Green Tomato Sauce?

I knocked out another 14 quarts of tomato sauce yesterday. The ingredients of the sauce consist of whatever tomatoes happen to be ripe, although I try to make sure half of them are paste tomatoes.

I am a bit particular about my paste tomato varieties. I’ve tried them all—Amish Paste, Romas, San Marzanos—and none do as well as a variety I happened upon some years ago called Oregon Star. That variety is the backbone of my tomato sauce. The fruit is huge; I’ve had some upwards of a pound apiece. It is also one of the earliest ripeners in the garden. I save seed every year, which is not easy because the fruit is so meaty that getting even half a dozen seeds out of one tomato is an accomplishment.

I also planted Purple Russian paste tomatoes, which are another favorite. They are much smaller and a lovely dusky burgundy. This year, I tried Northern Ruby paste tomatoes from Triple Divide Seeds. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by that one. The fruit is smaller—about half the size of the Oregon Star tomatoes—but the plants are loaded. I’ll probably keep that one in the rotation for next year.

Added to the paste tomatoes in these two recent batches have been 1) Cherokee Purple, another favorite and early ripener; 2) Dirty Girl, which is the open-pollinated version of Early Girl; and 3) Aunt Ruby’s Green. I added Aunt Ruby’s to the lineup a few years ago and have been saving seed. The plants are outdoing themselves this year.

Every tomato is huge. They never turn red, which can be confusing if you’ve never grown them before. They start out dark green and gradually turn yellowish from the bottom. The best way to determine ripeness is to squeeze them.

I like these in sauce because they have a unique flavor. I’m tempted to make a batch of sauce using only this variety just to see what green tomato sauce might taste like.

I make a pass through the tomato patch every couple of days and bring in anything that is starting to turn red. (The UPS driver asked me the other day how I keep turkeys out of the garden. I don’t, and they can do almost as much damage as the ground squirrels.) At the moment, every horizontal surface in the house is covered with tomatoes:

This is a south-facing window. Tomatoes ripen quickly here. The Oregon Star paste tomatoes are in the box on the left.

I am close to being done with sauce, and now I need to start on salsa. I’m doing a bit of a dance trying to keep one of our freezers empty for pork. I want to freeze these tomatoes for salsa because the skins will slip off more easily, but finding time to make the salsa before the pork arrives is going to be tricky.

The Blue Boar Berry tomato plants are doing exceptionally well. They were started from seed from a tomato that spent last winter on the ground in the garden. Mother Nature is amazing. I should take a picture of the plants, because they are trying to take over the world. The tomatoes start out dark purple, almost black, and turn red when ripe.

I’ve been watching Michael Snyder’s Pacific Northwest Weather Watch channel on YouTube and it looks like we might get one more warmup before the end of the month. I haven’t yet had to cover the tomatoes to protect them from frost.