Thanks!

Nice to hear they did well in not the easiest of environments.


[QUOTE=Labradors2;748691]I grew it last year. It was beautiful and productive. A fabulous paste tomato :).

Linda[/QUOTE]

We've grown it the last 2 years and it has become our favorite paste. The taste is fantastic and is a must grow from now on. Thanks for a great tomato Fred.

I would like to try this tomato. Do you have someone to exchange a few seeds?
Vladimír

Fred, I grew it for the first time this year. It did eventually succumb to Septoria, but we have it bad here (eastern Virginia) and there's not much here on our plot that doesn't eventually get taken over. It set fruit incredibly well. I definitely plan on growing this again and again, but at a larger scale. Thanks for working on and releasing this one!

I do have one question though. I noticed some plants had fruits that closely match the pictures I've seen (4-5" long or so) and then one or two that produced nothing but short fruits. Any thoughts on this? To be expected?

As an example
[img]https://i.imgur.com/EQ404eM.jpg[/img]

Hi Sean,

There were occasional off-types in our commercial production of seed a few years ago. Based on what they look like in our field (a small percentage of off-types that are variable) I am guessing that there was some outcrossing in the seed production field. But I did not visit the field, so I don't know anything else.

We are continuing to clean up the lines, and most of the seed we sell directly has been re-selected in our own field. But that doesn't mean that we are entirely free of off-types yet. But they should be less common going forward.


[QUOTE=SeanInVa;748721]Fred, I grew it for the first time this year. It did eventually succumb to Septoria, but we have it bad here (eastern Virginia) and there's not much here on our plot that doesn't eventually get taken over. It set fruit incredibly well. I definitely plan on growing this again and again, but at a larger scale. Thanks for working on and releasing this one!

I do have one question though. I noticed some plants had fruits that closely match the pictures I've seen (4-5" long or so) and then one or two that produced nothing but short fruits. Any thoughts on this? To be expected?
[/QUOTE]

We grow a lot of tomatoes plants for 1/4 acre lot, especially when 2/4 people in our house don't like fresh tomatoes. One of which is my wife, but today she said she wants to make sauce this year and I asked if I'd grow a tomato that is good for sauce. I had gotten some of these seeds and this will be our sauce tomato! I have never made sauce, neither has my wife, from what I've read a rough guide is ~5 lb of tomatoes to 1 quart of finished sauce. From what it sounds like, these tomatoes keep fairly well--so would you sauce makers think 2 plants be enough to make some sauce this year? Not talking huge amounts but enough to do a couple batches to learn, experiment, etc. I suppose we could always supplement with other tomatoes as well, but these will be the only paste varieties. Looking forward to trying this variety in 2020!

How did I manage to miss this one??? Going on my list for this summer.

With two plants, you might need to harvest, then core, then put the tomatoes into a ziplock bag in the freezer as the harvest comes in. Keep adding to the bag as more are ripe. I say to core them because it's a bear to try to core them frozen or after they're thawed (too mushy). Also, slice them before putting in the ziplock, because thawing out a thick tomato is way more time-consuming that thawing a thin one. Lay the ziplock bag flat in the freezer, to facilitate thawing.

Freezing and thawing is good because you can easily strain off the clear liquid that the tomatoes emit, leaving you with a thicker sauce. After thawing, run them through a food mill* to remove the seeds & skins, and then cook them a little (not much, if at all). You can skim off any more clear liquid that shows up. I've cooked down that clear liquid separately, simmering a long time, to reduce it by half, and then when I'm making the sauce, if it needs to be any "zingier" I add some of the clear stuff.

If you're wanting to have enough tomatoes all at one time to make a batch, you'd need a determinate with a short harvest window. Fresh tomatoes are also harder to get the clear juice out of.



*Food mill: I just have a hand-crank one that was relatively inexpensive
[URL]https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B000T3HWR2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1[/URL]

I never had to core Marzano Fire!

I always freeze my extras making it easier to chose a good day to can them (allowing a couple of days for thawing in the basement). Fortunately, I have multiple coolers, so I pop all the skins off and then leave them in colanders with bowls underneath to catch the thawed liquid.

Linda

My two Marzano Fire plants were planted out last week. Looking forward at our first attempt of homemade tomato sauce this summer! Fred, is the foliage a bit wispy/narrow? Just something I've noticed on my seedlings (on about their 3rd set of true leaves).

[QUOTE=jmsieglaff;756183]My two Marzano Fire plants were planted out last week. Looking forward at our first attempt of homemade tomato sauce this summer! Fred, is the foliage a bit wispy/narrow? Just something I've noticed on my seedlings (on about their 3rd set of true leaves).[/QUOTE]

Yes. Wispy nut not as pronounced as with some other varieties.