 It's nice and hot in the greenhouse which is perfect for tomatoes and the cucumbers are pretty much done now we have plenty of pickles in the basement so now we are all about putting up tomatoes and we're doing them every way we can and that's all I'm going to talk about this week on Food MacGeddon is how we're saving our tomatoes. As you probably know I'm using my neighbor's greenhouse to grow some of our food and in here I have about 75 tomato plants of all kinds of different varieties I've got beefsteak type brandy wine I've got paste tomatoes I have cherry tomatoes these are all like I said a week before volunteers from my garden compost that I use for starting other plants these tomatoes pop out and so I just transplant them I'm not going to save any seeds from here because they're all mixed together so they won't breed true but this is a good almost a tomato powerhouse for us to get this much garden space or this much greenhouse space in which to grow in other videos I showed you how I trellis and prune the suckers off of these guys so I'm not going to go into the care and maintenance of the plants in another video I also talked about how I'm fertilizing them namely with urine and ash and I linked to a finished study that showed that urine and ash can act just like regular fertilizer you buy at the store but it's pretty things that you have around the house which is really important now as fossil fuels become less available we need to figure out ways to fertilize our crops without the use of bottom nitrogen that's going to be a huge sticking point and so this week primarily we're just going to talk about the tomato harvest and how we process them and save them so that we can enjoy this summer goodness all winter I'm continuing to use rainwater to irrigate my tomatoes and five gallons and just about do all the tomato plants in this whole row they've adapted nicely I know that their roots are reaching these pools of water because it's pretty hot in here in the middle of the day right now and I don't have much in the way of of drooping or wilting and so every day right now I'm coming out here and making sure to water if I don't water then the tomato the tomato fruits will split so if you're seeing split tomatoes that's probably a lack of water or insufficient water and you know as I go along and collect I'm also cutting out these these suckers just as I see them when they're little I try and get them makes it a lot quicker and easier and then in here I have my paste tomatoes and these guys are heirlooms are San Marzano twos meaning that if I plant the seeds from these they'll grow up again just like this I could get a greater yield out of a hybrid like a celebrity but I can't replant that seed and expect to get consistent results so that's why I'm growing the heirloom seeds or at least open open pollinated types to get a consistent product year after year even when I can't order in the seeds from outside because fossil fuels aren't available for shipping and then right behind the house we have these German Johnson tomatoes this is another it's a brandy wine derivative and again this is also a heirloom one that I can plant and be sure that I'll get it to breed true next year instead of having to buy fresh seed and boy is it prolific but it also grows these insanely large tomatoes this looks like something was already enjoying this one but look at the size of these things it's crazy so I get some nice big tomatoes from these ones so every day I'm getting about a basket full of tomatoes which has to process fairly quickly because they will go ripe and get full of fruit flies pretty quickly here in our kitchen so for the paste tomatoes I freeze them in a dish like this then that gives me solid blocks like this this is about 25 paste tomatoes and that lets me gather about a hundred paste tomatoes before I do a whole batch of tomato paste so I used to just pop these paste tomatoes right into the fridge and then when I got a hundred of them I'd make my my tomato paste but my better half complained whenever she would open the freezer that a whole pile of tomatoes would fall out on her because you know they're around they shift around so this year I've been packing them into these square containers and this has been great it's a lot more space conscious and the freezer it's important to keep people you're living with happy with all your crazy projects I'm generally not a big fan of freezing but in this case I don't have I don't get a hundred paste tomatoes in the time that would take them not to go bad so what I generally just do is pop them open make sure there's nothing funny inside after I've rinsed them off of course I cut out anything that looks brown or black or sometimes there's a little bit of something inside these I don't know what it is just a little bit of black schmutz and as I go never mind the noise in the background that's just our local raccoon toddler raccoon pulling all the canning supplies out see there I had a little bit of black I don't know what it is so I'm cutting it out well feed it to the chickens