Tomato work

Vegetable gardening is a lot of work, with uncertain rewards. Depending on weather, among other variables, it may or may nor be worth the effort—specially financially. This year I decided to plant tomatoes again, and it was a perfect illustration of all that.

The year began with disappointment, when I discovered that blossom end rot had appeared on my tomatoes, the same thing that doomed my tomatoes in 2021. In 2021, I picked them mostly green and managed to get some usable ones, but so few that it just didn’t seem worth doing again. Lockdown in 2022 made it impossible to plant on time, anyway.

Planting tomatoes again this year, then, was a bit of a leap of faith, and while the blossom end rot seemed to suggest doing so was a mistake, it turned out that it only affected the first fruit. I suspect it may have been because I didn’t water enough at the beginning.

The next challenge came from the skies: All the storms we had in January and February. There was no damage to my property (or the tomatoes) from the storms, but each time I knew there could be other damage, and I knew I needed to act, and first did so after the Auckland Anniversary Weekend storms. Doing so created a new experience—and more.

I was facing a reality I know very well: Whenever there’s heavy rain, tomatoes may split (my mother told me that when I was a kid). It’s caused by the sudden glut of moisture, and the cells of a tomato’s skin can’t divide fast enough, so the tomato’s skin splits. When the split is horizontal, the tomato is usually fine, but when it’s vertical, it’s more serious, in part because it’s usually wide and deep, and insects, dirt, etc, can get into it and cause rot. After the first cyclone (Hale), one of my tomatoes split vertically, and by the time I noticed, it had mould in the crack.

My solution to the cracking crisis was to pick all the tomatoes that were even partly ripe. I did that to prevent them splitting (something that’s most likely the riper a tomato is).

It started to sprinkle again as I finished picking (including some that already had horizontal cracks—the photo up top shows that harvest and what the cracks look like). The cracks probably happened because of the constantly changing soil moisture, with periods with lots of rain and some that were hot and dry; there’s no way to know for sure.

I decided to first use up all the tomatoes with a split. Rather than cooking them into sauce though my usual method (more about that later), I’d slow roast them and then make them into tomato pureé. Technically, this was a tomato sauce that was crushed and sieved, and not a passata, which is made from uncooked tomatoes. I chose to do this because it generally intensifies the flavour of the tomatoes, and I knew that many of the tomatoes weren’t fully ripe.

So, I sliced the tomatoes in half and cut out the core and any parts that weren’t fully ripe (I’d already found that they were quite tough). I laid them out in one layer in a baking pan, brushed olive oil on them and ground some salt (which helps draw out excess water). I roasted them at around 110C (around 230F) for about two hours. Here’s the before and after roasting:

Next, since I don’t have a food mill, I pressed the cooked tomatoes through a strainer (the screen mesh variety). The mesh kept the skip and seeds and let the “good bits” through. When I was done, I put cling film over the bowl and put it in the fridge overnight—only because by then it was too late in the evening to use it.

I’d used passata a few times, but most of them are imported from Italy, and cost around 65¢ per 100g, though one made in Australia is only 54¢ per 100g. The bigger problem is that each bottle is 700g, which could easily be enough for two cooking adventures, however, once opened the bottle should be used pretty quickly. I generally only make tomato sauce one a week.

Awhile back, switched to tins of crushed & sieved tomatoes made in New Zealand. The tins hold 400 grams and cost only 50¢ per 100g. I think that this product must be cooked to remove water, since that’s common with tinned tomato purée. Real cooks and chefs would turn their noses up at using such a purée instead of passata, but I’m just a home cook on a budget, and it works well for my needs.

In the end, that tray of tomatoes probably produced around 600g of purée, and for less than I’d pay for the 400g tins (though I can’t be bothered to work out the precise cost, I’m nevertheless certain it was less than 50¢ per 100g). When I was ready to make my sauce, I took some more tomatoes, cut them up and softened them in the pot with the onion and garlic, before I added the purée and let everything cook.

Ordinarily, if I had ripe tomatoes in good condition (where I didn’t have lots of bits to cut out), I’d take a tomato, put in a pan of boiling water for a few seconds, take it out with a slotted spoon and drop it immediately in a bowl of ice water. This causes the skin to split (on purpose, so it’s easier to remove), then I chop up the tomatoes and start my sauce.

Without fresh tomatoes, I ordinarily use a tin of chopped tomatoes and a tin of the crushed & sieved tomato purée, and if I happen to have a ripe tomato or two, I’ll cut it up—skin and all—and put it in the pot. Kinda lazy, and probably not what I’d do if I was going to serve it to a guest, but when it’s just me? Speed and ease are valuable things.

I did a couple more harvests (after storms…), though I cooked them in a pot instead or slow roasting them because it didn't seem to make any difference. I got three meals out of doing all that pureeing, plus three lots (the equivalent of 3 cans) of purée are in the freezer.

There are probably still a few tomatoes left to harvest this season, weather, bugs, birds, etc., permitting. Even so, based on what I did harvest, I’d say I got around $8 worth of purée, plus maybe that much again in tomatoes I cut up for sauce or to have in salads or sandwiches. Let’s be (absurdly) generous and say that it was four time that—$32—but even then it wouldn’t be anywhere near enough to cover my costs. The plants were probably only around $5, but there were bags of soil designed for tomatoes, bagged compost, a new tomato cage, some fertiliser—all of which added up to more than that overly generous $32. However, prices for food items have soared since I planted the tomatoes, so maybe I at least broke even? I probably would’ve if I’d been able to have more tomatoes fresh—but, then, I seldom buy fresh tomatoes, so is that really relevant?

It’s not all about costs, of course: It’s a lot of ongoing work to grow tomatoes, and I’m not sure the relatively low financial return justifies the amount of work, especially when I seldom buy fresh tomatoes. If there was some way I could better control the weather—like by growing tomatoes in a greenhouse—it might work better (less prone to splitting from too much rain, for example). But that’s not a viable option right now.

Next year, I think I may focus on stuff I actually buy and use, like salad stuff, and maybe things I can freeze, like peas and green beans—assuming I can be bothered at all. If I grow tomatoes, they’d be from harvested seeds and I’d have far fewer plants to look after. Right now, though, I’m not really thinking concretely about what I will (or may) do next Spring, though I’ll think about it before winter, probably. Part of the problem this year—in addition to horrible weather—was that I didn’t really plan. But how easy is it to plan when extreme weather may still be likely?

The bottom line—in this case, pretty literally—is that, no, growing tomatoes was not financially viable (in fact, it cost me money to grow them). My next step is to research to see what, if anything, is sensible to grow.

It turns out, though, that I found out that marigolds grow well at my house.