Harvesting tomatoes...Passata, passata, passata!!
/Our tomato season started back in late August, when we planted seeds in the greenhouse. The varieties we tried this season included 'Marglobe', 'Grosse Lisse', 'Roma', 'Amish Paste', 'Principe Borghese', 'Tommy Toe' and 'Sugarlump'.
The seedlings were planted out towards the end of October along with companions Marigold and Basil. Since then it has been a process of keeping the tomatoes tucked into the trellis system, pruning (mainly to keep them up away from the soil), watering and feeding with different biodynamic preparations and home brewed seaweed solution.
The picking started mid January just in time for the Summer CSA program and we are still picking daily.... lots of tomatoes.....
We harvest and store the tomatoes early to hold the flavour rather than let the sun take too much of that - To make the passata we used the 'Roma' varieties - For preserving whole tomatoes for winter stews we used the 'Grosse Lisse' and 'Marglobe' varieties.
The machine made the sauce at such a wonderful speed.... our first 18kg of 'Roma' tomatoes in 7 minutes!
Cleaning, sterilizing and re-heating the jars took considerably longer ... but after processing the 'Roma', 'Marglobe' and 'Grosse Lisse' tomatoes harvested to date we now have over 60 jars of passata and whole tomatoes stored away to get us through until next years harvest.
If you are interested in a 20 kilo box of tomatoes, please let us know.
