tomatoes

7 Tips to Stop Blossom End Rot and Save the Harvest

August 2, 2019 By Laurie Neverman 69 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

While annoying, blossom end rot (BER) is treatable and preventable. Caught early, your odds of a successful tomato crop are still good. In this post, I’ll talk about blossom end rot causes, prevention and control; plus several photos to help you ID the problem and common mistakes to avoid.

There’s nothing worse than waiting for your first big, beautiful tomato to ripen – only to flip it over and find a black rotten spot on the bottom. (Black tomatoes = tasty, black bottomed tomatoes = not tasty.) Your black bottomed tomato has blossom end rot.

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Spaghetti Sauce for Canning Made with Fresh (or Frozen) Tomatoes

July 31, 2019 By Laurie Neverman 128 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

My husband came in from outside the first time I was canning spaghetti sauce, smiled and said the house smelled like an Italian restaurant – a good Italian restaurant. I had to agree.

This sauce takes a while to cook, but the end result is delicious! It’s great for pasta, pizza or topping spaghetti squash. Gluten free and meatless (you can add meat just before serving if you like).

homemade spaghetti sauce ready for canning

We take you through the recipe step by step with photos, plus share tips for working with frozen tomatoes, and a print friendly version of the recipe at the bottom of the post.A good homemade spaghetti sauce recipe for canning is a must in our house, because many store bought spaghetti sauces use ingredients like genetically modified high fructose corn syrup and soybean oil – not things we normally eat.

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4 Reasons Your Tomatoes Are Not Ripening + How You Can Help

July 19, 2019 By Laurie Neverman 97 Comments
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Tomatoes not ripening? Here are the four main reasons why your tomatoes aren’t turning red, and what you can do (if anything) to help ripen your tomatoes.

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Home Canned Salsa Recipe – Plus 10 Tips for Canning Salsa Safely

July 25, 2018 By Laurie Neverman 145 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

This home canned salsa recipe rates an “Awesome!” from friends and family alike. To make it a salsa recipe for canning, it contains a higher proportion of tomatoes than most fresh salsa recipes, plus added vinegar to lower the pH. (More on Canning Salsa Safely at the end of the post.)

The taste and texture of this salsa recipe is similar to a popular commercial brand we used to use, but canning salsa with your fresh local produce at the peak of ripeness really makes the flavors sing.

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Tomato Flowers But No Fruit, or No Tomato Flowers – 9 Troubleshooting Tips

July 9, 2018 By Amber Bradshaw 11 Comments
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This is a guest post by Amber Bradshaw.

It’s very frustrating when you have tomato flowers but no fruit, or big, beautiful tomato plants but no tomato flowers at all. Thankfully, most of the time you can get your tomatoes producing with a little extra TLC. In this post, we’ll look at two tomato flower problems – no flowers at all, and tomato flowers but no fruit.

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tomatoes

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