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As novice gardeners, we planted a bunch of stuff without really knowing where we were headed. Right now our tomato inventory consists of:

  • 5 cherry tomato plants
  • 5 Roma tomato plants
  • 7 Lincoln tomato plants
  • 1 unlabeled plant

I just looked up the yield of a Roma plant, and it said they can bear up to 200 fruits per plant...

Is that an accurate figure? Am I going to be canning a lot of tomatoes this summer?

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  • Making mistakes - that's the way we learn to garden. I've had an allotment to years, but, as a slow learner, it took me ages to realise it's best to only grow stuff I enjoy eating :-)
    – Peter4075
    Commented Jun 14, 2020 at 7:11
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    Title sounds like it would be a plot line from a really low-budget horror movie
    – rydwolf
    Commented Jun 14, 2020 at 15:39
  • You mean like this? imdb.com/title/tt0080391
    – crmdgn
    Commented Jun 14, 2020 at 19:44

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It's impossible to say if it is an accurate number. The number you actually get could be anything between 200 and zero, if you get hit by disease or whatever. Seed merchants usually quote the maximum crop you are likely to get, for the obvious reason, and you never know whether bloggers are writing from their own experience or just copying something they found on the internet.

I'm not a great tomato lover anyway, but in the UK I would say 2 to 4 plants per person, depending how optimistic you are about your gardening ability and how much you like tomatoes. Remember you don't get the entire crop at once, they should be spread out over several months.

You don't have to can them. You could make friends with your neighbours by giving the excess away!

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  • A small correction to the answer - Roma tomatoes are determinate, so the crop does indeed all ripen pretty much at once (typically for me, over a course of about 7-10 days). This allows all of the fruit to be processed only once or twice. Note that if you own a chest freezer you can also freeze your tomatoes after cooking them. Another idea would be to sun-dry or dehydrate them.
    – Jurp
    Commented Jun 14, 2020 at 12:36

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