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I've had good results for paste tomatoes by chopping the tops off and then freezing them. When I want to use them, I take em from the freezer, dunk em in boiling water and the skin comes right off. Then I either thaw them, or just boil them up from frozen, depending on what I'm doing with them
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Aug 7, 2020 05:11
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Looks like somebody’s about to kick off a late-start gazpacho summer or an odyssey of grilled pizzas and bruschetta maybe you’re gonna make a bunch of bloody marys from scratch there’s no such thing as “extra tomatoes” if you have your culinary priorities right
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Aug 7, 2020 05:12
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Do tomatoes need to be like... steam cooked after they're canned, or are they acidic enough to just toss hot tomatoes into sterilized jars/lids?
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Aug 7, 2020 05:18
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CommonShore posted:Do tomatoes need to be like... steam cooked after they're canned, or are they acidic enough to just toss hot tomatoes into sterilized jars/lids? Current USDA guidance is to cook them down a bit, put in a couple tablespoons per quart of lemon juice (to bring up the acid level), hot pack and then process with pressure or water canning. Pressure canning at 15 PSI is 10-15 minutes. Not sure what water bath is, but I bet it's like 30. I grew up open canning tomatoes, as I learned from my depression era grandmother. I stopped doing that for safety reasons 
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Aug 7, 2020 05:39
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Motronic posted:If you've got the freezer space that works really really well. This is really spiffy, thanks! I really hate the process of blanching and peeling tomato skins, especially when you have several hundred or more to do.
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Aug 7, 2020 14:29
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OSU_Matthew posted:This is really spiffy, thanks! I really hate the process of blanching and peeling tomato skins, especially when you have several hundred or more to do. Yep. Use the big screen/die of the mill and it takes out ALL of the skins and most of the seeds. If you really want the seeds out you can put it through a chinois or run it back though the mill with a smaller die in it, but I just leave them.
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Aug 7, 2020 16:50
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Anyone recognize what these peppers might be? Besides my usual birdseyes I planted lesya sweet peppers and sugar rush cream. Labels got misplaced and one of the latter two didn't make it while the other all came up looking like this which doesn't look at all like either. Tiny perfectly circular peppers that are growing upward. The only thing I can think of is I ended up with seeds for aji charapita or some ornamental variety. Hoping it ends up being the former. 
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Aug 8, 2020 02:06
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guri posted:Anyone recognize what these peppers might be? Besides my usual birdseyes I planted lesya sweet peppers and sugar rush cream. Labels got misplaced and one of the latter two didn't make it while the other all came up looking like this which doesn't look at all like either. Tiny perfectly circular peppers that are growing upward. The only thing I can think of is I ended up with seeds for aji charapita or some ornamental variety. Hoping it ends up being the former. You can try checking the calyx of a mature fruit. The calyx is the vaguely star-shaped bit where the flower stem (called the pedicel) meets the fruit. On most C. Chinense peppers there's a distinctive annular constriction in the calyx, kinda like the calyx is pinched in and folded where it meets the pepper. On most C. annuum peppers the calyx is shaped like a little cup or bowl, which sorta sits on the blossom end of the pepper like a hat. It's hard to see from the photo (and the peppers look like they're probably not ripe yet) but it doesn't look like the calyx is doing the C. chinense thing. That all said, a bit round C. annuum? Pimiento, maybe?
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Aug 8, 2020 03:35
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Most pimento I’ve seen have turn in the stem and grow down more than up. But it’s still possible. Could also be a hot cherry pepper type, Capperino maybe, and that wouldn’t be far away from a pimento. Almost certainly a C. annum though. The thing that I just can’t place with either of those are those leaf shapes. The wave on those are just wild.
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Aug 8, 2020 06:50
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Motronic posted:Current USDA guidance is to cook them down a bit, put in a couple tablespoons per quart of lemon juice (to bring up the acid level), hot pack and then process with pressure or water canning. Pressure canning at 15 PSI is 10-15 minutes. Not sure what water bath is, but I bet it's like 30. Please forgive my confusion, it's early morning. Do you mean for food safety reasons, or for your own safety while processing? I'm having trouble seeing what you've referred to as unsafe.
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Aug 8, 2020 13:21
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B33rChiller posted:Please forgive my confusion, it's early morning. Do you mean for food safety reasons, or for your own safety while processing? I'm having trouble seeing what you've referred to as unsafe. Food safety issue. Open canning and inversion canning are both common old school methods that are now considered unsafe. The process times in canning are to get food to a temp to kill anything that may be present in the food as it goes in the jar. Open canning and similar methods do not have processing times, so the product in the jar is not adequately heated to kill any lingering nasty stuff.
