Design

My favorite way to preserve tomatoes is to slow-roast them (at 200°F for ~ 8-10 hours), and then freeze them.  It's not original with me at all;  not being inclined to canning, a way to have tomatoes for delicious sauce for pasta or whatever without messing with hot water and jars is appealing. I bumbled on to Kalyn's method in a Google search a couple of years ago, and have been delighted with the results.

I was listening to the songs of crickets tonight; summer is here in the mountains of North Carolina.  They were delayed compared to the Piedmont, not surprisingly, but are singing loudly now. I've been harvesting lots of tomatoes since I returned home (to the mountains) and have been trying to shore up the vines (the lightweight tomato cages available at the big box stores simply can't support the weight of Cherokee Purple and Summer Feast tomatoes without extra support).  I thought I'd taken a picture of the raised bed vegetable garden since returning, but apparently not! I slow-roasted a batch of sliced Cherokee Purples overnight, and stuck them in the freezer.  They'll be summer magic in the winter, for sure.  And there are lots of green Summer Feast tomatoes that were casualties of the tipped-over cages.  I'll need to see if they ripen well, or not -- they're quite big, in any case. I succumbed to buying a basket of white peaches at the Western North Carolin...

I've harvested three nice-looking Cherokee Purple tomatoes this season so far, two yesterday and one today - the first large tomatoes of the season.  Cherokee Purple tomatoes The tomato plants in the raised beds are amazingly robust (hmm, it must be that good purchased compost) and the chard just keeps coming.  The beans, eggplants, squash, and tomatillo plants are all doing well, too.