My tomatoes are ugly this year

[bearfan454]

We have had massive rains. It caused almost all of the tomatoes to split. The tops are wrinkled with splits too. Some of my Cherokee purple tomatoes are whoppers. I just cut off the top and filet the split part out. They are still delicious with Kosher salt and EVOO from Spain. I'm going to be doing some canning Sunday. I have to go Saturday and fill up my deer feeders.

















Since it finally quit raining I will need to get my shade put up pretty soon or the garden will get burned up.

[Kolesar]

1. Do you use a pressure canner or a hot water bath canner?

I have my doubts that a pressure canner is really necessary. The farmer who supplied my tomato starts said that a hot water bath canner is all that I really need.

Presumably, one must use a pressure canner "these days" because tomatoes are not acid enough to kill all the microbes or enzymes. I wonder if I could use a ph tester or a ph papers to test my tomatoes. I am going to have to do something--put in ten plants of four different varieties this year.

[bearfan454]

2. In the past I used the hot water bath method.

A few months back franmarz gave me her canner that she used to use when we were kids.It's a heavy duty one. She also gave me about 4 dozen wide mouth quart canning jars. In the one pic you can see the lids with rubber seals and the rings I bought. She canned almost everything out of the garden when we were kids back in the 60's. She told me that for tomatoes it is 10 lbs of pressure for 10 minutes and you get a very tight seal. I have never had any problems with tomatoes sealing using the hot water bath method either. I just used my last 3 jars of canned tomatoes from last year on spaghetti sauce about a month ago.

[Kolesar]

3. The farmer who sold me the starts told me "I would know if there is a problem"

...if the canning process did not kill the microbes and/or enzymes. The tops would pop. I will likely buy a new pressure canner soon because it looks like we are going to have a lot of green beans. Thanks for the advice.

[kestrel91316]

4. The Ball Blue Book recommends adding a little lemon juice to each jar

of tomatoes to ensure enough acidity because modern varieties are lower in acid.........

Boiling water bath. Pressure canning of high-acid fruits and vegetables is unnecessary.

[bleedingheart]

5. tomatos with stretch marks...

that is what I think of splitting tomatos...

[japple]

6. My mother always used a water bath canner for

everything. Since she's been gone, I've taken over the canning for our family, and I'm using her equipment. I haven't had any problems with spoilage, leakage, or food poisoning, and I can tomatoes, pickles, relish, brandied fruit, and make jams, jellies and preserves. There's probably enough acid in the pickles, alcohol and suger in the jams, etc. to preserve them, but I do add lemon juice to all of the tomatoes (just in case), and some of the low acid fruit.

Beautiful tomatoes, BTW. Can't wait until my Cherokee purples are ripe.