Nice! I've been focused on fresh eating the last three summers myself, and the cherry tomatoes are going absolutely bonkers this year. Next year I am definitely growing some paste tomatoes for canning. I've got my eye on some "icicle" tomatoes, they look like peppers.

The only processing the BH enjoys is the tomato sauce prep and canning, because she knows we'll have sauce later. I have to hide some so we can have it in mid-winter. This year for me I'm down to a cherry and a slicer, the rest sauce.

Dan

no substitute for paste tomatoes... they taste better and make the process much easier... san marzano is one of my favorite varieties of any type of vegetable that i grow of which there are well over a hundred.

I try to get determinate varieties of paste tomatoes and plant them later, so as not to be canning in the summer heat.

If you think sauce made from paste tomatoes is great wait until you taste sauce made from a wide variety of tomatoes, including slicers and beefsteaks. There really is no comparison to the complex flavors you get when one moves beyond paste tomatoes only.

But if paste types is all you want then I agree that it is difficult to beat San Marzano. Other than its problems with BER it is one of the most popular tomatoes over on the Growing Tomatoes forum

Dave

I am with Dan and Dave. But it is a fact of life that every year I plant more paste, fewer slicers. And a lot of the paste tomatoes get eaten in summer: there is panzanella (sp?), for which we keep old bread in the freezer for one year, there is salsa, bruschetta, and there is the raw spaghetti sauce made simply by blending raw San Marzano, garlic, basil, and olive oil (salt to taste). All divine, and best with mostly or all paste.

I'm growing a variety of paste tomatoes too. However, for me the san marzano is being a disease magnet. I'm growing the straight strain. Is there a better strain perhaps that tolerates high heat and variable water more easily. I water regularly, but it's rain we are not getting at regular intervals (and it seems they know the difference!!!) I've not had much experience with paste tomatoes before. Normally I've grown canners or heirlooms and made sauce from those.

I think sharing info about garden successes is great. Each year I have the luxury of choosing a variety of tomato plants from a local grower. I'm growing Amish Paste tomatoes again, they are huge. But I think I also got a San Marzano. The Amish is huge. The grower sells individual plants so I can splurge of several varieties.

Dave, I had noticed the BER, didn't know it was a trait of the cultivar to be prone to it. Some fast lime seems to have righted it more or less, so I'm ok with it. I've got to say it has the flavor I like though! Well, I guess I already said that before. :)

I like the ieda of not canning in the heat, I was thinking of freezing some tomatoes whole to make sauce out of later, as I've read elsewhere. I wonder if that affects the flavor...

girlgroupgirl- I don't know about varieties but have you tried a soaker hose for your tomatoes? I've switched this year and the tomatoes are responding real well to it- no more cracking. And with mulch underneath making no more splash up plus no more overhead watering getting the foliage wet in our high humidity I think there is less fungal disease happening.

I discovered roasted heirloom tomatoes a few years ago and that is how I make my sauce. It is easy to prepare and freezes very well.

I use whatever variety is ripe so the color is often unusual but the flavor is unbeatable.

I roast and freeze some toms that have been cut in half and save them for making gazpacho. Roast up some of those cherry toms to freeze and top your homemade winter pizza with them.

I've been really pleased with the striped Romans I grew this year. Very meaty and cook a great sauce, too. Very prolific, too. Seem to be pretty good in our heat, as well!

You can even roast grocery store paste tomatoes in the dead of winter and think you've died and gone to heaven.

The one tomato i have not enjoyed is my Reisentraube cherries. They are no better than cherries from the store. I've taken to using them for treats for my chickens. I do have a batch I'm going to try dehydrating but it's not on my list for growing again. It's not even very prolific.

Alright, Y'all. I need help with my ignorance. I assume that you are talking about plum tomatoes? WHY are they superior for cooking and canning? I have never grown them, but always want to learn better ways. When you say tomato "sauce" do you mean Marinara or do you mean something similar to the canned sauce that I buy in small cans?

I like to can tomato juice that is used for vegetable soups and chopped tomatoes that is used for casseroles, etc. I also use some canned (store bought) tomato sauce and paste for marinara throughout the year. I have always grown slicing tomatoes. Am I missing something? Please fill me in.

Plum is a shape, paste is a dry tomato (various shapes but mostly plum). Roma is a plum shaped paste. Paste tomatoes have less water and cook down faster, but they usually lack in flavor. I don't know of many who actually cook them down into tomato paste (like in the little cans). I cook my pizza sauce down nearly that far. The sauce I preserve is simply tomatoes pureed with a submersible blender cooked down to half the volume I started with (paste varieties thicken down a bit faster) and then frozen, all the spices go in later.

