A Bubble Off Plumb

I’ve often written about my love for – and ineptitude at – gardening. Well, just when I thought it was safe to begin planting the fall crops, the tomatoes began to produce.

These aren’t your everyday tomatoes. They are cherry tomatoes that I grew from seed. I didn’t expect the seeds to live long enough to make plants, or the plants to live long enough to produce tomatoes. They did, obviously, and they are producing like there is no tomorrow. I can wander out into the garden every other day, telling the Redheaded Stranger I will be gone for a few minutes. An hour or more later he will come to look for me only to discover some pretty serious garden yoga going on.

I stretch, reach, crawl, pull, lift and turn the branches over – I never got them caged properly – to discover where the little red suckers are hiding. Then I pick them by the millions. That could be an exaggeration but there are a lot of them. Do you know how many cherry tomatoes it takes to fill a 3-gallon bucket? I don’t have the number, but I have the experience. It’s a lot. A whole lot. And I can mostly fill one of those buckets every other day.

Then, what can you do with them? They are small with lots of seeds. For about a month I was washing them and tossing them into the freezer in a plastic bag. When I filled the fourth bag and another bucket was sitting there smiling at me, I decided to process them.

I ran them through the tomato processor and canned tomato juice. The next batch I ran through the food processor and made more tomato juice. We use a lot of tomato juice because it is an integral part of the Stranger’s top secret chili recipe.

I had just about got the last of the dishes washed up from that little adventure when guess what? It was time to pick tomatoes again. We can always use a few more cans of tomato juice.

I was sitting enjoying a cup of coffee this morning when I got an email from a super retailer we frequent in the city. It was their sale flyer for this week. Guess what the loss leader is? Tomatoes, and at a price I can’t pass up. I am hoping to get about three cases to finish up our tomato sauce needs for the winter. That is, if I can get enough time away from picking tomatoes.