so now just as I fill this guy up so I press it down nice and hard until the juices some of the juices are released these are pretty dry tomatoes because they're paste tomatoes and it's been pretty dry here and then I just go on filling it up until we hit the top pop it in the freezer and then tomorrow or even later tonight I'll probably able to take it out of the form and by the end of the day tomorrow I will probably have a hundred tomatoes a hundred paste tomatoes about my my general measurement I don't want to ever make more than a set number of half pints at a time because my canner only holds so many you are a loud little boy so here I've got one I have my other and I'll pop this in this will freeze tomorrow I'll pop it out of the form and by then I should have enough to do a whole round of of tomato paste today is tomato paste day so I have all four of those containers this one is two quarts of crushed down and consolidated tomatoes weighing between about four or five pounds I've probably got about 20 pounds of Roma type tomatoes here cooking down and melting from their frozen state to get them liquefied then I'll cook them run them through a sieve and then cook them down some more probably in the oven I'm gonna try a different way this year before canning them so that's what I'm up to today more tomato mania and now we just continue to run everything through the food mill after it's cooked and softened up turn this just removes the skins and otherwise homogenizes the tomato paste or a little bit of tomato paste saves me from having the blanch and remove all the skins from all these tomatoes which would have been a huge chore definitely a worthwhile piece of equipment I used to make apple sauce and other things but it was a game changer when we got this the chickens then get to eat the leftovers they like that and that's the next day and I have reduced down and hot water bath can it was about about nine quarts of tomatoes and I reduced it down to 13 half pints so less than a third of its original volume now I've got tomato paste each one of these will make enough pizza sauce for three or four weeks or spaghetti sauce for a couple of nights just because it's a lot concentrated tomato flavor I will make another batch of this and I will also dehydrate a lot of paste tomatoes also one once I do probably I'll probably do one more batch of this tomato paste now with my larger tomatoes I am going to make tomato sauce but we're also making crushed tomatoes it's basically the same process you put the tomatoes in boiling water for just a minute till the skin start to come off and then out into the ice bath to cool you can see how the skin comes out it's not a how-to video so check out other resources for that this is just kind of showing you what we're up to then I use a paring knife to just cut the cut the core out pull the skin off this of course goes out to the chickens who are big fans of tomato skins and then lightly chop them in the pot I do oh I don't know two rounds like that it's about three pounds five pounds I don't know in the pot then the pot goes on the stove and I mash those down just to get it started once you have the first ones liquefied then you can add more tomatoes in the rest of them will liquefy and essentially what you want to do is have a big boiling pot of tomato bits now it'd be quicker if I was for for crushed tomatoes I just get them cooking for five ten minutes just sell their soft and then I can them but for tomato sauce you want to cook them until the cell walls have completely disintegrated and broken down so it's actually tomato sauce this is not spaghetti sauce which has spices and other things in it this is just straight up tomato sauce so it's good to you could make pasta sauce out of it you make pizza sauce out of it you can add it to soups it is an all-purpose delicious tomato intensifier and I want to cook it down a bit so that it's a bit more concentrated I want to be storing a whole bunch of liquid I want to be storing tomato a goodness so if these were crushed tomatoes they'd be ready to go just have to strain them pop them in the jars and then and then hot water bath can but since we're making tomato sauce we got to let it reduce quite a bit one more thing to use up all these dang tomatoes how many pounds of potatoes are you this is only ten only ten pounds of tomatoes we need more are you helping are you helping this is just one type of salsa we make we also wait until it's about to freeze and then we go collect all the green tomatoes usually we get about a five gallon bucket or two full of tomatoes and we make green tomato salsa and that's one of our other mainstays so here we've got eight sauces we want about 24 what are you making Lauren I'm making tomato it's delicious on everything and spicy if you want to make it spicy we choose to make it spicy so I'm filling up my solar dehydrator essentially a box to which hot air will pass and it will take all the moisture out of these tomatoes and we'll have nice sun-dried tomatoes hopefully I could use my electric dehydrator but tomatoes