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Outdoor Corner - Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes everywhere!
Gene Plihal
for Smoky River Express
One of my favourite annual visits is to Fern’s Greenhouse near Jean Cote.
Besides the helpful, informed service, there is always a wonderful array of most any conceivable plant.
So, with typical enthusiasm, I showed up the first week in May and made my annual purchase of annuals. I have a modest greenhouse which I reserve for tomatoes so this year I went with Sweet Million, Juliet, Early Girl, and, of course Big Beef varieties.
As of late July, the leader in my greenhouse is Sweet Million. While it doesn’t have a million sets, it has numerous fruit and appears to respond well to greenhouse conditions.
In second spot, in terms of numbers of tomatoes, we have Juliet. The configuration of the fruit is slightly different than other tomato fruit, looking a bit like a large tear drop. Each plant has 20-30 sets and are progressing well despite extreme cold temperatures of June and even early July.
Early Girl and Big Beef are also doing well. The former suffered from placement in the green house that isn’t ideal while the latter I always expect to come through in the months of August and September.
While we enjoy fresh tomatoes virtually from August on, I annually can a number of tomatoes and make a type of home made ketchup from the late ripening fruit.
It is a time honoured recipe which was handed down from my mother and grandmother and it is beautiful for making goulash or as a topping for fried potatoes or what have you. Mostly when the first hard frost arrives, I pick all of the tomatoes, place them in a cardboard box, not stacked too high, and place them in a dark room to ripen for this ketchup. The recipe is as follows:
12 ripe tomatoes
4 onions (cut up)
1/2 cup vinegar
1 cup sugar
1 Tbsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. allspice
Cook the above in a kettle until thick. Use corn starch to thicken if necessary.
The steps involved are as follows:
1. Boil tomatoes in water. Cut an X in the bottom of the tomatoes before boiling to facilitate peeling after boiling.
2. Peel and stem tomatoes after boiling.
3. Put tomatoes and onions in a large pot and cook until soft.
4. Add spices.
5. Taste frequently.
6. Add corn starch to thicken after corn starch is mixed with cold water in a separate container. Add to hot ingredients stirring frequently.
7. Pre wash jars.
8. Put lids in hot, not boiling water.
9. Place contents in jars sealing lids tightly.
Enjoy. This ketchup is incredible and goes great with moose burgers, guys! It is nothing like Hunt’s ketchup and believe me, once you taste it, you will rarely go back to the other ketchup.
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