Got my midsummer review, which is when we trim them back or take them out:
Cream Sausage- Not a spring/summer tomato. Was too dry, they never took off, got like 3 tomatoes at best per plant. Gonna try again for fall/winter.
Everglades- Florida Classic, tried and true. Survived the drought, only the ones in my aquaponics died, the rest are still producing. Will plant again.
Midnight Snack- 9th months old now, still producing. Trimmed it hard at the end of May, its come back with new fruit. Survived high 20s to low 100s. Will plant again.
Gobstopper- Poor performance. One flush of tomatoes on all 4 plants. Will try remaining seeds for the fall, but the other cherries performed way better.
Pink Thai- Slow to start, but has been producing great. Aquaponics ones died, but the one in ground has 10-15 on it for a second flush. Great taste, great color, will plant again, and more.
Hybrid- A backyard hybrid, so I can’t really plant it again, but it produced good. Just chomped it down to a sucker, so it should produce again.
Slicers- A determinate, so I got a flush at the end of May, then trimmed down. Its growing good, and should be getting a second flush in August/September. Was a basic red tomato, so won’t be saving seeds, but it does taste good.
Probably going to start my fall/winter seeds in the middle of August. Should be enough time to get some fruit before December.
my tomatoes are very crowded in this year- I only plant indeterminate so I’m thinking this will be a jungle to navigate. I’m not sure how often to add fish fert/calmag/bloom and fruit boost with this many growing so near each other. think it’s an experimental year!
two rows of dozens of plants
Japanese trifele, Siberian giant, bogatyr, San marzano, Baylor paste, mats wild cherry, brandywine, black slicers, hillbilly, early Willamette, tiger stripe, white gw, one sun gold for me to eat while I’m doing garden things, and a few unlabeled.
I planted dozens to give away, and I planted two of each variety in here. plus a few still in big pots waiting for the garlic to get pulled so they can go there.
Finally harvested some tomatoes and got my first BLT of the season. Once again, Dark Star gave me the first slicer. I am about a week late because we were evacuated for the big wildfire a couple miles from here. But I’m home and eating fresh tomatoes from my garden, so life is good!
BTW, firefighters are awesome- very impressed with what they accomplished in very rough terrain.
all my tomatoes are tall and flowering and have some fruit set, most are green still but getting a few every day
I mostly plant indeterminate, for my paste tomatoes for canning I just freeze whole in a bag in the freezer until I’ve got a batch worth. I do my canning in the fall and winter, often in the greenhouse to warm it up- I have this for my canning, two of them is enough.
cadco portable stove burner (seen with my lil pressure canner and a water bath pot) I bought one of the portable burners new and got the other on line used, it just needed a good cleaning as the inside was full of debris
Its about to be fall tomato season for us in the warmer parts, which is when I put in the slicers and other large tomatoes. Got 6 varieties started:
Ace 55- supposed to be a good tomato for soup.
Gary’s Golden Bear Tomatoes: Big low acid yellow/orange tomato
Boxcar Willie- good sized red tomato
Pink Thai Egg- Egg sized, probably my favorite variety right now
Midnight Snack- We overwintered one last year and it produced good sized crops the whole time
Everglades- Currant tomato thats just a staple around here
The worms should be dying down, so these big tomatoes will actually be able to ripen.
I’ve been using a turkey fryer burner outside to water bath can, it brings things up to temp much faster than the stovetop and keeps the heat outside. Now I want to set up a permanent outside kitchen!
I see pics of Boxcar Willie on the internet. Some pics have a very “bumpy” top, and others have a very smooth top. What is your experience? Would you recommend the variety for a small commercial operation (we only grow about 500 tomato plants)?
Olpea, If you are specifically looking for varieties to hit local flavor preferences, grow Box Car Willie, Lynnwood, and Akers West Virginia. Box Car Willie tends to be consistently productive of large red slicing tomatoes with very good balanced flavor. Lynnwood is a slightly better flavored tomato that is a bit smaller but still a very productive slicing tomato. Akers West Virginia has the most robust flavor of the three. People who want an old fashioned acid tomato will enjoy it. It is not sweet, usually brix in the range of 3 or 4 but has that rich flavor you can’t get in modern hybrids. Plant in new soil that has not grown solanums (tomato, potato, eggplant, pepper) recently to avoid soil diseases.
If you want a sweeter but still richly flavored tomato, Crnkovic Yugoslavian is a very good pink but IMO not as productive as you might prefer. Momotaro would be a hybrid pink that is very sweet. It is more likely to produce a crop of highly marketable fruit in your conditions.
Ignore the pics. Box Car Willie can throw fruit all over the place in shape and size depending mostly on weather. It has the fasciated gene which causes large fused ovule fruit. Sandhill Preservation has the correct variety. tomatogrowers.com probably has all of these including Momotaro.
Japanese black trifele were a big hit in my house this year and I’ll grow them again. shaped like a small apple, green/black/red, sweet tart. they had a very rich flavor even when ripened on the counter after first blush. the plants made a lot of fruit too, I was surprised at it. outperformed all my other black/dark tomatoes too.
yellow brandywine, “great white”, San marz, Costa Rica green stripe, Baylor paste, and Japanese black trifele.
great white plant was a gift, they were juicy and sandwich-good, but on their own a little watery and bland. similar to the yellow BW, paler tomatoes like that always seem so to me. the Baylor aren’t as solid as the SM, for sauce, but were good enough to fill up the cooker for sauce and paste. the green stripe were flavorful and amazing- will grow those again too. lots of them, bunches.
