'Maters

To all you many people who track my blog, I have to apologize for not posting much of late. Too many late days at work and too little time in the garden, and I don't have the time or the content to post. But I am working up a new concept to take the place of the garden news that will be coming this fall. Stay tuned!

Late August is here and the thrill of fresh garden tomatoes has done what it usually does when you have hundreds of the fruits piling up in the fridge and more turning red on the vine. So when you can't keep up with that home-grown goodness, it's time to get the canning jars out.

As you can see by this basket full of San Marziano's, we have plenty of tomatoes to put up for the winter. This basket holds just the roma's from five plants. One plant had twenty-seven red tomatoes ready for picking a week ago, and I picked about the same number from that same plant today.

In additon to this beautiful basket of romas, we had a less attractive but much larger basket of standard red tomatoes (Super Sioux and Legend) from three plants here at home and six plants out at Perkins.

So far, we have a little more than twelve quarts put up. We'll be in good shape for the winter if we can pick and save enough to get another eight or so quarts. Long, dark, cold days are little easier to handle when you have some good pasta doused with last summer's tomatoes with some parmigiano reggiano shaved on top.