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Growing Tomatoes

How do you preserve your harvest?

16 years ago

Hi All! I'm asking for you to post your receipes so all will be able to try different ways to preserve the fruits of their labor. In the past we only cold pack canned tomatoes but are open to freezing if we can get instructions on the processes. We tried one of our friends methods and feel there most be meny methods and receipes in use today.

A couple of pics to show what we have so far.

The frozen ones.

The canned ones. With hot peppers and garlic.

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Comments (7)

jimm_sc
16 years ago
We wash and quarter toms and run them through a Victorinox food mill. Puree comes out one side, peels and seed come out the center. We freeze the puree in heavy guage zip-lock bags laid flat. Very efficient use ofstorage space.
Jim
lisalu
16 years ago
Wow, what a haul you have! Nice harvest.

I froze my tomatoes, I don't do canning. I blanched and peeled them, then quartered them and removed the pulp over a sieve. I then coarsely chopped them and froze them in freezer bags. I pressed all the air out of the bags and froze the tomatoes in slabs. I figured they would freeze quicker and thaw quicker that way, plus avoid freezer burn.

The juice left from sieving the pulp I used for drinking and cooking.
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Okay, so here's the whole procedure... I carry the totes out into the sunshine and let it sit for an hour or so (allowing the surface to heat up and dry out enough that the majority of the worms are inclined to go deeper) then I begin by scraping about a 1-2" layer off the top of each bin and putting that into the screened frame I have sitting on top of the wheel barrow. I then shift the castings around back and forth until most of what's going to pass through the 1/4" screen has done so... by then maybe 20-30 minutes has elapsed and I'm back to the first bin and I simply repeat the process perhaps another 7, 8, or 9 times to the point where I begin to run into much larger populations of escaping worms. Whenever the wheel barrow gets near filled I go dump it in the garden... this happens like three times for 90 gallons. Then I stop... put the bins back in the shade and add 4-6" of coco coir and top it with shredded paper and put the lids back on. Then I go inside and collapse for a few. That's the whole process... it takes up a goodly part of my day. I'll estimate I "lose" maybe 5-10% or so of the worm bin population to the garden in the process... a win-win for those worms and the garden plants wouldn't you think? Its only a broad guesstimate mind you but I likely have 4-5 lbs of worms in each bin to start with so whatever is lost is going to be good for the remaining population in their reduced post-harvest bedding volume and I assume they are to be quickly replaced... Think about this... I'll grab out a gob on occasion just to feed to my koi (if you dig around in a bin you can usually find a ball of pure worms without getting all the castings in-between, those are the ones I scoop up to feed to the fish... I limit it to usually no more than a hundred or so per feeding). I don't sweat the losses since each bin is so large and densely populated that their numbers are easily buffered by littler ones to absorb those losses. Remember because population growth is exponential its only the percentage of loss that one should focus on and not the actual count of individual worms lost in the process.
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trudi_d
16 years ago
I make sauce and either freeze it or can it.

T
digdirt2
16 years ago
lkittle - Check out the Harvest Forum (linked at the top of this forum page). All forms of tomato preserving is heavily discussed there right now and there are many, many recipes and lots of tips on how-to's and safety measures.

You'll be amazed at all the info there. ;)

Dave
sunsi
16 years ago
I freeze the tomatoes whole and when they defrost the skin slips right off then I chop them and put in the pot for sauce. Add tomato paste to take up the water from the tomatoes then add your spices.
trudi_d
16 years ago
Today I cut toms across their equator and squeezed out the seeds, then the halves went into a pot of boiling water for about twenty seconds which was more then enough time to loosen the skin, it also rapidly blanches the flesh.

I took out the halves with a strainer and put them into a colander under cold running water. I next slipped off the skins and squeezed the tomato through my fingers which crushed the flesh and forced out the stem knot. All of it went into a container while I did more batches.

After all the tomatoes were seeded, blanched, skinned and crushed I drained off the extra moisture which had pooled at the bottom of the container. I filled sandwich sized ziplocs with the crushed toms, squeezed out any extra air, and into the freezer they went.

For me, this was simple mass production and took care of a peck of toms in about an hour from start to finish--including washing the pot, strainer, colander, container and sink.

T

PS--wear your ancient old t-shirt when doing this because skinned and lightly cooked toms are very squirty when you squoosh them through your fingers. Afterwards I looked like a Jackson Pollock painting ;-O
hunter_tx
16 years ago
I make tomato sauce or slice and dehydrate them.
Mrs H

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