Thanks. Green Giant mystifies me. I inspect daily for color, firmness but pick four out of five tomatoes either under-ripe or over-ripe. Don’t have this trouble with any other tomato. They seem to sit on the vine at pre-ripe color/firmness for a long, long time then BAM go over-ripe in blink of an eye.
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I’m trying German Pink and Pink Fang this year for the first time. I love purple tomatoes but I’m sick of the cracking
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Same here, though on the Marin coast. Days are probably a bit cooler, and nights a bit warmer. And it’s windy. I grow in 15 gallon pots in a small fenced area that’s somewhat protected from the wind.
I tried Berkeley Tie-Dye Pink last year, but it didn’t ripen. Brad’s Atomic Grape did pretty well, as did Black Cherry and Chocolate Pear. Stupice and Bloody Butcher did fine, but were uninspiring. Best performers were Black Krim and Paul Robeson.
This year, I’m repeating Black Krim and Paul Robeson, and trying these:
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Because my garden is still in the idea stage due to the move, I really limited my selection for the year to tried and true varieties. I grow all heirlooms except the Sungolds.
- Opalka - one of my best canning tomatoes, but it is great for fresh eating too. Long and pointed, almost like a hot pepper, almost no seeds. Polish heirloom
- Heidi - another great canning tomato, but make even better sun dried tomatoes. The are smaller, but produce a ton and are a bit blight resistant. Heirloom out of what was called the Congo at the time
- Brandywine from Croatia - heirloom Brandywine that went to Croatia and came back. Tough plant that handles blight well. It produces a lot, but later in the season. Great for fresh eating/salsa
- German Red Strawberry - another late one, but huge and great for canning/sauce
- Ukrainian Purple - this year’s black tomato, because it seemed like the thing to do
- Sungold - not a heirloom, but still the best cherry I’ve ever found.
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I’ve grown German Strawberry, I agree a fine variety.
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@Bellatrix what are your seed sources for Heidi and German Red Strawberry? I think I might add them to the list. My friend raves about Opalka, it would be fun to grow some additional paste/sauce options for her to try next year.
@alleyapples I’ve been growing and saving seed for those varieties for at least 15 years. I know I originally got the seed from Seed Savers Exchange through the actual exchange (yearbook, not the SSE catalog), but I don’t remember who had the listing (it is somewhere in my records). It looks like several people are listing both this year.
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Both are widely available. Sandhill Preservation has them, I think Bakers Creek may also have both. https://tomatogrowers.com/ probably still carries both of them and would likely be the fastest to ship seed.
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Okay, after sifting through my seed stash, my picks for this year are these, many we’ve tried before and liked them. Anything with a * shows a first time variety-
Orange KY beefsteak
Chocolate Cherry
Jaune Flammé
Kelloggs Breakfast
German Strawberry
Big Beef
Big Boy
Black Brandywine
Giant Belgium
Lehrertomate
Durmitor
Tsalma
Mamie Brown’s *
Brad’s Atomic Grape *
Daniel’s
Cuostralee
Cherokee Jumbo
Russian Queen
Frembgens
Celebration
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Honestly, since 3-5 plants will supply a couple, probably it’s most cost-effective to buy them.
Generally, I would say salad sized tomatoes are easier. Also, more consistent in flavor. Practically any salad tomato will be decent in flavor. There are a few clinkers in the beefsteak category. You won’t go wrong with a few “Early Girls”.
I think Wall o’Waters are a good investment in my climate. The knockoffs with a similar alliterative name not so much.
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Early Girl does fairly well in a dry climate that is not too hot. I don’t recommend them in the midwest or southeast. Parts of California and other western states are a better fit. Someone always says “I’ve grown them forever” and I counter “what have you grown to compare with?” Eva Purple Ball is an open pollinated variety that will outproduce Early Girl with similar fruit maturity and better flavor. Big Beef will double the production of Early Girl though it is about a week later to first ripe fruit. Why is Early Girl a problem in some climates? It is very susceptible to several foliage diseases which limit fruit production and dramatically affect flavor. In a dry climate, foliage disease is far less of an issue.
I thought about this a bit and decided to post a bit more information about early maturing tomatoes. First and foremost, tomatoes do not develop good flavor if matured in cold weather. They need fairly consistent temps in the 70’s/80’s and plenty of sunshine. But there are a few varieties that are pretty good in that early planting early maturing slot. Bloody Butcher is arguably the best combination of golf ball size fruit with decent flavor and 55 day maturity. Gregori’s Altai IMO is one of the better 60 day tomatoes with flavor that can tip into top 10 territory. Sasha’s Altai is another that while not highly productive has a good combination of earliness and flavor. As above, Early Girl is a hybrid that needs specific conditions to develop both lots of fruit and good flavor.
