Featured Recipes: • Watermelon, Tomato and Feta Salad Gardening Tips: Taming Tomatoes The better your tomato crop, the more important it is to support those heavy, leafy vines, laden with ripening fruits. My favorite system is to train them in circular cages~and I don’t mean those flimsy ones you buy at the garden center which are neither tall enough nor strong enough to support the weight of indeterminate (vining) varieties. Instead I purchase sheets of concrete reinforcing wire, which is sold at hardware stores in flat rectangular sheets of heavy duty metal grid, with 6”-by-6” openings. Just the right size for reaching in to pick. Each sheet, cut in half, will make two 5’ tall cylindrical cages. Cut the sheet in half with wire cutters, leaving stubs of wire that can be twisted around the opposite sides to form a cylinder about 18” in diameter. I also snip off the horizontal wire at the bottom, leaving more stubs I can poke into the earth to hold the cage steady. As the tomatoes grow you can train them a little, removing the bottom suckers up to the first fruiting branch, and guiding each uppermost tip to stay within the cage as it grows. But most of the time the vines will simply rest their elbows on the on the wire, so to speak, as they climb, remaining staunchly upright. The Tao of Tomato Sauce Although I tend to eat with the seasons, there’s one summer crop I’m never willing to part with when frost threatens~ tomatoes. The trouble is, I’m often too busy or lazy for the hours I’d need to can them or cook them down into sauce. Fortunately I’ve found a way to let tomato sauce “just happen”. When frost is predicted I pick all of my ripe Plum Tomatoes, rinse them off, cut out the little core at the stem end, and place them in 1-gallon sealable plastic bags, in the freezer. Whenever I need them I can take them out individually or by the bagful. I quickly slip off their skins by holding them under hot tap water for a few seconds while they’re still rock hard. This way, much less of the beautiful, nutritious pulp clings to the discarded skins. Once skinned they can be tossed into soups and stews, or turned into a completely effortless tomato sauce. To make it, I just set the frozen tomatoes in a steamer or colander, over a pot, and let the liquid drip through the holes into the pot as they thaw. This water, which is nearly clear, can be added to another recipe or discarded. Meanwhile, while I’m off doing something else, the tomatoes have become a little pile of rich, concentrated goodness~in other words, a sauce. All they need is a little olive oil, garlic and herbs.