Tomato Sauce Sovereignty Project By Marjory Wildcraft

Tomato sauce is the pillar to most of my family’s favorite meals.Spaghetti, chili, pizza, stews – you name it, we love to slather tomato sauce all over everything.

Like almost everyone else, I grow tomatoes every year.Some years are great and I am over run with the red fruits, and some years I wonder what hit me.But this year I am going to be more scientific about the process.

I want to be tomato sovereign!

I invite you to ‘watch over my shoulder’ as I show you what I am doing and why.I’ll keep you updated on the progress and you can join in the laughter as I post my results.

What I am hoping to achieve in this first go-round is 24 pints of tomato sauce.That is about a six-month supply using one pint of sauce per week.We could eat a lot more of course, and when I can get more work out of the kids we will!LOL.

I like to make thick tomato sauces and you need about three pounds of tomatoes for each pint.So I figure I’ll need a total of seventy-two pounds of tomatoes.

So how many tomato plants do I need to grow?What you can get varies widely depending on spacing, soil fertility, and gardening experience.The yields can range from between 2lb. to 16lb. per plant.I am guestimating I’ll get around 8lb. per plant.Which means I’ll need nine plants.

I am actually planting 14 plants.Oh yes, if you’ve done any gardening at all you know by now to bank on some failures.

Have you ever lost a lot of your crop because the tomatoes rotted on the ground?Me too.So in a future update I’ll discuss staking and pruning methods to get the most from each plant.I’ll also go into details on how I stagger the nutrients to optimize production – you’ll be surprised by what you shouldn’t do, especially near the end.

I’ll post an update soon.

Cheers,

Marjory

PS: Do you remember that little tool ‘The Power Plucker” which helps you pluck chickens in lickity spilt seconds?Eli (the small business owner who developed this product) has put out a new video showing this tool in action. Simple and fast – that’s what I am into. Chekck it out here:

http://youtu.be/l4BlXSxEbe8