I’ll admit the title is a bit misleading. You would think that the first tomatoes I would be talking about would be the first ripe tomatoes, I’m sorry to say that it isn’t so! I would love to be able to tell you about how wonderfully tasty those ripe red Roma tomatoes are, how full and rich flavored the Brandywines taste, or how perfectly sweet the mouth popping cherry tomatoes are but I can’t. At least not yet we’re all still green here. But I can share with you some of our green Romas! I’m excited to see Romas starting the season this year as last year we were lacking in the sauce making tomato area. Romas are great in salads or just eating on a sandwich with mayo and bacon (my favorite! kind of sandwich!) but sauce is where they excel!
Since our Roma style tomatoes got buried last year underneath the faster growing (and extremely indeterminant) cherry tomatoes I said “Ixnay” on the cherries this year, at least for actually planting them. You see over the years I’ve noticed a lot of volunteer tomatoes in the garden and inevitably they are the cherries. The same is holding true this year – at least I think so. It’s hard to say yet until the flowers and fruit begin to form but I suspect we have several volunteer cherry tomato plants. I know that in the bed that held the yellow pear tomatoes there are volunteers as well as several other beds so I’ll just need to wait and see what emerges. I planted extra Roma tomatoes this year and isolated them to their own bed to ensure that we would get a good crop of sauce tomatoes. Our first canning experiments went very well last year but didn’t last through the winter so hopefully we’ll be doing more canning this season. I’m planning on canning tomato sauce, tomatoes themselves, salsa, spaghetti sauce, a family recipe of pizza sauce, and maybe a ketchup. That’s just with the tomatoes! Hopefully we’ll have a great tomato year and be harvesting all the way into October.
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My first tomatoes are sungold and they are as green as can be~but I am thrilled to have them….they're planted in an old wicker laundry basket! If I can grow these in a container I'll try romas! Btw~that's cool about the yuccas! gail
Gail,
Any tomatoes this time of year are great! Especially after a long winter without suitable eating tomatoes. You should go for some Romas. I noticed a few others later in the afternoon producing so we should be happily munching on tomatoes soon!
Boy, I can't wait to taste a vine ripened tomato. I have 2 different red & 1 yellow. Maybe this yr. I will get 1. For the past 3/4 yrs I have not had any luck with them at all.
I gave up growing cherry tomatoes for the same reason, also the labor intensive harvesting. My sister-in-law grows Roma for eating. But, I am sure they make a great sauce.
Eileen
Yeah for the tomatoes! I seem to remember you had tons last year. Lucky you!
I watch over my little green tomatoes as though they were a priceless treasure.
Any chance you'd share your pizza sauce recipe? I keep trying to figure out the difference between pasta sauce and pizza sauce besides thickness. I'll know it when I taste it!
Our tomatoes, without as much sun as they'd like, are flowering but not yet producing. Soon!
Lola,
Vine ripened are the best! What I love most about gardening is being able to walk outside and pick the fruit right from the vine. No chemicals, no across the country travel time, just pure fruit of the vine!
Eileen,
I like the cherries for my kids mostly since they love popping them in their mouths to eat. Although it is fairly humorous when one of them didn't quite get her mouth shut and chomps down and it explodes!
Tina,
We did OK last year I guess but the year before was really good. I'm expecting some great tomatoes this year though. I've organized things much better in the garden.
Donna,
They are aren't they!
MKM,
I don't know, it's kind of a secret family recipe my grandfather put together. I may consider it but I doubt it will be featured on the blog! (Dominoes is just waiting for an even better recipe!) It's one of the best but it calls for canned tomatoes. I've substituted fresh for the canned ingredients and it just became even better!
We do have some heirloom cherries planted this year, just because they fill in the gaps when nothing else is ripe. However, you're right, they love to self-sow. If it's possible for a vegetable (well fruit) to be invasive in the garden, cherry tomatoes are close!