First hint of color on Pink Boar in the greenhouse today.
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Just an update for anyone curious, I picked my first ripe Moskvich yesterday which was 68 days from transplant. The plants are not thriving but may be due to my faulty irrigation system which has since been corrected.
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I am harvesting that many every other day.
Early Girl
German Johnson
Rutgers
Delicious
San Marzano
Amish Paste
Large sweet Cherry
Beefsteak
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Looking good @Naeem.
I finally cut down my Amish paste, maybe it’s too gangly. Hopefully it will generate fruit eventually.
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Please report on taste of Jaune Flamee, have had that on wish list for a long time. Any disease problems with it?
It’s got pretty good disease resistance here, which is saying something for our soggy, humid conditions. I imagine you have a similar if not more muggy climate.
Taste is pretty good, tart and a bit sweet. The one I had today wasn’t the best specimen, as it had split from all the rain we had recently (+4in last weekend).
Chocolate Cherry also has good disease resistance and tastes great. I thought I had planted 2 of them this year, but apparently have 3, plus a Black Cherry. So, we’ll have lots of cherry tomatoes this year.
We are growing a large red cherry variety for the first time called Durmitor, it’s the most vigorous variety I’ve seen. I have a couple of them in 5ft tall, 3ft wide wire cages, and they’re about two feet above them. The flavor is rich for a cherry tomato. The plants seem to be getting some blight on them, tho.
My patch of 38 plants is getting almost unmanageable, most of the plants have started to grow into each other, despite me planting them 4ft apart.
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You know i have a hard time remembering what these pink egg shaped ones we grow are but they are a favorite heirloom of ours. The bag is full of mostly them. Was always told they were very rare but obtainable. They look like a thai pink egg but that is not what they were called years ago. They may still be a thai pink egg.
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I have heard from several people around that an old timer in my community grows some of the biggest and best tomatoes that you will ever see.
He was out mowing grass today and i got to stop and talk to him.
He calls them Hogs Head Tomato. He said they are an Amish heirloom he thinks and you cant buy the seeds anywhere that he has found. I cant find them either.
He said that everyone wants them…and that they are the best tomato hes ever grown.
He said his got hit by something this year so he wont have any crop. But he put me onto another guy that grows them so im curious. He said next year hes planting 100 plants if he has enough seed saved up…he cant grow them fast enough for people wanting to buy them.
No data found online of any Hogs Head Tomato. All i have is great reports of how big and good it is.
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A lot of tomatoes get passed around and renamed in the process. I’m cautious about anyone offering “an Amish heirloom” and the “best tomato” someone has eaten. The reason is because there are hundreds of heirloom varieties available today many of which have exceptionally good flavor. That they “got hit by something” this year is a red flag suggesting it is disease susceptible. Not to rain on your parade, but do want to inject a sense of reality.
If you want to grow the “best tomato you’ve ever eaten” and also one that is exceptionally large, here are a few worth finding:’
Omar’s Lebanese - large pink tomato with very good flavor
Daniels - another large pink potato leaf with good production and flavor
Crnkovic Yugoslavian - Heavy producer of large pink good flavored tomatoes
Lynnwood - An exceptionally good flavored medium size slicing tomato
Druzba - Nearly round, large, very good flavored red slicer
Box Car Willie - slightly oblate red slicer with good overall performance
Heidi - exceptional for a determinate paste tomato
Kellogg’s Breakfast - outstandingly good orange tomato
KBX - a potato leaf version of Kellogg’s Breakfast with slightly better production
Jaune Flammee - Bright orange very tart/tangy tomatoes
Cherokee Purple - Outstanding flavor and good production in a dark tomato
J.D.'s Special C-Tex - a very good flavored dark/black tomato
Bear Creek - One of the best of the blacks
Aunt Ruby’s German Green - green when ripe, outstanding slightly zingy flavor
Cherokee Green - green when ripe variant of Cherokee Purple
Green Giant - pretty much what it says, green, very large, very good flavor
If you want some cherries, consider Lorelei (red), Green Grape (green), Hibor (orange pear), Dr. Carolyn Pink, Galina’s yellow, and Black Cherry.
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I only need enough tomatoes to feed my family, so 4 indeterminate plants is usually more than enough (I have 8-foot-tall cattle-panel tomato cages, and they usually grow right up and over the top). I always try to do 2 cherries and 2 slicers. This year I was supposed to be growing sungolds and sweet treats for the cherries, and early girl and Cherokee purple for the slicers, but the Cherokee purple was mislabeled and ended up being some random red cherry tomato.
