Everyone’s talking about tomatoes!

Some have lost them massively to the blight. Others are up at 3 am catching up on the canning.

I feel fairly content with where we are at tomato-wise. I planted about 8 varieties, grown at home from seed. I also allowed certain strong seedlings that self-seeded in the garden, ending up with a few unnamed mixed varieties. We have many beautiful tomatoes, despite the cool summer that slowed production and encouraged disease. But - I planted more tomatoes this year than I have ever before, and have less of a harvest than I have had many years.

This year we have a lot of Caspian Pink. Flavor-wise, it may be my favorite beefsteak type tomato, but it is problematic. It's bottom can start to rot before the top is ripe, and it splits very easily. It's hard to get a perfect one for market purposes.

Usually Costoluto di Genovese is one of my favorite and most prolific tomatoes to grow; this year it did very poorly. It seemed particularly susceptible to the blight or other diseases that did afflict some of my tomatoes - particularly the early planting set out under row covers. In fact, it seems the earlier the tomato was transplanted, the greater the chance of total loss to blight.

Last year, I discovered a new way to use Caspian Pink (and any other soft sweet beefsteak). We are drying them to make tomato chips! These are dried tomatoes with a twist - they end up so thin and crisp and intensely sweet that we just tend to eat them just like that!

The art of canning seems to be going through a revival, but the art of drying food is more seldom mentioned! We love our dehydrator, and are running it round the clock for the tomatoes, zucchini, corn, and herbs right now.

Cherokee Purple I tried for the first time. It’s okay, when I can get a good one off the plants. Tends to split and show blight spots on the top, in my garden.

Other standbys are Polish Linguisa and Opalka - two sausage-y paste tomatoes that look so similar I lose track of which is which. They are huge and fabulous and make great sauce.

Pineapple is a new tomato for me this year, that I haven't grown before. It is a beautiful (and luxuriously tasty!) thing.

Beautiful range of colors in tomatoes cut up for drying! Back to front: Cherokee purple, Pineapple, Caspian Pink, Pineapple.

In addition to the drying, I’ll be canning too, whole tomatoes, sauce, and maybe pizza sauce again.