I have seed from them, yet to grow it out though. Nice and really early for your zone. My tomatoes just started forming. I’m tending to start later here. They really don’t grow well till warmer, and I’m finding less disease issues with later starts, which is the main reason. I noticed this when I planted some suckers, my other tomatoes all had leaf spot, but the suckers were free of it. I think the stress of the cold was why they got it in the first place. Also the wetness here in early spring is no friend. Yes, production may be a little off, but I added extra plants to make up for it. This year I’m not seeing any disease issues yet. For my area it is better to start a little later.
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Red pear Franchi was quite good. I was thinking about it as a paste tomato, similar to many pear shaped varieties, but it is more of a beefsteak. Romeo set many large impressive tomatoes it should ripen soon.
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I can’t comment much on taste as every tomato I used for sauce, surprisingly light for how big they get, truly paste tomatoes. I can say that year I had killer sauce. Romeo, Opalka and Polish Linguisa were used. These are all keepers for me.
I’m testing Black Pear, and Federle this year, I only got one plant of Black Pear as I had limited seed. My plants are flowering like mad right now, impressive so far this year. I’m not going to test many more, Cow’s Tit, that’s about it. I have others, but I’m happy with the keepers, and the sauce was excellent from them.
Romeo was the clear winner of all, but I guess it could fail in some areas? Best to try, here they did really well. I know year to year variation too. Also another tomato with a pointy end is going around as Romeo too, I have not tried it. I’m happy with this version. Ends are not pointy. Keep seed please, I may need some back at some point! Plus these are super hard to find, not sure why? Romeo is a fantastic tomato!
A good paste produces few seeds, and this might factor in on why the best pastes are not wide-spread.
I was bummed this year as I lost all seed to one variety, but luckily a guy on tomatoville helped me out. A great site to discover all that is tomatoes.
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Thought some folks might enjoy this video. It’s a quick one about the guy who created the Carolina Reaper pepper. It’s interesting in its own right but the part that stood out to me was when he talked about other breeders trying to create a hotter pepper but that he’s got peppers twice as hot as the Carolina Reaper he just hasn’t released yet.
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Looks like it would be delicious. Is the small seed cavity typical of this variety?
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I FEAR THE REAPER!!! I grow as hot as I can… just don’t eat them… LOL My buddies love them. This guy has some hotter ones ready to roll out… OMG!!!
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Yeah at one time he called them Death Strain, he may have renamed it, the new ones hotter than the reapers.
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This is the only ripe tomato so far from it. I will report about it later.
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I’ve watched some Youtube vids of folks taking the Reaper challenge. They are so painful to watch. I don’t know if I could do it, maybe if the price is right 
. I took a Habanero hot wing challenge and made it all right, but a Reaper is another animal!
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Thanks
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I ate my first Trinidad scorpion butch t. It was full sized but still very green showing no signs of turning red yet. Wow , what a pepper , super pungent with a great flavor, and yes it was hot. I am sure it would get hotter if I let it turn red , I think I will stick with the green ones.
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I don’t eat the hots alone. I like them to spice up dishes like chicken adobo. I’m mostly growing them to see which work for me. In the future I’ll probably grow one or two every few years. Speaking of peppers I think I found a volunteer. Curious as to what it could be? I also found four tomato volunteers and some ground cherry volunteers. I’m going to grow them all out.
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Vindaloo?
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No it’s a Spanish dish also called adobar. Well I think the name refers to the sauce.
Have you ever made an East Indian Vindaloo. Perfect for your peppers!
Yeah I didn’t know what it was and looked at recipes. Sounds excellent, I’ll be trying it.
Here are my preliminary evaluations for 2017.
From 2016 (for reference):
A few caveats: I feel like location may play a role in how these do. One planting area has been used for a while now, and the soil is much deeper and probably richer (a lot of leaf mulch ~5 years ago). I noticed that some instances of the same variety behaved differently in different areas. For instance, all the Big Beef were healthy, but one was massively productive, while another was moderately productive and a 3rd (in the area with shallow, not as fertile soil) wasn’t all that productive at all (2 tomatoes so far).
Looking at the list, my initial take is that I may do 30-40% Big Beef in future years (maybe 4-5 plants), as it is hard to argue with it’s continued success. While most of the produce goes to cooking, Sungold seems good from a snacking perspective, so I’ll probably keep one of those.
While having flaws, the two yellow ones (King of Siberia and White Kentucky) both may be back as well. I’m tempted to give Gogosha another try, as it got unlucky in it’s placement and didn’t have another elsewhere for comparison. It also appears to be healthy, so maybe in a better spot it would be productive too.
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Great intel Bob.
This is my first year growing Big Beef and I am so impressed! The fruit is great tasting, nearly all are perfectly globe shaped, and my single plant produced a number I only wished I had kept track of. Big Beef will be in my garden forever if they do this every year 
By contrast, Big Boy was a disappointment for me anyway and so I won’t plant that one again.
I have Brandywine Sudduth strain also for the first time and while it was a good enough tasting tomato, it seemed prone to splits and was not nearly as productive as the Neves Azorean Red. NAR is another one that I wish I’d troubled myself to count or weigh the harvest, but man do they produce.
Every year I plant San Marzano and this year I planted five which was a mistake because they are all paste tomato machines
I’ve tried all I can to figure out Blossom End Rot on these longer shaped tomatoes (adding calcium etc, as it’s apparently a calcium uptake problem) but I get some every year with them. They out grow it fairly soon in the season and are good to go after that, but early forming toms that are infected are tossed ASAP and I bet I tossed 25 per plant. Sounds like a lot but it’s not.
Here’s a shot of some SM’s we’re going to work up today.
Here is the latest Neves Azorean Red I picked a few days ago on a regular size plate.
It tipped the scale at 1.10.3
I’ll only plant one cherry tom next year, we had Sugary, Sun Gold & Sun Sugar this year. Sugary was a red longer style that was nothing special at all, and both Sun Gold and Sun Sugar crack a ton. I plant them mostly for the grand kids so I’ll probably only keep planting Sun Sugar going forward. One plant seems to be enough for everyone.
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Bob there is no question you are the king of growing unique potatoes! But now your tomato production is huge . Just fantastic!
Planted sungold cherry tomato first time. Amazed at the size. Constant pruning to keep the height to 7 ft and then it got so dense it was hard to get at some of the fruit. Next year I’ll prune it differently. They do crack but not as bad as Sweet 100. Delicious fresh eating and stores very well.