Hillbilly may not be the sweetest variety, but the ones in north central Ohio to Holmes County are divine. Such a delicious edition to sandwiches. Worth checking out. Pineapple tomato is a solid choice that is easy to find locally.
For prepping there probably are but I don’t know where. I usually ask questions and go from there. It took me ages to join this forum lol
Some hunters also are into this type of stuff. A few have even found apples in abandoned orchards that are sold today for their disease resistance (Blue Hill Wildlife Nursery).
I grew burpee honeycomb hybrid last year and that was one of the sweetest I’ve ever had though im not a huge tomato person, similar to sun agar but sweeter and has kind of a syrupy quality, maybe slightly less productive
It’d be interesting to see if this were a genetic thing between different groups of ‘Hillbilly’ or if it was terroir.
Genetics drift over time. The Cherokee Purple for example used to be a big beef steak tomato, a classic, now many CP seeds that are sold produce small to medium sized fruit.
Even on 1 vine some tomatoes will taste better than others. If you enjoy 1 variety in particular, hand pollinate 1 vine of that variety and keep the seeds from your 3 favorite tasting tomatoes on that vine, and repeat each year, also make your selection of tomatoes that are of proper size, color and shape as well to ensure its offspring stay relatively close to the parents. If you buy seeds every year, they may change over time.
If i eat a hillbilly tomato that has been hand selected for 20 years on one amish farm, grown in awesome soil… it may taste entirely different than someone who ate a hillbilly tomato grown in miracle grow and seeds sourced from a huge online distributor.
I got my Cherokee Purple seed from Craig Lehoullier. I suspect it is true to type. ![]()
Thats awesome. Is he on here? Id love to buy some Cherokee Purple seeds off him so i can have the original genetics right from the source… i was disappointed a few years back when i grew out Cherokee Purple again.
To my knowledge, he has not been on this forum. I’ve got his number on my phone and know his current address. I stayed overnight in his home several years ago. That was when he lived on the outskirts of Raleigh, NC.