End of Summer: What to Do With Too Many Tomatoes

I have a tomato problem. The Sungolds are coming in faster than I can eat them, the Black Krims are finally turning that deep reddish-purple, and the Yellow Pears are just relentless. This is the dream scenario I was hoping for, but it turns out I hadn't really thought through what "too many tomatoes" would actually look like in practice.

The Eating Phase

For a while, the answer is just: eat more tomatoes. Tomato salads, tomatoes on toast, tomatoes in everything. My colleagues at work have been very patient about receiving small bags of Sungolds at the office.

But there comes a point where you can't keep up, and that's where it gets interesting.

Roasting and Freezing

The simplest thing I've found is to halve the tomatoes, drizzle them with olive oil and a bit of salt, and roast them in the oven at a low temperature for a couple of hours. They shrink dramatically, concentrate in flavour, and become something completely different from a raw tomato. You can then pack the roasted tomatoes into freezer bags and freeze them flat. A bag like this in February, pulled out and stirred into pasta, is genuinely one of the best things about growing your own food.

The Chili Sauce Project

The chilies aren't fully ripe yet — they take longer than tomatoes — but I can already see this is going to be a significant harvest. I'm planning to make a batch of hot sauce once they're all ripe. I've never done it before, so there will definitely be a post about that when the time comes.

End of Season Notes

The cucumbers are slowing down, which is fine — I'm slightly cucumbered-out at this point. The pea bed has been cleared and sown with autumn spinach, which should give me one more harvest before the cold arrives. The allotment is starting to look a little tired around the edges, but in the best possible way. It's been used hard this summer.