Bounty from a previous year's garden.
One of the primary reasons I garden is to fill my pantry with canned fruits and vegetables that are (almost*) free of bpa and pesticides. Of all the different things I preserve, tomatoes are far and away the most-used ingredients in my household; it seems I’m constantly pulling a jar of some sort of tomato product or another out of the pantry. In previous years, it’s been pints and quarts that I put up from our big California garden. I ran out of the canned goods I brought with me when we moved some time ago and I’m reduced to buying canned tomatoes – it’s killing me. (And yes, the movers DID think I was nuts. But I needed the jars; why not bring them full?)
As the time for planting a garden nears, I’m gearing up to once again fill my pantry with tomatoes from the garden. In the past, I’ve planted as many as 40 tomato plants in a season and always had plenty for me as well as lots to share, but my space wasn’t nearly as limited. Here on this small lot where (ironically) full sun is scarce, there’s not room to wantonly plant excess. I need to know – roughly – about how many tomato plants will yield enough fruit to fill my larder.
I know that yields will depend upon the variety of tomato as well as the weather and my general success, but this page about preserving tomatoes says:
One bushel of fresh tomatoes weighs 53 pounds and yields approximately 18 quarts of canned tomatoes or 15 to 18 quarts of juice. Approximately 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 pounds of fresh tomatoes makes 1 quart of canned tomatoes.
Past experience in a hot summer region leads me to believe that a single tomato plant can yield as much as 20-30 pounds per season. Since I’m gardening in a region that’s new to me and notorious for being hard to grow tomatoes in, let’s assume I can get 10-15 pounds of tomatoes from each plant. This is nothing but a wild guess, but we’ve got to start somewhere, right?
In a year’s time, my family of four (including two teenage boys) will eat:
- 26 quarts of pizza sauce (in 52 pint sized jars)
- 24 quarts of marinara sauce
- 36 quarts of salsa (I use salsa in chili recipes and Mexican dishes in addition to serving it with chips)
That’s 86 quarts of tomatoes (more or less, as there will be other ingredients tossed in with the tomatoes).
In order to stock my pantry with the tomato products we eat regularly, I’ll need to grow 258 pounds of tomatoes. That means I’ll need between 17-25 tomato plants in order to accommodate my family’s needs.
I don’t have room for that many tomato plants, but I’m told that with the mild weather here in Hawaii, I can get two or three crops a year. Which begs the question: if I can grow so many tomato crops in a season, do I really need to preserve so much? Maybe I can get by with fresh tomatoes for some of my cooking needs. We’ll see how this plays out!
Do you grow tomatoes? Do you calculate how many plants you’ll need or just plant and hope for the best?
*There is BPA in the canning lids manufactured by Ball/Jardin. Tattler makes BPA-free reusable lids, but they are plastic, and I’m not convinced that they won’t leak something just as damaging as BPA. Weck makes beautiful glass jars with glass lids that are probably worth investing in, a few at a time.
You seem to be saying that the 60 plants I had for the two of us and some chickens might have been a couple too many… Ah well, the chooks were fat, happy and filled with tomato goodness!
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Au contraire! If you’ve got room for 60 tomato plants, I say go for it! I’ve definitely planted that many in the past, but find myself in the position of having to get by with a bare minimum. And that may not leave much for my chickens!
It was INSANELY too many, but most of them were cherries and we snacked on them all day long, plus the chooks ate as many as they wanted all day long too. If it’d been 60 plants of full-sized tomatoes, I shudder to think.
Melanie @ Frugal Kiwi recently posted..Two Degrees of Devastation- NZ Earthquake Day 2
This is so great. We have been talking and talking about getting a tomato plant and the question was how many?? I always hear that people can’t seem to give away tomatoes fast enough, but they are always the ones that have 5 or 6 plants. So, nice to see a post on how to know when enoughs enough!
If you’ve never done it before, even ONE is a great start. It will keep you in tomatoes all summer long. But if you’ve got room, it’s easy enough to plant a few – you can always donate the excess to your local food bank.
My very favorite moment is when I visit with a friend or neighbor with a lot of tomato plants and he/she “unloads” her bounty my way. There is nothing as delicious as tomatoes from the garden. Yours look fabulous…wish you were my neighbor
One of the reasons I plant to excess when space allows is so that I can share my bounty!
