If you like to talk to tomatoes.....

I'm not sure that growing and canning your own is really worth it....

Last March I carefully planted tomato seeds into little toilet paper tubes and watered and cared for them until they were supposed to be big enough to transplant outside.

They all died/disappeared (Rabbits).

So we hunted and hunted and hunted for tomato plants that were bigger - mind you, it was now past tomato planting time.

We planted anyway, and cared for 4 regular tomato plants and 4 cherry tomato plants all summer (with some help from friends while we were away!).

The cherry tomatoes went crazy!  I ended up making 4 pints of salsa out of those.  That may have been worth it.

The other tomato plants, not so much.  In fact, at the end of September, I picked a full box of green tomatoes, wrapped them in newspaper, and coaxed them into ripening in my laundry room.

Finally, they ripened and were ready to be made into spaghetti sauce.  Since I didn't want to load my kids up for a shopping trip for JUST canning jars, I decided to freeze my sauce.

One hour later - after boiling and icing and peeling and squeezing and cooking down and adding spices - I have approximately half a quart of spaghetti sauce.  This might be enough for a spaghetti meal for my Curly Crew, but then again, it might now.  It depends on how it tastes and how saucy the Curly adults are feeling that day.

All in all, I'm not sure if it was worth it this year.  I mean, seriously, how many tomato plants will I have to plant next year in order to get a decent amount of sauce?  I just don't know.