The thing is, having three different cherry tomatoes this year to compare, I realized that I really just love and prefer the sweet sweet taste is the sungolds. My kids do, too.
Question: Can anyone recommend any other tomatoes that are also super sweet, like the sungolds? Bonus points for sweet slicers, since theoretically I could just plant two sungolds if I want more sweet cherry tomatoes.
Disease resistance and drought tolerance are a plus, because I don’t have any sprinklers so my veggie garden only gets hand watered when the leaves start to droop. That’s why I always plant one early girl, it handles dry spells better than anything else I’ve found so far.
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Hibor and Maglia Rosa are possibilities though neither is a slicer. If you want a really sweet slicer with some disease tolerance, try Momotaro. It is a hybrid that was developed specifically for people with a taste for “sweet”.
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Now I’m starting to get good harvest of
Optimal. Here is the largest from today. Has anyone successfully fruited it in a less-than-optimal tomato climate?
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Ive heard tale of this local to me tomato over the years. Ive never seen it or tasted it though. Almost everyone that talks about it puts up two hands and it always looks twice the size of a softball. So far its an urban legend… like a big catfish that people outstretch arms to. But obviously its real.
‘something got it’ is likely herbicide drift etc. The old timer used to farm hundreds of acres but has since sold it all and moved into a 1 acre plot. His 1 acre looks like a garden of eden… over 50 fruit trees, gardens, grapes, he has every vegetable you can imagine growing as well. No telling what he sprays when and where…i do know that he sprays roundup all over the place…its obvious.
Im sure that it isnt the biggest or the best… but to local folks it obviously is.
He isnt the only one growing it… and im sure that he likely saved the seeds from someone else. He put me onto another guy growing it…so at the very least i am curious.
Sungold were a favorite of my sisters children. We always grew a few plants for them. We never found another tomato they liked as well as those. It’s a balancing act growing tomatoes between flavor and production. As you know every tomato has its good and bad points. Definately consider the yellow pear Yellow Pear Tomato – Mary's Heirloom Seeds . The red pear is not nearly as productive but exists. Pear tomatoes are given to cracking. They are heavy producers of good tomatoes. Some tomatoes like roma produce very heavy but are meant for paste so they have very little flavor. The tomato im growing above might be ellas pink plum but im not sure unfortunately. As i said its very rare but obtainable.
"Ella's Pink Plum Organic Tomato Seeds - TomatoFest
Early girl is a great choice it should be called dependable like it is. Prefer rutgers over many tomatoes for flavor but early girl might be the wiser choice overall. Brandywine has a great flavor if you can get by the unusual potato like leaves. There are so many good tomatoes. Cherokee purple has a good flavor but it does not produce well. It seemed i was doing 100 times more work for 100x less tomatoes. Y9u can have the best of both worlds and cut your roma sauce with some pink heirlooms. The flavor is deeper and after spices are added i could barely tell the difference.
So what do i have against sungold? Only that it’s a hybrid so the plants will not grow true from seed Sungold Hybrid Tomato, Cherry/Grape Tomato Seeds: Totally Tomatoes
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I had a few last year before the fall rains came in force and caused cracking and rot in all my tomatoes. I’d started them too late, though. I’m out of town at the moment, but when I left a week ago “Optimal” had started swelling nicely. I’m expecting that they’ll be starting to ripen in about 2 weeks. I have one vine outside and one in the greenhouse, but they were started around the same time and are around the same stage, with the greenhouse plant just being a bit larger.
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I feel ignorant, but how do they sell sungold seeds if they’re not true to seed?
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That is a good question. Hybrids are a controlled cross that is repeated Hybrid Tomatoes | Varieties | California SummerWinds
" What Are Hybrid Tomatoes?
Unless you are getting your produce at the local farmer’s market, the bulk of the tasty tomatoes you get from your local grocer are most likely “hybrid” tomatoes. A hybrid tomato, simply put, is created when plant breeders intentionally cross-pollinate two different varieties of a plant, with the outcome being an offspring, or hybrid that contains the best traits of each of the parents. Cross-pollination is a natural process that occurs within members of the same plant species. In hybridization, pollination is carefully controlled to ensure that the right plants are crossed to achieve the desired combination of characteristics, such as bigger size or better disease resistance. The process of developing a hybrid typically requires many years."
