vegetable

Tomato

Sauce, salsa, and the morale crop. Not a staple — a reason to keep going.

Canned tomatoes are the backbone of winter cooking. Amish Paste and Roma earn their bed space.

Never water-bath plain low-acid tomato mixtures with peppers and meat. That’s a pressure-canner job.

When to sow: Start indoors April 1. Out after May 15 behind a wall or May 20 in the open. Harden off a week.
Spacing: 24–36 in. Stake or cage. Determinate (Roma) for sauce in one wave; indeterminate for all summer.
Days: 70–85 from transplant
Harvest: Full color. Pick ahead of a frost warning and ripen on the kitchen counter.
Store: Can (water-bath with added lemon juice — 1 Tbsp per pint), dehydrate into leather, or freeze roasted halves.
Save seed: Ferment scooped seed 2–3 days in a jar, rinse, dry. Isolate heirlooms by 20+ ft or more.
Companions: Basil, marigold, carrot. Not potato.
Pests: Hornworms — hunt at dusk, look for stripped stems and black frass. Leave any with white cocoons (braconid wasps). Septoria leaf spot — mulch, don’t water leaves, prune lower suckers.