I’m already thinking about what tomatoes I want to grow next year. I just started the garden in my new house this year and I am growing two exceedingly disease resistant varieties that are OK flavor. I also am growing 1 brandywine and 1 ramapo. So far disease and fungus are well under control and I am hopeful I can expand my varieties to a little more fussy, but tastier varieties.
I would like recommendations for excellent flavor paste tomatoes (canning sauce) and excellent flavor slicing tomatoes (sweet, tomato-y, and acidic, less mealy flesh).
cherokee purple is the best tomato i have ever grown and eaten…its an heirloom too so you can save seeds…the best small cherry tomato is the sungold…it is a hybrid though so cant save seeds…
I have grown sungold in my old garden. I did find them tasty, prolific and prone to cracking. Have you tried the super sweet 100s? I’m curious about them.
I have grown ss100 the past several years… because I could not find sungold here.
This spring one of our local nurseries had sungold so I am growing them.
Ss100 is a very good, very productive, disease resistent variety… it is a red cherry. It is my second choice for a cherry tomato.
Sungold has a special taste that we really like.
Ss100 is very good but not special.
I think any cherry tomato that is near ripe and you get a big rain… you will have some splitting… but they produce so much fruit… who cares… just pick the ones that did not split.
Toss the split ones in the compost pile.
For a great larger tomato… pink brandywine is my fav… cherokee purple is right up there with it… but CP is much more prone to split and rot before fully ripening here.
I grew both BW and CP last year… and got 4x more ripe fruit from BW… because most of the CP split and rotted on the vine before ripening. I wont grow CP again.
Could get different results at your location… worth a try.
My favorite is Stump of the World, I grew most of the varieties mentioned above and it did the best for me. We are in somewhat similar climates it looks like so it should also do well for you. I now am grafting it, any heirloom should really be grafted as you will get 3-5x as much harvest from a grafted plant.
what do you graft them onto…i actually grafted a cherokee purple onto a sungold and a branch came out below the graft so i got sungold and cherokee purple on the same plant…but it has not produced very many so wondering what root stock do you use for grafting tomatoes… and i do have some splitting on my sungold…but usually after a heavy rain and then i start picking them a day or two early and let them ripen on the counter…do not seem to have a big problem doing that.
t
I have been using the official rootstock seeds… I think I used Estamino this year. I am in the process of stabilizing one by self crossing and will see how it compares… The seeds are now super expensive. I have a few grafts going on saved rootstock seeds this year and so far no diseases. I know they will be worse than the hybrid, but the price will be right
good lawd at the price of them…26.45 for 50 seeds on johnnyseeds… and i am just learning to graft so could be an expensive test!!..
how did you save your rootstock seeds…can you plant the estamino and save seeds for the next year if you dont graft onto it…if so i may order some and just plant a couple without grafting to save the seeds from.
thanks for reply
tommyg
A cheaper method is just to get a modern hybrid like Better Boy, it will have good disease resistance. The rootstock seeds produce super vigorous plants though, I think you need the special rootstock for that vigor.
I should have some second generation crosses in a few months feel free to PM to check I can send you a few.
well dern…i grew some better boy this year…for some reason they turned out about half size and was reading somewhere that theirs did the same thing…i used the sungold cause they make hundreds of small ones and keep making until the cold kills them…but i only have picked a couple off it so far…thanks for your time in replying!!
tommyg
For slicing, I like Better Boy. In addition to size, shape (I don’t like the deformed looking stuff with lobes and creases) taste, and internal composition, I also like the disease resistance. When I say internal composition I like a lot of the cells with the gelatinous, acidic tasting stuff that’s around the seeds. I don’t make sauce, juice, or paste, I just canhttps://growingfruit.org/t/tomato-varieties/65451/16 tommatoes, so the Better Boys are good for that, too,
Big Beef is all around a better tomato than Better Boy. Go back to Otto Schifriss who bred big boy, using a commercially developed highly disease resistant tomato crossed with an heirloom variety named Teddy Jones. When Better Boy was developed, the cross was another commercially developed line with better disease resistance crossed with Teddy Jones. Since then, Big Beef was developed from two disease resistant lines with complementary traits (it is a more complex cross, but meh). It is more productive, has better disease resistance, and tastes better than either Big Boy or Better Boy. I still grow some heirlooms because they taste better than Big Beef, but I know they will have more problems with disease.
I grew both Better Boy and Big Beef for the last 2 years after having to stop growing heirlooms due to Fusarium Wilt.
I wasn’t sure which strain of Fusarium I had so I got Beef which is supposedly resistant up to strain 2, and Better Boy which is only resistant up to strain 1.
Big Beef has shown better resistance and has bigger, better tasting fruit. Next year, I’m dropping Better Boy
