I’ve harvested the last of the ripe tomatoes. We’re eating them fresh at every meal. This wonderful “flavor of summer” won’t last long so we’re savoring fresh tomato taste while we can. I didn’t do well with tomatoes this year. I grew some in “earth boxes” and some in the ground. The plants in the ground did better than the ones planted in the boxes. I think the boxes are simply not deep enough.
Tomatoes really need more heat than what we got this summer. The temperatures didn’t get over 70 degrees. As usual, the ‘Early Girl’ and ‘Celebrity’ performed the best in this cool coastal climate. ‘Green Tiger’ and ‘Striped German’ produced really well last year but this year, while the plants were gigantic, the blooms just didn’t make fruit. Again, I think it was the “June gloom” that seemed to last forever.
I was able to grow enough tomatoes to serve some fresh and to “put away” some for winter. I washed whole ripe tomatoes and slipped them into plastic bags. These will be good for sauces and soups this winter. Just let them thaw, squeeze, and they slip right out of their peel. I find this method easier than peeling them before freezing them.
The rest of the tomatoes, I washed, sliced, and dried in a dehydrator. We love dried tomatoes. Their flavor is intensified with drying. Sun drying tomatoes is not an option in Cambria but you can dry them in the oven on a low temperature and they come out fine. It took the tomatoes about 8 hours in the dehydrator and the result was chewy and delicious. I packed the dried tomatoes in olive oil and slivers of elephant garlic. In oil the tomatoes soften slightly and are great on pizza and Mediterranean appetizers with cheese. They’ll keep in the oil for a few months in the refrigerator and/or frozen in plastic bags for a year.
Summer is officially over when we harvest the last ripe tomatoes of the season. Now it’s time to address all those green tomatoes that will never make it to their scarlet state.
