Tomatoes & friends
San Marzano
15–20 galPaste tomato for sauce.
- Indoors
- 6 to 8 wk (late Mar)
- Outside
- Transplant after frost
- Where
- Grow bag or raised bed, staked
- Sun
- Full sun
- Water
- Dead even; paste fruit shows blossom end rot first
- Harvest
- Aug to Oct, one big flush
San Marzano is the most famous name in paste tomatoes, and one plant a year grows here beside Amish Paste for the sauce weeks. Every September the two meet at the canning pot, and the famous name has to keep earning its row.
Growing
It runs with the main tomato crop: started indoors in late March, planted deep after mid May, staked, with 15 to 20 gallons of root room or a bed slot, suckers pruned weekly. Moisture is the discipline here: let the soil swing wet to dry and blossom end rot arrives in the long fruit before any slicer shows a spot. The crop comes in one big late flush, August into October, which is exactly what a canning weekend wants.
Varieties
San Marzano 2 is the improved standard strain; Redorta is the oversized Lombard cousin that fills a sauce pot in fewer fruit.
In the kitchen
Split, roasted flat, and milled, it makes the sauce the can labels keep promising. Dry flesh and few seeds mean less time boiling water off the pot.