Malakchite Box - repeat from last year, very good green when ripe tomato, early, productive, good taste, medium to big size;
Japanese truffle pink - repeat from last year. Early, productive, unusual shape and the taste is good enough.
Unknown Pink Beefsteak - My former Japanese Truffle Red. I was very surprised when I got big oblate pink beefsteak which did not look anywhere close to the Red Truffle, but it won the taste test, so I repeat it.
Brandy Boy, F1 - for Brandy Boy contest on GW.
Black from Tula
Lida Ukrainian
Bulgarian Triumph
Persimmon
Krasnodar Titans
Maria
Also ground cherries, tomatillos and sweet peppers.
Drew, you found tomatoes with funny names . The word of caution about new Russian tomatoes. The older ones have the years of selection behind them. But I have the strong suspicion that many Russian seed companies just rename the old OP western cultivars and sell them to Russian public, who do not really care about their true identity. And then these tomatoes go back to US as the new Russian tomatoes with exotic names.
I think most are legit, but yes one or two could be renamed. Some are well known even though new. The ebay sellers are good guys, so I don’t have much concern. Many ebay sellers are bad, but certainly not all. Like one I got tomatoes from has sold peppers to many members on tomatoville, and they rave about the peppers. I bought them too! So I did my homework on these varieties. Some members of Tomatoville don’t like some sellers that have renamed items, such as Amishland, but overall her products are decent. Many other sellers quote her as the source for many new varieties. Plus I’m not that concerned anyway. In a few years I will only be growing a few tomatoes that produce well. I’m eliminating many that don’t work for me. I’m not that concerned with the name.
I have seen American tomatoes sold by Russians, but they were all named correctly. At least from the sellers I deal with.
Yes, at the end only production and taste matters. I just see so many new tomato names on Russian sites. It seems like the selection exploded. However I know the state of Russian agriculture and I have great doubts that the years of careful selection are behind those varieties. It is just plain cheaper to mail order seeds from Europe or US, test them for one year and to sell them under their own trademark name. I am sure that seed selection is still going on, but it is done by the agricultural institutions or by the hobby gardeners who are not so interested by the making money right away. The seed sellers are just sell what they take from these packets with Russian names. But again at the end only good variety matters, but not its name. The “Unknown pink beefsteak” as good to me as any other named cultivar if it tastes good.
I didn’t buy any from seed companies, although a couple originate from them. I didn’t know that till I looked them up on Tatiana’s site. All of them come from Croatian hobby gardeners, well the ones I bought on Ebay.
I just spent the morning setting out tomato plants (a little late for my area). @Drew51, I’ve seen your tomatoes before and always enjoy seeing more…they are just so beautiful and varied! What are the cherry-sized ones in the wooden bowl on the stovetop photo? BTW…just yesterday I saw some tomatoes in a grocery store that were called “cocoa”, obviously because they were absolutely chocolate colored. Very unusual and attractive looking tomatoes. I grew some chocolate colored bell peppers last year that looked just like those tomatoes. No real purpose for either, but fun for sure. With your extensive tomato knowledge I’m sure you’ve seen/heard of the “Cocoa” tomatoe but I hadn’t seen it…pretty neat.
@amadioranch : Those are some of the most beautiful plants I’ve ever seen…so you certainly have figured out how to grow them in AZ! I never even thought about the fact that tomatoes are hard to grow in some climates. I must confess that here in TN they are one of the very easiest veggies (oops…I mean fruit technically!) to grow. Even those who have never grown anything else often set a couple tomato plants out in their yard around here and are usually able to pick quite a few.
@thecityman Quality tomatoes are the holy grail of Phoenix gardeners. Its mainly due to our weird growing conditions. We have a short spring early summer period in which they do well. From March til mid June. By late June we are seeing highs above 110 degrees on a daily basis. Our all time high of 123 degrees was on June 23. While it is possible to keep them going into July the overall health of the plant really suffers and they look really pitiful. Besides the yield tanks. So we just let them go by the end of June and call it good enough.
The July-August months here are rough on alot of typical summer veggies but some just love that high heat and humidity that shows up in those months. Melons of all sorts, sweet corn, vining winter squash, and okra LOVE it.
Labor day is our traditional planting weekend for what we call our “winter” veggies. Beets, carrots, lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and the sort. Yeah its different. What we see over and over is people moving here and trying to grow like they did on the east cost or midwest. They fail over and over and proclaim thats its impossible to grow here. And because we have so many transplants from that area here now the general thought by 90% of the citys population is that same thing. Which is ok I guess…they can come and just buy stuff from us.
For some reason everything you just told me blows my mind- I suppose just because I never really thought about it. I guess I just sort of assumed that spring comes earlier there but otherwise things would be fairly similar. What you described sounds incredibly difficult growing conditions. And I thought tomatoes were a universally easy to grow veggie (fruit). On the positive side, as you pointed out, I know I’ve seem lots of cantelopes and other melons from Arizona here. Since melons are by far my favorite thing to grow in a garden, I might enjoy that aspect of AZ farming. But overall, it sounds much harder to grow many things, and that just surprises me! Learn something new every day here- literally.