I remember canning with my mom. I wish I were a decent gardener so I could can my own produce. I’m going to keep reading–maybe you can help me become a better gardener.
Stick around, Squid! You CAN grow your own produce.
You can never eat enough tomatoes as far as I am concerned. I look forward to learning how to preserve them.
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Girlfriend, you will be growing A LOT of tomatoes to feed those boys. Can’t wait to hear about how they come up!!
You should see my neighbor’s garden – he has at least 40-50 tomato plants taking over his backyard. It’s a forest! Free tomatoes for me all summer!
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We have to have enough sun-dried tomatoes to get through the winter and spring here in Northern California, so I plant 10-12 ‘Principe Borghese’ determinate tomato plants early in the season. Another two or three early variety tomato plants are dedicated to homemade ketchup (24 lbs of tomatoes for 6 pint jars.) Four plants for fresh eating (‘Red Zebra,’ ‘Cherokee Purple,’ ‘Yellow Brandywine,’ and ‘Paul Robeson’ this year. And another 10-12 plants will go in once it’s really warmed up for sauce tomatoes. That ought to hold us.
Ketchup is something I made for the first time last year, and I’m totally adding that to my calculations!
Barbara Lampshire Anderson: Barbara, that’s my general philosophy! (But space prevents me from getting carried away these days.)
I think I’m holding steady at about 30 plants or so. We have to have enough sun-dried tomatoes to get through the winter and spring here in Northern California, so I plant 10-12 ‘Principe Borghese’ determinate tomato plants early in the season. Another two or three early variety tomato plants are dedicated to homemade ketchup (24 lbs of tomatoes for 6 pint jars.) Four plants for fresh eating (‘Red Zebra,’ ‘Cherokee Purple,’ ‘Yellow Brandywine,’ and ‘Paul Robeson’ this year.) And another 10-12 plants will go in once it’s really warmed up for sauce tomatoes. That ought to hold us.
Yey for tomato math, this year i am saving seed from the heirloom varieties i purchased, i did not get as many tomatoes as i wanted but i really need to learn how to can before next season because like you i want to quit buying tinned tomatoes
fun numbers, thanks! Im just about to plant- hopefully I can get to it tomorrow or wednesday. Friends got us canning jars for our wedding and life has been to hectic to fill most of them. Planning a canning garden this year and taking notes. By the way- do you have estimates on how long fresh lids are good for? I know they arent supposed to be reused, but if theyve been 2 summers in a hot house, are they any less likely to seal?
Kelli Ploeger Hinn: I LOVE that you got canning jars for your wedding. As for jar lids, I’m no expert but I’ve used lids (new) that I’ve had in storage for a couple of years, anyway.
Where are you getting the Bpa free seals?
I’ll check this out.
We grow tomatoes and we struggle; it’s so hot and dry here that the last few years not much grows until September. I have 10 varieties of tomato seeds this year and my husband says I always go overboard in the number of plants I choose compared to the limited space we have. Oh well, I’ll just make it work! I haven’t canned before but I want to try this year.
Sarah, my husband always told me I went overboard. Some ladies lie about buying clothes, some lie about how many tomato plants they have.
Now that I’m in a smaller space, I’m forced to use restraint. I’m also trying upside-down tomatoes to take advantage of unused space. We’ll see how that goes!
Roz Kidd: Roz, BPA in canning lids is a huge problem, IMO. Tattler lids (not sure why I can’t tag them) are the only BPA lids I’ve found – but they’re *plastic. Much as I love the idea of BPA free lids, I don’t trust that the plastic leads aren’t leaching something else that’s terrible for us. Weck Jars are all glass but expensive.
I feel that canning in glass – even with the BPA lids – is a better option that purchasing cans. The glass jars sit upright and don’t have contact with the lids at all once processing is complete. It’s an imperfect solution…
recent article said some BPA free plastics are still releasing hormone like other compounds. I agree with the upright/lower contact surface/ its better than nothing
Great info
Considering I’ve never managed to keep more than a couple of plants alive on my deck, you seem very adventurous to me! My solution is to bring home tomatoes from the CSA!
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