You can't really tell what type of a sauce a tomato is going to make until you cook it. Some poor fresh eating varieties make very tasty and distinctive sauces.

Last year I made a bunch of sauces and did a side by side taste test of all of them.

Opalka + Polish Linguisa pastes = basic/simple/ uncomplicated flavor. Cooks down a little faster than the others, fun to scald and skin.

Oxheart mix (Wes, Kosovo, et al)= rich complex savory flavor.

Beefsteak mix (Brandywine et al)= complex with sweetness--cooking time increased compared to hearts.

Black mix (Black Krim et al)= rich, complex, savory, with something more to the flavor than oxhearts.

Costoluto Genovese = Bright, flavorful-intense, tangy sauce, very different from the above mixes. Might be better toned down by mixing with 50% other varieties. Good for pasta-pizza sauce, probably not good for making chile con carne.

Opalka+P.L. with about 10-20% Limmony (tangy yellow w/ white flesh beefsteak) in the mix= similar flavor profile to Costoluto Genovese. Limmony has a stong unique sweet-tart flavor and enables you to make a very good tasting yellow-white sauce by adding it to bland white varieties.

Orange varieties (KB, Aunt Gerties Gold et al) make a good sauce similar to red/pink beefsteaks, but sometimes have a faint raw pumpkin-carotene tone to them (most noticeable when I made sauce with Gary Ibsen Gold). Honorable mention goes to Orange Banana for a good orange sauce from a paste variety.

Greens and Bicolors tend to be watery and have a fruity taste, are difficult to cook down, and make a funny fruity tasting sauce--really bad for chile IMO.

If I was limited to a just two varieties for making sauce I would grow a heart like Wes, and Costoluto Genovese (or Limmony) to give me a couple of different flavor profiles depending if each is used alone or mixed.

Plum, paste, roma ... to me they're all the same.

The one year I canned tomatoes I used Viva Italia plums. I also like to use plums for Pasta e Fagioli and always for roasting.

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spiced_ham, thank you so much for that information.

I've made sauce previously but am growing alot more tomato varieties this year that I'm not familiar with.
They include paste, ox heart, beefsteak, cherry, stuffer, sausage, etc
with colors including: red, pink, orange, yellow, white, etc.

Your research on flavors will make my sauce making process to alot smoother!
Thanks for sharing :)

spiced, you'd be great here in Sonoma Co! Wine and food country!
I have limited room (raised beds) to plant sauce maters VS slicing, so I mix them all!
Sometimes, when things get crazy, I just toss them all into a plastic bag and throw them in the freezer to deal with later.
I've never had a bad sauce!
The sauce tomatoes do have more meat and less seeds, so they're less work, but tomatoes are all good!
I also dehydrate and freeze for winter use. Nancy

natal, put out another place setting! I'm coming over to your place for supper.

My husband does the roasting here and he likes to cover the bottom of a pyrex pan tightly, then add fresh garlic and basil with just a touch of olive oil. Roast till they are dense but not charred. We use it on thick bread, sometimes with mozzarella broiled on top, and it is ambrosia.

It's funny about that, but the best roasted tomatoes we've had were not particularly tasty fresh. I don't know what chemical magic makes certain tomatoes bloom when roasted, but it's definitely there.

We've grown Super Marzano for the past couple of years, an improved variety of San Marzano, I suppose. Terrific for canning/sauce and no BER. I've also scalded and frozen with good results.
Also, another vote for Viva Italia...a tried and true disease resistant hybrid that we've been growing for decades.
Natal, that bruschetta is food porn. More! More!

Thanks for the info, folks. Sounds like there's really no need to grow pastes, though I may try a couple next year just to experience them. Natal, you're making me hungry!

Coffehaus, if I remember you're not too far from me (comparitively), so if you're doing well with Super Marzano I bet there's a fair chance I will too. I'll keep an eye out for it next year at seed ordering time. I forget who mentioned Ox Heart-types (m to lazy to scroll up to search for the name), but I was interested to see that at least one of my catalogs considers them to be paste tomatoes too. I never knew that! Of course, that ignorance comes in part from me have to strenuously limit what I allow myself to read about (and desire) at seed ordering time. I've got a bunch of tomatoes today that are less than wonderful fresh, maybe I'll try a ilttle roasting test and see if they become transformed. Everyone's enthusiasm is catching!

Jnfr, roasting works magic on just about any veggie.

Sunnibel, I think you're going to being pleasantly surprised.

I'm so hungry from all this! Is it too late to plant a san marzano seed?