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Aug 8, 2020 14:41
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SubG posted:Aji charapita are C. Chinense and that doesn't look like a C. Chinense plant to me--specifically, the anthers appear to be yellow, which means it's C. annuum, something exotic, or a hybrid of some sort. If you look at each flower, it's got a green bit sticking out from the centre. That's the tip of the pistil. Radially around the pistil are the stamens. The poofy bit at the end of each stamen is the anther--it's the bit that produces the pollen. C. chinense, C. frutescens, and most C. annuum anthers are darker, from light blue to an almost black purple, due to the presence of anthocyanin (which is the pigment that gives most blue and purple veg their colour). Say what you will about SA in general but posts like this are why I loving love these forums some times.
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Aug 8, 2020 15:35
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Jhet posted:Most pimento I’ve seen have turn in the stem and grow down more than up. But it’s still possible. Could also be a hot cherry pepper type, Capperino maybe, and that wouldn’t be far away from a pimento. Almost certainly a C. annum though. But yeah I was throwing pimento out there as a wild-rear end guess. You can figure out species from morphology (usually), but there are so. loving. many. new hybrids and exotic cultivars out there these days that it's hard to identify a specific variety from looking at the peppers, particularly if they're not mature. Comedy option: they're actually a volunteer wild hybrid tepin or piquín sown by a pooping bird and therefore are completely immune to formal identification. mischief posted:Say what you will about SA in general but posts like this are why I loving love these forums some times.
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Aug 8, 2020 20:22
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SubG posted:Pepper identification is serious business. Very serious. Easier when the fruit is ripe and can be cut in half. I’d doubt that it’s a tepin or the like though. They’re a pain enough to get started in ideal circumstances, but stranger things have happened. Everyone is having so much fun making random crosses and sharing them that it’s great fun getting random seeds and just seeing what happens. I’ve been seeing pictures of a wave of white crosses this year too. I’ve not had any variety have wavy leaves like that myself. It’s why they’re just so trippy. I have a couple Guatemalan Chiltepin that are growing in my indoor experiments, but only one is a C. annuum variety so I don’t have much in my garden to compare.
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Aug 8, 2020 21:51
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Jhet posted:I’d doubt that it’s a tepin or the like though. They’re a pain enough to get started in ideal circumstances, but stranger things have happened.
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Aug 8, 2020 22:29
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I’ve given that some thought, because it makes me jealous. I can’t even get real jalapeños at the grocery store, and I’d think the germ rate via avian deposit is probably pretty low and they don’t put out many seeds per fruit anyway. Tons of fruit though. Personally I’m hoping to have a few bushes that I can baby for a couple years. Maybe some from rodents stealing the fruit somewhere before taking a bite and not loving what they’ve found? There are some really cool looking ‘Wild’ varieties from South and Central America that would be an absolute blast to grow. Limited space or I probably would have tried a half dozen of them this year.
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Aug 8, 2020 22:46
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What are some good weird peppers to grow for flavor over heat? I love spicy food but I don't need to grow anything spicier than a habanero, and a lot of the specialty pepper seed places seem to prioritize raw scovilles over everything else. Next year I definitely want pimentos because I'm from the south and I want to make my own pimento cheese.
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Aug 8, 2020 22:53
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Look into the C. baccatum plants. Many of them are less heat than a habanero, and have some interesting flavors. Bird Aji is a very small fruit that looks pretty cool and tastes good too. The tepins can be really neat as well, and I'd look at them if you want interesting flavor. I'd also take a look at the NuMex peppers. They've done some really solid varieties and they tend to produce good flavor and quantity. I bought a bunch of seeds from https://www.semillas.de/ this year and have between 90-95% germ rate from them. Shipping takes about a month to the US right now, but there's not much you can do about it except order early if you do. Stay away from the C. chinense if you don't want super heat, but there are so many other options too. So many options, I need to stop looking at peppers now before I try to spend money on seeds I can't use right now.
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Aug 8, 2020 23:12
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showbiz_liz posted:What are some good weird peppers to grow for flavor over heat? I love spicy food but I don't need to grow anything spicier than a habanero, and a lot of the specialty pepper seed places seem to prioritize raw scovilles over everything else. I've also grown piquillos and really liked them. They're a super mild, fairly sweet Basque pepper. Think something like a shishito or something like that--they're good either grilled/roasted and served tossed with a little oil and salt, or stuffed (with w/e) and served as an app/tapas/whatever. About the only downside of growing them is that they don't seem to be very productive, at least compared to most popular garden peppers. Facing heaven peppers/朝天椒 are another rewarding garden pepper. They're hot but not too hot, most of them seem to be somewhere between an arbole and a Thai bird, if that helps, although I'll occasionally get some that are either completely mild or substantially hotter. They're pretty productive and are a good culinary pepper for dishes where you want to throw a whole shitload of peppers in and want heat but not overwhelming heat.
