San Marzano Tomatoes

Tomatoes have always been a favorite of mine to grow. I love eating them fresh out of the garden. My favorite has always been sweet cherry varieties. Last spring 2023, I wanted to try something different and make sauce so I grew some San Marzano tomatoes. I have grown other Roma tomatoes to make salsas in the past but I really wanted to try one that was better for sauces so I chose this one. 

One thing that I noticed with these right from the beginning was that they took longer to ripen than other varieties that Ive grown. I don’t know if it was because I got such a late start on them or if it is just this variety. We did have lots of colder weather for a long time and tons of rain into late June so I felt that might have been the reason. Also I noticed a lot of the first blossoms were dropping off and I thought it was possibly a pest but I wasn’t unable to find anything.  After a few weeks when the temperatures warmed up, they did much better. These tomatoes were beautiful and I was very impressed by the quality.

 I wasn’t able to start harvesting until around September and I still had a ton of green tomatoes on the vines into October so I began picking the rest of them and allowing them to continue to ripen on the vine. The amount of tomatoes on these plants really surprised me. Most of them had clusters of 8 and were about 4 inches long. 

It was fun making tomato sauce for pizza and also pasta but I still had a ton of extra, so I gave many away to my friends and coworkers,

I think that I overdid it and planted too many so I will probably only grow maybe 3 plants instead of 12 this coming spring. I had one garden bed dedicated to these and grew some cosmos and zinnia on the edges along with basil and celery. 

During October I was also harvesting a lot of flower seeds as well as tomatoes and getting the yard cleaned up for fall. The night time temps start dropping early and I had to get a head start on things so that I could focus on digging up my Dahlia tubers for storage for the winter. This was another project that I was new at and had to do a lot of research about it before hand. You can read more about what I learned about Dahlias and storing in my climate at the link below.

Dahlia Storage - Click on heading to the left to read the post

The picture above shows how the San Marzano grow in clusters. I left many of them on the vines to fully ripen. Once ripened, I boiled them for a minute in a pot of hot water and pealed the skins off. Then I chopped and blended them and added my spices to make the sauce. 

Since I have not ever made sauces before I searched for recipes and resources online of how to do it. I was excited to also find a recipe for pizza using a cast iron skillet and it turned out perfect. I have a gluten allergy so I do not eat gluten but I made this for a friend of mine and he loved it.  Because I was pressed for time, some of the remaining tomatoes I had were put into the freezer. I left the skins on and put them into ziplocs to freeze for making roasts and soups in the future. I didn’t know this could be done but someone online mentioned it so I thought it was better than letting them go to waste. I am pretty sure that the flavor changes when they are frozen, but for soups I think it should be good. 

The pictures to the left show the small cherry tomatoes that I love to grow and do so well for me. I do not use these to make sauce but I love to eat them direct out of the garden as a quick snack or cut them up for use on my salads. 

If you would like to try making pizza with a cast iron skillet here is a link below to a simple basic description of how it’s done and you can add anything you like. I found that there are lots of recipes online to make this type of pizza but I believe they all use the same basic instructions that you will find in the link below and you can add whatever veggies and topping that you want to, I think the main thing is heating up the pan to a specific temperature and amount of time cooking. The instructions here are by Lodge.  CAST IRON PIZZA

I think that there is also instructions on their website to make pizza dough if you need one. I currently buy my pizza dough in the produce section at Trader Joes premade and freeze it until I want to use them.

If you are looking for tomato’s seeds, there are a few sellers that I like to purchase from. I get a lot of my seeds from Baker Creek because they have a ton or rare varieties and fun selection, but these San Marzanos were purchased from a rack possibly Lowe’s garden center. I cannot remember but they are from Ferry Morse and they worked well for me. 

I am also sharing the new tomatoes below that I am going to try out this coming spring. 

Pictured on left are varieties that I recently purchased for 2024. Super Sweet Cherry and Giant Pink Belgium, also Cherokee Purple and Purple Bumble Bee from Baker Creek. I am excited to try these new ones and hopefully will have some great things to say about them and photos to share this summer. My growing season doesn’t start until the middle of May so I am very anxious to get started.