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Of course! Sandhill is one of my favorites and may be where I got my seed. I completely spaced on them. @alleyapples Sandhill definitely has Heidi and may have GRS. https://www.sandhillpreservation.com/tomato
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Amana orange is my only repeat from last year. It slightly edged out striped German on taste and texture, and blows it away on productivity. Trying kellogs breakfast, rosella purple, and sun gold for the first time. The seed catalog talked me into trying Abigail and big beef plus. I will also try grafting German Johnson and Amana orange onto the big beef plus. If I wind up with more room and I can find some seedlings local I will add black cherry and cherokee purple.
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In 2021 I did-
Kellogg’s Breakfast
Cosmonaut Volkov
Mortgage Lifter
Red Brandywine
Legend
Rutgers
Paul Robeson
Black Sea Man
Neves Azorean Red
Due to room constraints I am not doing some so I can try new ones.
This season it’s:
Cherokee Purple
Black Sea Man
Mariana’s Peace
Pineapple
Pink Brandywine (Sudduth)
Legend
Rutger’s Select
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I grow heirlooms mainly, which are indeterminate and huge. I purchased a large roll of concrete reinforcement wire and made cages out of that. I also used it for permanent trellises that run length-wise down the beds. In my opinion, heirlooms straight out of the garden have much better flavor than most of what you find in the store and are worth growing.
My garden is completely organic and I don’t find tomatoes to be finicky at all. They have a bit of blight late in the season and look raggedy, but still produce very well. This may be more advanced, but I do a trick at planting that helps with resistant to blight. I add some compost that was made from shellfish (blue crab/lobster) and some shrimp shells in the hole at planting. One of the microbes that breaks down chitin has been found to give the plant some resistance to blight (from Journal articles on studies of organic farming techniques). It has helped in my garden and the year that late blight turned up early thanks to the Big Box stores, I still had healthy tomato plants in the garden when everyone else’s in the neighborhood were dead.
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Microorganisms that break down shrimp chitin also attack nematodes. I’ve never read that it directly helps with foliage diseases, but the addition of organic nutrients is very beneficial. Also, I’ve consistently found that organically enriched soil produces plants that are healthier and able to withstand disease pressure longer than soil where chemical fertilizer is used. You should have seen the plants I grew when I had access to manure from a rabbit barn. Indeterminate plants grew up to 40 feet long and produced 200+ tomatoes per plant. That was the year I saturated the market with Marianna’s Peace seed.
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I’m trying Mariana’s Peace for the first time this season.
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Seed started for these
Early Girl
Cherokee purple
German Johnson
Rutgers
Delicious
San marzano
Amish Paste
Black Cherry
Large sweet Cherry
Boxcar willie
Beefsteak
Picture shown below my hot peppers started March 11th and tomatoes started today and few days ago.
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In your climate—as in mine—you’ll probably have to deal with foliar diseases, principally early blight (alternaria) and septoria. Late blight (a strain of phytophthora responsible for the Irish Potato Famine and other contemporaneous and less well-known outbreaks elsewhere in Europe) can be destructive some years, but is not a problem in others. As as has already been suggested, mulch will help reduce pathogenic splash. Keep lower stem well-pruned and lower foliage well away from soil, as early blight and septoria spot like to work their way from the bottom up. Pruning/pinching out superfluous suckers to keep the plant’s structure somewhat open (but not so open that fruit sunburns) can also help by facilitating air flow and spray penetration.
Various wilt diseases----usually soil-borne, but sometimes the result of insect-vectored viruses—can affect tomatoes, but I usually don’t have a problem, save with certain cultivars. (“Yellow Pear” always wilts and dies on me prematurely.)
Generally, I spray my tomatoes with Bordeaux mixture (or another copper fungicide) to keep the blight and septoria at bay and maintain productivity to the end of the season. I’ve also had good luck using potassium bicarbonate against early blight, but have found it less efficacious against septoria spot in my location.
All that being said, growing tomatoes really isn’t difficult. Good luck!
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Do you ever use Bonide copper spray? I have some of that. I was wondering how often you spray.
Also, do put down any weed barrier down? I have some, but haven’t used it yet.
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