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Aug 8, 2020 23:15
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 Already bagging stuff up to give away Monday. I'm still really burned out on the garden in general but it is nice to get a good result. On the pepper tip, I planted six banana peppers given to me by a friend. Three of them are almost definitely either ghost or reapers. Even when I don't plant superhots I get superhots. 
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Aug 8, 2020 23:28
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SubG posted:Aji charapita are C. Chinense and that doesn't look like a C. Chinense plant to me--specifically, the anthers appear to be yellow, which means it's C. annuum, something exotic, or a hybrid of some sort. If you look at each flower, it's got a green bit sticking out from the centre. That's the tip of the pistil. Radially around the pistil are the stamens. The poofy bit at the end of each stamen is the anther--it's the bit that produces the pollen. C. chinense, C. frutescens, and most C. annuum anthers are darker, from light blue to an almost black purple, due to the presence of anthocyanin (which is the pigment that gives most blue and purple veg their colour).
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Aug 8, 2020 23:53
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mischief posted:
Yowza. How many plants' worth is this?
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Aug 9, 2020 00:09
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32 planted, I believe 28 of them are producing.
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Aug 9, 2020 03:48
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Can I just bring my potted peppers in over the winter and put them in a window or do I need to do all of this megapruning that YouTube is showing me
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Aug 9, 2020 05:39
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CommonShore posted:Can I just bring my potted peppers in over the winter and put them in a window or do I need to do all of this megapruning that YouTube is showing me You can just bring them in. They’ll look like poo poo, but they will survive. Do not overwater them. Platystemon fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Aug 9, 2020 |
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Aug 9, 2020 06:25
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God, what happens with cherry tomatoes when you don't pick them the day they are ripe is nasty! Tastes of fermentation a day later. No visual way to differentiate them from good ones, just the slightly weaker feel of the flesh under the skin. Eugh. This ridiculous hot weather isn't helping, I'm sure.
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Aug 9, 2020 18:20
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You can pick them way earlier and they will ripen off the plant FYI I pick mine when they’re just barely staring to change color and they ripen great.
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Aug 9, 2020 19:28
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Peppers are starting to come in!
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Aug 9, 2020 20:03
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Gorgeous peppers!Neon Noodle posted:You can pick them way earlier and they will ripen off the plant FYI Yea most tomatoes arent supposed to fully ripen on the vine before you pick them
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Aug 9, 2020 21:25
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mischief posted:
I'm super jealous of these. I had two better boy plants last year and they gave me a ton of these delicious softball sized fruits.This year the few I planted aren't producing much and not even a single one has ripened so far. Got some German Johnson tomatoes as well and flavor wise they're alright but they seem to get mushy and mealy fast and the plants aren't producing nearly the quantity I got last year. Oh well, 90% of what I've gotten so far is going to be several jars of pasta sauce in a day or two. 
Quiet Feet fucked around with this message at 02:24 on Aug 10, 2020 |
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Aug 10, 2020 02:21
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mischief posted:32 planted, I believe 28 of them are producing. How much space do you have dedicated to these, indoors or outdoors, determinate or indeterminate? First year getting serious on tomatoes for me and I'm trying to learn the most
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Aug 10, 2020 18:01
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Quiet Feet posted:I'm super jealous of these. I had two better boy plants last year and they gave me a ton of these delicious softball sized fruits.This year the few I planted aren't producing much and not even a single one has ripened so far. Got some German Johnson tomatoes as well and flavor wise they're alright but they seem to get mushy and mealy fast and the plants aren't producing nearly the quantity I got last year. I usually start a handful of different heirloom varieties every year (Rosso Sicilian, Brandywine this year) and hedge my bets with a more predictable and resilient indeterminate hybrid. I've had great luck with all the "boy" types, especially better boy. Rutgers is another reliable one, plus you can buy freakin' SPACE TOMATOES. Most of the ones in that picture are Rutgers. I fertilize frequently and heavily with Neptune's Harvest Tomato & Veg formula. It's a 2-4-2 organic so it's mild enough I don't worry about burning anything and it really produces just better flavors than any of the chemical stuff I've tried before. I know the organic/not organic argument goes both ways but for me I feel it's worth the headache. I really liked the "Vibrant Bloom" from Shoreside Organics but haven't been able to find it in a few years. It had some kinda sketchy rules about applying it that made me wonder how healthy it really was but drat it grew some pretty tomatoes. ' I liberally use Monterey BT throughout the season and Spinosad until stuff starts flowering. Harry Potter on Ice posted:How much space do you have dedicated to these, indoors or outdoors, determinate or indeterminate? First year getting serious on tomatoes for me and I'm trying to learn the most I've never measured, honestly. They're over 3 rows, trellised with Tenax netting. All outdoors, started early on seed mats/artificial lighting in the garage. Maybe 80 foot long rows? I can measure when I get home. The whole garden is a few thousand square feet, the people that owned the house before us used it as a dog run for the beagles they bred. I just added a boatload of compost and tilled it for about four years straight and the dirt is finally getting good. Just this year we added at least 6,000 pounds of compost. I usually grow indeterminate just because I get longer seasons out of them, determinates just seem to give me one good pop of production then that's it. My trellises are nine feet tall and I'm having to weave the tops of the plants laterally now they're so tall. I'd take pictures but the grass is kicking my rear end this season and the garden just looks like a dumpster fire.
