A robust garden is worth celebrating — but too much of a good thing can sometimes be overwhelming. Take a hearty tomato harvest.
Figuring out what to do with all those ripe tomatoes can be tough, especially if you don't have hours to toil over a hot stove making sauce. Thankfully, a veteran gardener-turned-popular TikToker recently shared his chilly trick for storing and processing every last garden tomato, especially if you have too many to use at once.
The scoop
TikToker Jacques Lyakov, who posts under @jacquesinthegarden on the platform, recently shared a hack for storing tomatoes from the garden. It takes no special equipment and little effort. The trick? Lyakov freezes his tomatoes whole.
In his video, the seasoned gardener explains that he pops his extra ripe tomatoes into the freezer, chilling them until they are "rock-solid."
"You can just grab those tomatoes and throw them in a pot of boiling water," Lyakov says in his video. "It only takes a few seconds before you can fish them out, throw them in a bowl of cold water — preferably with a little bit of ice — and watch what happens."
As Lyakov explains, heating the tomatoes from frozen and then shocking them in ice-cold water makes the tomato skins incredibly easy to remove. Removing the tomato skins is essential when making tomato sauce, but you can also use these tomatoes in any recipe that calls for canned tomatoes.
Lyakov says on Instagram that, when frozen, the tomatoes should last until next season's harvest. Past that, Lyakov advised his followers to compost the remaining tomatoes and "start a new stash."
How it's working
Home gardening is an accessible and rewarding way to make a positive climate impact. When you grow your own food, you minimize food-related waste and reduce your pollution footprint. And it doesn't take much money to get started. According to our research, an investment of $70 can yield $600 of produce a year,
In addition to saving money, many people find homegrown food is fresher and more delicious than what they would buy in stores. Plus, you don't have to worry about chemicals or pesticides in the fruits and veggies you grow at home. As a bonus, growing food reduces one's contribution to climate-polluting gases associated with transporting produce over long distances.
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Tomato plants are especially popular in home gardens as they are cost-effective and easy to maintain. According to Ohio State University, tomato plants require a relatively small amount of space, yet can produce 8 or more pounds of fruit per plant.
What people are saying
More than 174,000 people viewed Lyakov's video on TikTok, with many sharing their appreciation for the hack and promising to try it with their home garden yield.
"How did I not know you could freeze tomatoes like this?!" one TikTok commenter wrote.
"That's a handy trick," another TikTok commenter added.
Some home gardeners on TikTok and Instagram even added their hacks to the comments, with several advising to core tomatoes before freezing. These gardening pros said they found the tomatoes weren't as bitter after freezing with the core and seeds removed.
"Core them before freezing," one TikTok commenter advised. "It's a lifesaver when you're processing them later."
Others had questions about the flavor of the tomato possibly being diminished when frozen. But Lyakov said he didn't notice a detectable difference in his many years of freezing tomato crops.
"The tomato flavor will be slightly affected but once it gets up to room temp, it's essentially the same," he wrote on Instagram. "The freezer locks in nutrients and stops them from degrading so in theory it should be full quality or dang close to it."
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