Tomato photo album - Growing, harvesting, and preserving!

Wow! We had a beautiful summer here in the Okanagan region of British Columbia, and my first tomato garden in a few years did very well. I'd like to share with you some photography of the plants, the crop, and how I've been storing some of it for winter.

Yield has peaked, but until recently I was pulling in a big bowl of these "Sweet 100" tomatoes every couple days.

My other strain this year was Amish Paste, a bell-shaped fruit on a hardy disease-tolerant plant.

I only have 7 plants, but they're all very lush, green, and healthy.

Still a fair bit of fruit on the vine.

Sometimes there can be 30 or more tomatoes on a single strand like this. I had a plant back in 2014 that had over 100 full-sized Sweet 100 tomatoes on a single stalk protroding from the main stem! (And it had several other massive clusters on the same plant.) This year wasn't quite so dramatic, but I'm very happy with my 200% organic heirloom garden.

The evening harvest has become a rewarding routine, once the heat of the day is passed. That's typically when I water my plants, also.

We slice up and eat the Amish Pastes on sandwiches, plant-based burgers, salads, etc. They're sweet and flavourful, without too many seeds, or too much extra water.

I eat as many of the little Sweet 100s fresh as I can, but even so, they start to pile up!

Uh oh....

So yeah, that happened...

First, I'm going to deal with all these awesome pasting tomatoes!

My wife @MediKatie and I put our garden harvest together with some additional organic Roma tomatoes from the local farmers market! We had enough for a couple batches of canned tomato sauce.

After being cored (removing the part where the stem attaches) the tomatoes are scored (small cuts made in the skin).

A brief scalding water bath. Ouch!

Then into a bowl of cold water, and the skins pop away from the tomatoes!

The rough treatment got these guys feeling heated (I guess they were seeing red?), so I left them to stew for a while.

Once they cool off, they're quickly processed, and all that's left is the part we want to eat.

The skins will be composted into soil to help grow next year's crop.

Into the blender!

And then poured into a big pot, on medium heat.

Meanwhile, we sterilized some canning jars in the oven.

The tomato sauce doesn't have to fully cook, it just needs to get up to sterilization temperature (a simmer).

Whoa.... I don't remember stirring it that quickly! Perhaps I was excited to get on with the next step, which was...

Pouring into jars! This is where you realize that a garden full of tomatoes - AND a box of somebody else's - condenses down to few liters of food. Oh well, it's like gold!

Opening a jar of this stuff in mid January, when the snow is piled high outside, is a real blessing. You can taste the sunshine and nutrition.

With lids on, the jars go into the pressure cooker.

Once it gets up to pressure, it only takes a few minutes to sterilize and seal the food in the jars.

In this photo, we're stacking a layer of jars on top of a partition, which is on top of a bottom layer.

We have tomato sauce to last until spring!

What about all the extra Sweet 100s that I can't eat fresh, or dice up onto nachos?

I decided to make Sweet 100 tomato paste! First, I hit them with a potato masher...

I strained out the skins for composting.

Then I ran the tomato juice through a strainer and pulled out most of the seeds.

I simmered the juice for a good 2 hours, until it finally condensed down to where I wanted it.

All the sweetness, nutrients, and intensity of an entire bowl of cherry tomatoes!

You could sweeten it up and add some onion powder, to make ketchup.

I decided to set mine aside for making chili next week!

The seeds went into a glass of water on the windowsill for a few days.

Once the slimy coating had dissolved off, I strained the clean seeds, and laid them on paper towel to dry.

Heirloom organic seeds mean security to someone with the skill of growing plants, and somewhere to do so.

This pouch of seeds is worth its weight in gold. (I'll be giving about half of it away next spring, as I do every year, if you're interested.)

Most of us don't get to taste real food very often. Growing tomatoes is an incredibly rewarding experience for me, and provides safe nutrition for my family. This year, I was blessed to have a garden - and enough health and freedom to make use of it.

Loving thanks to my talented and hardworking wife, who helped make the crop and the canning possible.