Nice photos. There are a good one - for a paste tomato. But have to ask, why the focus on paste types when so many better tasting ones are available? I also assume you know that BER is more hydration related than low Ca related?

Dave

thank you dave. well, i lean toward the paste types because we have a spaghetti sauce we make every year. it is a recipe 20 some years in the making(stuff evolves, you know? add this, subtract that until you get what you want).

in years past, we only grew romas...and anything from the garden tastes better, so we didnt realize how bland and tasteless they were. the first batch of sauce we made from san marzano and costoluto genovese...i cant wrap my head around how much better it is.

i have some jars from last season yet and when you put them side by side, the stuff from this year is bright fire engine red. the roma sauce is more reddish orange. we dont eat raw ones. maybe the occasional burger topping, or rarely in a salad.

i have several varieties...grew out 4 this year and will probably only keep the redorta to grow again. kind of an oversight on my part, but i could stand an earlier finisher. the ones i grew this year all are later finishers. going to try some anna russian, opalka, paul robeson, petit cuor di beouf and japanese black trifele next year along with the redortas. i realize some of these varieties are 80 day-ish. was more looking for a 65, which was what anna russian was said to be. we shall see.

as for the BER issue...i wasnt aware that it was a hydration thing. calcium always seemd to really help the romas, and i had read several articles stating that calcium deficiency was a primary reason for it. is it from lack of, or too much? at the time the mana leone's went bad...it was wet as we had been getting rain twice a week.

thank you for the tip on BER, -much- appreciated. what are your thoughts on great tasting sauce tomatos? i really dont like to cook things down for hours on end, so the paste types are really the cat's pajamas for me.

brian

Saurus .... very nice fruits. I bet they do make the base for some wonderful sauce.

Typically we make sauce out of anything we like .... not just paste types.

But ...... I've grown Redorta and it did great here. Loved it. Its been several years. We put up 100+ pints and lots of freezer bags full of sauce and are still working through them. I asked my DH if I should plan on growing some some pastes for next year. He's kind of on the fence because we've still got some inventory.

We don't sell paste types .... the demand here in "round-n-red" country is pretty low.

There are several paste varieties I would like to try including: Cow's Tit, Scatolone, Sarajevo M-17 and Teshchin Yazyk.

Over the years we have grown at least 3 of the San Marzanos, Opalka, 3 of the Costolutos and Ropreco. All are great for sauce and have their individual taste nuances.

The only BER issues we've ever had were with the standard Roma varieties. We haven't grown any of those in a long time.

Shell

"i cant wrap my head around how much better it is."

Then you will really be amazed at how much better the sauce is if you start incorporating non-paste type fruit. Gave up growing most any paste type years ago. Hearts are especially good but some of the tasty beefsteaks also make a wonderful sauce. Prolonged cooking down isn't required if you use some of the draining or roasting techniques prior to turning them into sauce.

Roasting adds a great flavor and eliminates much of the water at the same time. The easiest IMO is simply to core and freeze them whole. Then let them thaw in a colander and drain well before milling them. The freezing ruptures the cell walls and most all of the extra water drains right out.

Dave

thank you guys so much for the advice and tips! i have been gardening for 25 years...and cant believe i never heard of this heirloom business before. i guess up north here, the hybrids are more sought after because of their low maintenance qualities. the fun thing is that you never learn it "all", you know? always something that could be improved or changed...or learned.

i will try those methods next fall dave, very interesting. i roast the scapes from my garlic, so i could probably just roast everything at once. if you havent ever tried...garlic scapes are incredible. i dehydrate mine, break em into half inch pieces and throw them in soups and dishes all winter. id grow the garlic just for the scape itself...seriously. kind of a cross between a green onion and garlic.

oxhearts will probably be the thing i grow the most of next spring, as i have several kinds of seeds. anna russian, petit cuor di boeuf, cuor di bue. the paul robeson...its a black tomato, and i dont really know if it is an oxheart or beefsteak. same with the japanese black trifele. the trifele kind of looked like a mini eggplant in the pictures. the anna russian seems to bring alot of praise.

what i really need/want...and didnt exactly get this season is yield. although the plants looked decent...i most likely had them too close together and they fought for nutrients. the costolutos looked like they would set a ton...but really no size to the fruit. small tangerines maybe. the redorta did better than the rest...but i want something at least twice as prolific. as a example...all we have harvested from 15 redorta and about 12 costoluto made 13 quart of sauce. i was hoping for enough to make all the sauce we needed, plus maybe try homemade ketchup as i heard it is awesome. not gonna happen, will be lucky to get one more batch of sauce (usually 6-7 quart per batch)

"We put up 100+ pints and lots of freezer bags full of sauce and are still working through them"

wow! LOL! i would be in sauce heaven farm girl!

brian

Just to add (as I did in another thread) that BER is due to calcium deficiency in the plant. Not necessarily in the soil. That is, it's a matter of how efficiently plants pull calcium ions in from the soil, and there are many stresses that can interfere with that, hydration being one. I'm in a locale that is sitting on limestone, and the soil is uber rich in calcium. In spite of that, lots of folks here still get BER. It would be silly for them to add calcium as an amendment. Dig a little deeper, and you'll get a better picture of this. At least on the basis of calcium carbonate contributing to water hardness, some places in the west, and large regions of the southeast, are pretty calcium poor. Everywhere else is fine. Wisconsin soils should have abundant calcium.

I had ZERO BER on my San Marzano 2 this year. Just not very productive.

I want to try the SM Redorta. Sounds like among paste tomatoes it is one of the best.

Like Dave mentions, I find that freezing them whole is the easiest way to do sauce. I wash, core, and remove blemishes then fill large freezer bags. I like to wait until it gets cold outside and long cooking will help to heat the house, but you can make your sauce at your convenience.

When the day before sauce day comes I take the bags out of the freezer and put them in the sink to defrost. For the recipe I use, it works out to 6 - 7 bags for a single batch. When they've defrosted just enough to pull them apart, I run them under water and the skins slip right off... easy as can be. The still-frozen, skinned tomatoes next get stacked up high in large bowls to defrost overnight.

The next day, the tomatoes are defrosted and are sitting in that 'tomato water' created from the burst cells Dave mentioned. The tomatoes are tossed into the cooking pot at the right time, and all that water is left behind. But...

I don't throw that water away. It is chock full of minerals, flavor, and good nutrition. I use it as the base for a minestrone soup - basically all the veggies and beans that need eaten from the pantry and freezer with some nice whole wheat ziti, rotini, or similar style pasta tossed in to soak up that wonderful flavor. I also always make sure to add a frozen bag of my broccoli raab to give it that extra twang, but any slightly bitter green will do. That soup also freezes well.

Anyway, no sense in tossing out the tomato water when it has such a good use.

great advice all, thank you. brian