Living and Loving Hobart:

I have tomatoes

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by tomatoes?

Summer is the season for tomatoes and tomatoes and tomatoes and tomatoes...

Last year Skye had a seedling bonanza, where supply outstripped garden bed capacity. This year Skye swore a solemn oath to hose her gardening pursuits down but it didn't quite go according to plan.

Sometimes there are too many tomatoes in your life... this is Skye's story:

I swear I promised fewer seedlings. But as I found more varieties, the seedlings grew exponentially.

Photo does NOT do seedling quantum justice

Row upon colonizing row, spilling over the edges of a trestle table out in the back sunroom, waiting to be planted.

Tomato tip – Tasmanian tradition, plant tomatoes on Hobart Show Day, last Thursday of October.

However, because size does matter, and those seedlings were still babies, I was off to K&D to pick up some more plants. Did I stop there? No. I'm the first to admit that I suffer from poor impulse control and the Environmental Expo was a chance to buy heritage tomato plants including the glorious Black Russian. Needless to say I ended up with more tomato plants than should be permitted in a suburban backyard.

Tomato tip - The Black Russian is beautiful to look at, eat, and is possible to peel without blanching.

And so it came to pass that I had more plants than garden beds and was on the phone to Stoneman’s ordering another three uprights and doubling our garden space.

Tomato tip – control your tomato impulses. It’s weird!

There was the shoveling of loam.
There was black birds.

There was metres and metres of netting.

And then, there were tomatoes and tomatoes and tomatoes.

Here is how it all turned out.

Looking at tomatoes:

Tweeting about tomatoes:

Having Facebook ‘your’s are bigger than mine!’ tomato envy:

Making tomato and zucchini* frittata:

*the other Summer vegetable

Making passata for pasta.

Oh and did I mention, making passata for pasta.

Tomato passata in readiness of pasta with our onions, basil, garlic and zucchini (yeah I could have made the pasta but I would have had to grow and grind my own wheat and that was never going to happen).

... and off-loading tomatoes on to Ange to use.

My contribution to this epic tale was quite painless...

I collected the tomatoes from Skye, sliced up said tomatoes and added flavourings such as honey, white balsamic vinegar, brown sugar, oil and some herbs.

Then it was a matter of leaving them in a low oven for 4 hours or so, and there you have it - slow roasted tomatoes!

Using the slow roasted tomatoes:

Then spending the last weekend in February making Ange’s Nan’s tomato chutney:

And as we go to post, we find ourselves in March, and there is more passata on the stove top and more tomatoes ready for picking.
Don’t even get me started on zucchinis.