his old side lawn (but my area was very rocky acid soil that was leveled and compacted with a bulldozer to put up a hoop house so I had to put compost on deeper). So I think your original plan would work if your raised bed is deep with well-amended soil, or if you had decent soil underneath that was double-dug or tilled to loosen it. But if you've got poor soil (the reason for raised beds to begin with?) and less than 12" of good mix in the bed, I'd give the plants more room - and more water - than they would take planted "in ground". Think of that type of bed as a big container. Don't prune the Romas if they are determinates. Oh, and don't worry about rooting suckers from the SM - you're not likely to have room for more plants. Though you could do it if you want to give some away to friends/family. If you do use both beds for tomatoes, you may want to put some slicing tomatoes in there - anything you like for fresh eating, I recommend determinates, not only may you want some for salads/sandwiches but a lot of people on the Harvest (canning) forum think sauce tastes better with a variety of tomatoes included. Just don't put any purple/black ones in unless you want mud-colored sauce (you'd be amazed at how 1 tomato can change the color of a whole batch) LOL! This post was edited by ajsmama on Fri, Jun 13, 14 at 9:25

ajsmama - I know right! I have to break out the ladder if I want to do anything with them. Drew51 - Wow! All of that looks good, so what you are doing works! I doubt I will ever get that ambitious, but that is a spread to aspire to. Daniel_NY - I trimmed branches and leaves near the bottom but I doubt it is 18" from the soil. They are also mulched to stop some of the soil splashing up. It is cypress mulch and I have heard the lecture, so you can save the keystrokes. : ) I read where someone here rotated between copper fungicide, neem oil, and serenade on a weekly basis. I couldn't find the serenade, so I started rotating the copper and neem when I transplanted. Once the plants got so big and was going through the copper and neem, I stopped. I haven't used either in 6+ weeks. The plant in the pic is the Mortgage Lifter that I have not cut out the yellow so I could post the problem here. The Lemon Boy was the one where I cut the yellow out and sprayed with copper and about a week after that with neem, but it steadily yellowed and died. I believe I was still spraying weekly at that point. I just watered for the first month since the potting mix had compost (and peat and coir-peat), then in May I fertilized with a full dose of MG 10-10-10 weekly. When fruit started to set in late May I switched to MG Tomato Food 27-27-27 weekly. I used MG since I had the 10-10-10 on hand and it was something that I was familiar with. I may use organics next season. I didn't weigh any of the fruit so I do not know how many pounds per plant, but I have ate myself silly, have about 12 pints frozen and have given lots away to several family, friends, and neighbors.