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Aug 10, 2020 18:47
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I'm losing the war against  Since they like hot, dry conditions, and one of the best ways to get rid of them is to simply mechanically spray them off the plants, I've taken to dousing my tomato plants whenever I water them, on top of watering the pot. Then I've been following this with liberal application of neem oil spray once a week. It seems to help momentarily, then 3-4 days later there's more than ever before. Unfortunately, all the plants on our street are infested with these useless parasites, if you look at any bush you'll find them crawling all over with tons of visible webbing. So no matter how hard I work to keep them off my plants, they'll just come right back next time it's windy. And by that same token, I imagine if I were to unleash predatory mites or spider mite destroyers, they'd probably peace out to the places where there's more food. Sigh. On top of that, I've noticed some of my black cherries have been growing with a weird mottled pattern that persists once ripe:  I've never seen tomato mosaic virus, but if I had to give a name to this condition, I'd definitely describe it as mosaic. But the leaves don't exhibit any of the yellowing that apparently come with the virus, just the increasing spread of dots from the aforementioned evil little fuckers. Any ideas? Neon Noodle posted:You can pick them way earlier and they will ripen off the plant FYI But cherry tomatoes ripened off the vine are noticeably less sweet and juicy, they just taste like... grocery store tomatoes from Mexico. And I can get bland cherry tomatoes at Whole Foods without all this hassle, if that's what I wanted. 
Jan fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Aug 10, 2020 |
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Aug 10, 2020 23:15
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Pinus Porcus posted:Food safety issue. Open canning and inversion canning are both common old school methods that are now considered unsafe. The process times in canning are to get food to a temp to kill anything that may be present in the food as it goes in the jar. Open canning and similar methods do not have processing times, so the product in the jar is not adequately heated to kill any lingering nasty stuff. What, you’re telling me that a hidden storage room open bucket jam canning operation in one of the trendiest LA brunch places isn’t safe? Even with the mold scrapin spatula? 
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Aug 11, 2020 15:19
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OSU_Matthew posted:What, you’re telling me that a hidden storage room open bucket jam canning operation in one of the trendiest LA brunch places isn’t safe? Even with the mold scrapin spatula?  In gardening news, my tomatoes are still splitting even with waiting days between watering. They aren't splitting terribly, but every single one splits.
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Aug 11, 2020 15:28
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Pinus Porcus posted:In gardening news, my tomatoes are still splitting even with waiting days between watering. They aren't splitting terribly, but every single one splits. Did you have a lot of rain? I only have issues with splitting when I keep an uneven amount of water in the soil. And that usually happens when there’s a storm and it doesn’t completely drain to regular moisture. Then again it’s August and I like to increase water a bit this month to keep the extra large plants healthy.
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Aug 11, 2020 15:38
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Yea my understanding is irregular watering can lead to splitting as well Edit: how many inches of water does everyone aim for one tomato plant in one week? ~1.5-2? Harry Potter on Ice fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Aug 11, 2020 |
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Aug 11, 2020 15:43
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Jhet posted:Did you have a lot of rain? I only have issues with splitting when I keep an uneven amount of water in the soil. And that usually happens when there’s a storm and it doesn’t completely drain to regular moisture. Then again it’s August and I like to increase water a bit this month to keep the extra large plants healthy. No heavy rains, but I live on the coast, and our ambient moisture is pretty variable depending if the marine layer comes in or not. I guess that may be playing a bigger role this year, as it's been super inconsistent this year.
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Aug 11, 2020 15:48
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Harry Potter on Ice posted:Yea my understanding is irregular watering can lead to splitting as well For reference I grow tomatoes with their roots literally submerged in water and they only split maybe 20% of the time for me at a guess
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Aug 11, 2020 16:57
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I planted too many cherry tomatoes and not enough regular tomatoes and now I am suffering for my folly Also, I left my tomatoes alone for a bit too long and weaving them through the trellis got away from me https://twitter.com/RottenTunaGames/status/1291761401917300737?s=20
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Aug 11, 2020 17:03
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