So now lets discuss the difference Difference Between Heirloom and Hybrid Tomatoes - Western Garden Centers
"An HEIRLOOM TOMATO is one that has been selectively reproduced for certain characteristics, perhaps a certain trait that is best suited for a growing region or a certain color or flavor. It may be the best one for canning/bottlings because of its acidic content. Or maybe a variety that is huge and juicy, where one slice fills an entire sandwich! Some varieties of heirloom tomatoes include Black Beauty, Brandywine, Chocolate Stripes, Green or Red Zebra, Big Rainbow, and many more. As the names would suggest, heirloom tomatoes come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, colors, and flavors.
Many would argue that heirloom tomatoes are more flavorful. I have personally grown Brandywine for several years and can attest that they are delicious and juicy. They also can grow to be quite large, but the same vine could also produce medium or smallish fruit. They are not completely consistent in size, but always tasty!"
"A HYBRID TOMATO is one that is the result of intentionally cross-pollinating two different varieties of tomato. This means the “child” plant will have characteristics of both of the “parent” plants. These tomatoes can be very hardy, disease resistant, and produce fruit that is consistent in size and shape. Being disease resistant is probably the biggest and most important benefit. There are few things as frustrating as growing a big beautiful plant, have lots of fruit forming, then get a plant virus that destroys your crop.
Some popular varieties of hybrid tomatoes are Big Beef, Cherry, Sweet 100, Early Girl, Better Boy, and Grape.
THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HEIRLOOM AND HYBRID TOMATOES…
…is what kind of 2nd generation fruit will grow from this year’s plant. You can’t be certain what kind of tomato will grow from the seed of a hybrid. Often the seeds are sterile and will not sprout at all. In the event that they do sprout, they probably won’t be the same as the plant you harvested them from. We planted a Cherry tomato two years ago and had lots of volunteer plants growing in that area of the garden the next season. We let a few of them grow and found that the plant produced fruit that was pea size, or smaller! They were delicious but a real pain to harvest. "
Sungold, early girl and others have that wonderful hybrid vigor. So why not just grow hybrid tomatoes? The reason i grow mostly non hybrids is to protect my food source. If someone wants to charge $50 for a package of tomato seeds everyone growing hybrids must pay the hybrid cost. Everyone growing heirlooms saves their seeds and grows the same tomato year after year.
That sounds bad but its still not the end of the world. There are companies out there that are actively trying to control the market on our food supply. If you think that sounds like conspiracy your not alone but it is actually true whoever have the seeds people want makes money. There are companies who want all seeds to be gmo not just hybrids. If it sounds far fetched i agree that is what i thought when people told me in the 1970s we had to protect our seeds. In the 1990s i understood what i was told as a child was true and there are companies altering our seeds. Please read up on that here Monsanto and Terminator Seeds | Open Case Studies .Most of my life we grew some type of heirloom seeds and i understand now we always must do that.
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Thanks! It’s amazing to me that the same two parent tomatoes will create seeds for sungolds consistently everytime. Haha, my husband and I have “produced” three crosses, but our F1 offspring are each so different!
Seriously though, genetics are so weird… I am Filipino, my husband is a red-headed mix of Caucasian, and we have:
- one black-haired brown-eyed son,
- one brown-haired hazel-eyed son, and
- one BLONDE haired, hazel-eyed daughter. If I didn’t give birth to my daughter myself, I’d never believe she was mine.
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Your husband sounds like he is part irish and those genetics will hang in there. My suspicion is they will be back when you have grand children some should be gingers like your husband. The children are very blessed with good genetics Filipino and Caucasion. You Got the Luck of the Irish: You’re a Redhead! - ABC News .Wishing you and your children and future grand children much success in tomato cultivation. We must always pass down seeds and plants in my family. Taught my sisters children and many others how to graft to ensure our food supply remains safe. One option you have is to grow sungold in the house and graft it every year to other tomatoes just like we do fruits. Here is a thread about tomato grafting and there are several on the site Tomato Grafting 2022 .In that way you get to have the best of both worlds. Should mention its also easy to root tomatoes. If your growing a hybrid and root it over and over " cloning" the strain never reverts to the undesirable plants. There is always a way to do anything.
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