take forever especially these non-paced tomatoes and running a dehydrator at 1500 watts will just take up all of our power for the day so I have this solar dehydrator so what's happening is the black mesh in there heats up and pushes air upwards as it heats right through convection so it pulls colder air in underneath heats it up and then it gets to the top it runs all the way up into this box and then it runs through all these racks and these are just sliced beefsteak style tomatoes with tiny bit of salt help get the juices flowing my target temperature is about 135 to 140 degrees today I'm here not just to harvest tomatoes but pick a few tomatoes to keep for seeds so I'm gonna look at my plants this one may have some sort of blight going on so even though it's producing really nicely I'm gonna avoid it and pick some of the nicer plants here to save the seeds from for next year and now I just take my seed potatoes seed potatoes no seed tomatoes and make sure they're free of dirt and take a wide-mouth jar a couple different ways to do it you can slice them open scoop it out you can also in theory and I'm not as good as this is I'd like slice the lobes open and then milk the seeds right out but I always word that I don't get enough I don't get it all nice and ripe tomato though what you're looking to get out the seed and the goo that surrounds them I think it's called germoplasm or something and what's gonna happen is over the next five to seven days this is gonna ferment and twice a day I'm gonna shake them just to kind of make sure everything gets mixed in and what I'm looking to do is mix up and break down the goo that surrounds the seeds because that is a somewhat of a germination inhibitor so I want to get the seeds out from their protective gel coating and I do this for each variety of tomatoes separately into their own jar obviously each of these tomatoes are also planted as far away from one another as I can so that they don't crossbreed okay so basically twice a day I'm going to shake these things just to bust up the the seeds from the seed germ around them after about five to seven days I'm gonna add water and give them a couple shakes let them sit a little longer all the viable seeds sink to the bottom all the in viable seeds stay on top I skim the sludge off the top I rinse them and wash them a few more times and then I rinse them with a 10% bleach solution and that will kill late blight spores that may or may not be on here since it's the end of the season and I'm saving them there may be late blight on them all of these instructions you can find at the permaculture research institute it's the best short guide I've seen to saving tomato seeds there's a lot of them out there so just avail yourself to them I will link to PRI permaculture research institute right here or right there I don't know where it shows up anyway yeah and then I'll dry them and save them for next year we haven't quite filled up this half of the of the food storage yet but we're getting their pickles and our maple syrup honey and this is all tomato products this will probably get over full we'll have to this is the overflow up top for extra pickles and extra tomatoes we've got our crushed tomatoes or tomato sauce or tomato jam or tomato paste salsa and marinara sauce and it's still coming so we still have a lot more work to do to fill up the rest of this storage area and then this all get under construction and will be insulated and closed up more shelves put in fill the refrigerator still have a lot of work to do down let's it for this week of food and again thanks for joining us this week we spent pretty much all of our time talking about tomatoes next week I think it'll be more of a regular episode we'll just kind of run around the farm here okay and show what we've been up to more generally the week after that or coming up soon we'll have a whole episode devoted to apples which will be which will be fun apples are my favorite fruit and luckily we just were given access to an abandoned orchard with a hundred trees so we're gonna have to help rehab those over the next year luckily there's luckily there's a crop this year already for us to use so that's great I'll be building an apple cider press and a shredder for making apple cider and hard apple cider as well as apple sauce dehydrated apples a whole bunch of other stuff so thanks for tuning in don't forget to subscribe you can check out our blog lowtechinstitute.org where we have all kinds of information about not only food and again but low technology Institute which is our parent organization and some of the research we're doing like be research and other things so check us out there you can reach me I'm Scott I'm Scott at low tech Institute org you can also find us on the main social media site Instagram Facebook etc etc so so yeah be in touch thanks for watching and take care that's what I'm up to today more tomato mania oh no you don't get the hammer that's not for you tornado what are you doing making a mess nice ripe tomato though not good tomato hey felt yourself again camera