And notes for next years gardening

1.  Need to be more aggressive about weed control .  The tarp strips worked really well but need to use more.

2.  Keep fruit and branches off the ground.  I lost a lot of fruit that way.   Prune low branches aggressively.   Tie up things better.

Summary thought on 2014 varieties

Airy leaf:  ok but not as impressive as super sauce.

Better bush:  I got a few, nice round red tennis ball size, but not super prolific in the end.

Black Cherry: As last year, this is a very prolific cherry.   With about 4 plants I had a lot of these and I canned 2 quarts. Still a great plant.  Good taste.

Black from Tula:  similar to Cherokee Purple in color and size, but BFT are often a little bigger and weirder shaped.  Still nice, great flavor .

Costoluto Genovese:   I think it's worth planting again,  as it was not bad for yield and it's a great deep red fluted fruit, and sauces surprisingly well.  It is prone to end rot and otherwise softens/rots very quickly on the vine.  

Cherokee Purple:  lived up to high expectations:  good yield, great fruit & flavor.  Rounder than BFT.  Plant again!

Flamme:  still did well , nice yield.  

Green Zebra:   Nice yield but I didn't get to many of them in time due to vacation, and the plant location (the ones in the back got less live).  Still a good one.

Hawaiian currant :  still a great currant.   Super prolific.   Only need 1 or 2 plants.

Indigo Rose:  hardly harvested any, though they made lots;  too overgrown in the back there,  but it accomplished my goal for cross-pollination attempts.

Kellogs Breakfast:  did pretty well and I like these big yellow fruit.

Mortgage lifter :   As widely regarded, this was prolific, grew well and had great fruit.  Tasty.  Plant again for sure.

Orange Slicer:  did well, was prolific, good tomato.    Just barely darker orangey than KB.   

Pink ping pong:   I don't recall seeing these at all (1 plant , planted late) but the location in the back row was pretty overgrown with weeds.

Red pear:  my kid seemed to like these last year so I planted this again.   But despite fantastic yield,  the fruit was very susceptible to disease, bugs and spoiling, so I didn't pick many.   Won't plant it next year.

Super sauce:   I liked these a lot.  Got some fruit up to ~1 pound.   Need to support these better to keep the gravy trusses off the ground!!

Saving seeds / closing down the garden

The tomato harvesting is all bit done now.    Only picked about ten or so today, with the exception of Hawaiian Currant which is still going well.  Not bad for one plant! Once it starts this variety keeps continuously growing and producing .  They are tiny but sweet and my daughter still loves them.

I saved seeds from the single crossed fruit that survived (IR x CP).  Seeds+pulp from the IR fruit were squished out into a small glass,  a little water was added, and let sit ~3 days.  Swished around once or twice during this time. Then strained out the seeds which were largely free of the pulpy jelly after the ~3 days fermenting. (It stank).   Then , put seeds on a piece of wax paper to dry thoroughly.

I started taking it down today, starting with the first row. ( note mulch tarp mostly pulled up just before I took the poles down.).

Winding down

Late July was the peak harvest.   Now it's slowed down although I made about 2 quarts more purée the other day.

Only 1 of my cross pollinated fruits survived.  One other was lost when my spouse discarded it by accident; forgiveness is key to a good marriage.  I am now saving seeds from the lone survivor IR x CP fruit.  IR don't have tons of seeds though.   

Made some very good salsa with a store bought mix, several tomato types and tomatillos.

Jars....!

Canning progress 8/13/14

Yesterday I had my largest batch of pasta sauce yet - 7 full quarts, enough to fill my canner.   This was made from a big batch of red tomatoes - enough to fill my sink (I'll post photos later).   The tomatoes were mainly Super Sauce, with some Mortgage Lifter and Airyleafs.  The Super Sauce were really great.  A few came close to 16 oz. - really huge plum shaped, red fruits.      

In total I have about 25 quarts canned so far, and I believe we are just past the biggest harvesting time.  
I noted that the Green Zebras and Indigo Rose were the last to ripen.  However I think they went in the ground last, so there you go.

For the canned quarts I have the following items.   The pasta sauces are all basically made with homegrown basil, garlic, salt, sugar, maybe onion, oregano, and maybe a bit of "italian seasoning" and a sprinkle of red pepper (not too much).

•A few jars of "orange sauce" made from yellow tomatoes (Kbs , Orange Slicers and a few Flammes). From blanched/peeled/pureed/filtered tomatoes.  Lotsa basil, which after cooking seemed to darken the yellow sauce to an orange-red color (still much more orange then normal pasta sauce).
•A few jars initially of "dark red" sauce, mainly BFT + Cherokee Purples + Mortage Lifters, and some Costolutos. From blanched/peeled/pureed/filtered tomatoes.
•A few more jars of red sauce, mainly from MLs.  This time I did not blanch and peel them - just pureed them with the skins on, after cutting out the cores and bad parts of course.  I decided it was too much time and work to do all the blanching and peeling.
•The 7 jars noted above of red sauce from SS, ML and Airyleafs.  For this batch I pureed what I estimate to be ~10-12 quarts of liquid tomato puree to begin with (after filtering out seeds and pulp with a colander).  This was boiled down to the 7 quarts, then I enlisted the help of a neighbor who let the sauce simmer with the garlic, basil etc. all day long till I could can it that evening.  I was really happy how that went - especially when the final volume was almost exactly 7 quarts, perfectly filling the canner - couldn't have planned it better if I tried.
• And, a few jars of blanched and peeled, whole/halved/ quartered tomatoes.  2 quarts of black cherry tomatoes, which is nice because it's a bit different.  Several jars of the yellow tomatoes.  Here I started to notice some jars had a bunch of water (like ~1/3 the jar volume, with floating tomatoes on top) separating in the jars after canning.   Those are nicely yellow.
• The weirdest jar was made from pureed Costolutos    After initially being dissapointed with the first few of these tomatoes, due to a fair number with end rot,  I warmed up to them as more good ones started coming in: they are the deepest red of all the varieties I've had, and with the ribbing they just look really fantastic on the plate.  So the puree from these is a really great red color.  After canning one quart of puree, it separated out to have a floating layer of solids, a watery layer and a sunken layer of solids.   Weird, but eventually when cooked and reduced it should make a fine base for a single small pot of sauce.

Pics of recent harvest 7/18-7/20/14.