First major unsuccessful trial

We have enjoyed many successful trials in our garden and the few minor failures weren't anything to get excited about.  The tomato fiasco this summer was pretty devastating.  But wait, compared to the demise of our greenhouse which was a major disaster, the tomatoes  drop down to the minor fiasco category.

Here's the story:  After researching to find the best paste tomato for my spaghetti sauce, I found the Juliet.  Rave reviews! Heavy yields!  Roma type tomato with fewer seeds which was perfect since Terry can't have seeds.  Less seeds mean less work removing them.  We sent for a packet of the seeds and in early spring planted some of the seeds in little pots  under the grow lights in the basement.  All went well with our seven beautiful plants.  In May, they were planted outdoors, fertilized and staked.  They grew larger than any tomato plants we ever tried.  The number of little oblong green tomatoes was mind boggling. They began to ripen but were much smaller than a regular Roma tomato.  Okay, I can handle that. 

Each bucket we picked was quickly washed, blanched to remove skins and frozen for sauce making when all were harvested.  One evening we picked two buckets full and when I began washing the first bucket I decided to not freeze this batch.  It would be interesting to learn how many jars of sauce these little guys would provide since some of the ripe tomatoes were pretty small.  Set up the sieve attachment on my mixer and started to send the tomatoes through.  All was going well until I noticed that a number of seeds were being pushed through the sieve screen and ending up in the juice. This never happened before.  Looks as if those extra small tomatoes had small seeds.  I took the juice and pulp and used the finest strainer I own and still had seeds escape into the juice.  This will not work!

We can use some of the fresh (de-seeded) tomatoes for salads and cooking but it would take hours to remove seeds by hand for making sauce.  Called a friend who makes sauce and doesn't mind the seeds.  Drove to her house and presented her with a bucket of tomatoes.  Not sure what will happen to the tomatoes in the freezer.

More research and next year we will try Amish Paste Tomatoes.  These are meaty and larger than a Roma.  The Heirloom Seed Company advertised that these beauties will average from 6 to 12 ounces each and are said to be the ideal paste tomato.  Let's hope that next year's trial is a success.