Amish Paste Tomato

Solanum lycopersicum 'Amish Paste'

vegetable

Amish Paste is a large Italian-American style paste tomato long grown by Amish communities and prized for flavor unusual in a sauce type. The plump, oxheart-to-plum-shaped fruit run 6 to 10 ounces with meaty, low-moisture flesh and few seeds, giving more usable tomato per fruit than a small Roma while still cooking down thick. That combination bridges the gap between a dedicated canning tomato and a fresh slicer, so the fruit is good enough to eat raw yet ideal for sauce and paste. The indeterminate vines are vigorous and set fruit over a long season rather than in one flush.

✅ Plant alongside

Good neighbors that attract beneficial insects or deter pests

• Basil — Repels thrips and whiteflies
• French Marigold — Suppresses root nematodes
• Borage — Draws parasitic wasps and pollinators
• Calendula — Trap crop for aphids

❌ Keep away from

🛡️ Pest & disease prevention

Proactive ways to stop trouble before it starts — tap a name with an arrow for its full guide

• Tomato hornworm →

  Plant borage; handpick; rotate nightshades annually

• Blossom-end rot →

  Mulch and maintain even moisture; avoid excessive nitrogen that impairs calcium uptake

• Early blight →

  Stake for airflow; prune lower leaves; mulch soil surface

🌾 Harvest & storage

First ripe fruit comes about 80 days from transplant, with picking continuing in waves through the season. Harvest when the tomatoes are fully red and meaty but before the skin softens too much, and check the blossom end for rot on the larger fruit. The dense, low-moisture flesh is ideal for sauce, paste, and canning and needs little draining, but it is also good sliced fresh. Process within a few days of harvest for the best flavor, and store at room temperature rather than the refrigerator.

🥗 Nutrition & benefits

The dense flesh of a paste tomato concentrates lycopene, vitamin C, potassium, and vitamin K into less water, which is exactly why these varieties make such rich cooked sauce. Lycopene is absorbed better when tomatoes are cooked with a little fat, so a long-simmered Amish Paste sauce delivers more of that heart-healthy antioxidant than the same fruit eaten raw.

⚠️ Toxicity & safety

Eat the ripe fruit only. Tomato leaves and stems (and large amounts of very unripe green fruit) contain solanine-type compounds and are not for eating.