Five tonnes of organic tomatoes are being trucked to Melbourne as part of a push for the public to bottle their own passata.

Organic grocer CERES Fair Food is coordinating the effort, which it has dubbed "crowdsaucing".

Organiser Monique Miller said the campaign was born from the social enterprise's inability to sell local organic tinned tomatoes.

"Even we, who are an organic grocer, don't and can't stock organic canned Australian tomatoes — they just don't exist," Ms Miller told 774 ABC Melbourne's Rafael Epstein.

"There's one cannery left in Australia now and the growers that grow for them are all conventional farmers."

Profits go to environment park

CERES Fair Food has nominated April 30 as Crowdsaucing Day and is encouraging people to organise public or private tomato bottling events on that day.

The group has set up a website, crowdsaucing.org.au, where people can register to take part and purchase tomatoes.

"We have contracted a farmer to grow five tonnes of organic tomatoes for us," Ms Miller said.

The tomatoes will be delivered to registered events by CERES Fair Food, which funnels all its profits to the CERES Environment Park.

CERES, which stands for Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies, is a 10-acre not-for-profit park and education centre built on a decommissioned tip in Brunswick East.

The park includes a bush food nursery, organic market, bike workshop, cafe and community kitchen — which is where a lot of the crowdsaucing will take place.

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Ms Miller said a test event in October attempted to sauce 120 kilograms.

She said that event was the first time she had preserved tomatoes.

"It's really not that hard," she said.

The crowdsaucing website includes resources to help first-time sauce makers, including a video on how to sauce tomatoes if you have no equipment.

Food brings people together

People interested in taking part but cannot host an event can use the crowdsaucing website to find the public event nearest to them.

Ms Miller said while this was the first Crowdsaucing Day, the organisers hoped it would not be the last.

"Food is such a great connector and brings people together," she said.

"And preserving food is such a great way to understand seasonality."

Monique Miller says preserving tomatoes is not difficult. ( Supplied: Tim Turnbull )

Listeners messaging 774 ABC Melbourne 's SMS line noted that groups of people coming together to preserve food was nothing new.

"How times have changed — as Italians we used to be ridiculed for this; well done to you all," one listener said.

Michelle in Eltham said her family had just joined with three others for their annual passata day.

"Eight boxes [of tomatoes] cooked in old beer bottles in a 44-gallon drum over an open fire — sauce for a year," she said.