Eric, thanks for the weather description. It helped me get a better mental picture of Phoenix growing conditions. I didn’t know that you had a high humidity in July and August. Is that monsoon season there? The hottest it’s gotten here has been 113 for a few days in late June 3 years ago. Because of the humidity, the heat index was 131. The temps that entire summer were elevated with far too many days in the 100’s and upper 90’s for me.
I can tell that your warming times for spring come earlier than here by the harvest pics that you post. I don’t feel secure putting maters in the ground before the beginning of April because they don’t do as well if they have to tolerate chilly weather when young. Good thing they weren’t out early this year because of that surprise freeze that hit the end of March.
It is also true in the hotter parts of the Southeast that the spring and fall/winter planting seasons can give the lushest vegetable gardens. For good results, much of the spring planting here needs to be done from late January through February when it feels a bit crazy to be out planting. Many things should be in the ground, or have their seeds started before they are available in local stores. It’s still going to take me awhile to be accomplished at fruit growing here, but my winter and spring veggie crops practically look fake because they are so lush, thick, and healthy. It’s not just newcomers to your area who don’t get it. Most home growers who’ve lived here forever don’t get it either. Maybe it’s because people just assume summer is the best time for gardens. For me, summer gardening takes the most and hardest work to keep it alive. The other seasons have sufficient moisture. It seems easier to protect against frost than against too much sun and heat.
Two items that I plant that were missing from your summer veggie list were peanuts and sweet potatoes. Do you not care for those, do they not do well there, or are they just not profitable enough to bother with? People in the family love melons. I would prefer not to plant them because they take too much effort giving them sufficient water on a steady basis to keep them from cracking if it rains. Okra is a biggie here.
I should have mentioned sweet potatoes. We usually grow them every year but after a incident last year in which we lost our entire crop to a mold infestation in cold storage we decided to take the year off. They grow incredibly well here in the heat. We have in the past grown peanuts too. Did quite well. But alot of trouble to dig come harvest time in our clay.
We do have some humidity show up mid july -mid september. Yep its called our “monsoon” season. Lots a thunderstorms and blowing dust. The humidity comes up (somedays 80% usually 40-50%) but its nothing as bad as what you all get in the south. Feels awful to us because we are used to 5-15% humidity.
Here is one of our famous monsoon “haboobs” rolling in.
Yep. Just a big old dust storm. They blow in about 4 times a monsoon season. Lots of wind/lighting/thunder and just enough rain to make all that dust into mud on our vehicles. lol They really are quite something to see.
Ha! I wish! More like damnit that rain just washed my surround off my pomegranates! Now I get to respray! We have a terrible time with leaf footed bugs on our poms here.
My contribution to the tomato thread is an endorsement of “green grape”. It is a sweet and excellent flavor. Its larger then a standard cherry tomato, but small enough to pop in your mouth whole. It is still green when you eat it, just a different tone of green. As it gets further along it gets yellow tones. I like them right before the yellow shows up.
Those are ground cherries. Related to tomatillos, but are sweet. Next year I want to grow some prurple tomatillos. I’m growing two different ground cherries this year. Ammon martin, and Godie. Those in the bowl are Aunt Molly’s. A nice cultivar for sure.
MM, sorry that I just now noticed your request for my tomato varieties. I grew about 20 varieties last year, and am growing 16 this year. I’ll need to check my list tomorrow as I don’t recall everything I’m growing at the moment.
I wish I could give you my personal opinion on taste, but, sad to say, I don’t like tomatoes! I grow them just because I enjoy it, and I enjoy giving them to friends, family, and coworkers. I do know that one of the more popular types I grew last year was called Chinese Velvet. I also grew some white tomatoes - German White and White Wax. Not sure how different they are, but people either really liked them or didn’t care for them. I believe most white types are low acid.
I got most of my tomatoes from a site called amishlandseeds. I was a member of the tomatoville forums, and many of the folks there didn’t think very highly of amishland. However, I have no complaints. I had nearly 100% germination the last two years, and all the plants produced as described.
Here is what I think was a Suddath strain Brandywine. The largest tomato I grew last year. It’s on a full-sized dinner plate:
Does anyone know any varieties that have a nice acidic bite? So many are described as low acid or sweet. Tomatoes that I’ve grown in the past have always been better than store bought, but it has been years since I’ve had any with the acid zing that my taste bud memory says is required for true fresh tomato flavor. It’s especially important for a proper fried green tomato.
. The word of caution about new Russian tomatoes. The older ones have the years of selection behind them. But I have the strong suspicion that many Russian seed companies just rename the old OP western cultivars and sell them to Russian public, who do not really care about their true identity. And then these tomatoes go back to US as the new Russian tomatoes with exotic names.
