What tomatoes WON'T you grow in 2018

Primo Red from Harris, no foliage terrible sunburn.
Chef’s pink, too acid and weird shapes, rots too easily.
Chef’s green, we got dew last night, split, you touched me, split. Did I say this one splits.
Warrior, no foliage sunburn and rot. Last three totally tomatoes.
Super Sauce from Burpees. No foliage, sunburn, and looow production. The tomatoes that do make it are huge.

2 Likes

Carbon - low productivity, seems pretty diseasea susceptible. Decent tomato but not enough.
German Striped - low/late productivity. Good flavor but too late!

2 Likes

‘Biltmore’ big beautiful hybrid sold at Home Depot. Surprisingly early considering the size. As good as any field grown non-heirloom sold by Safeway in the winter if carefully grown.

“San Francisco Fog” nothing good about it except for the name. I was warned.

German queen. Too much disease even after spraying.

It seems always true the tomatoes I like best are same as above, low productivity or late. I grew Rebel Yell, and it is an awesome blood red tomato, delicious too! It had both problems, low productivity, and very late. I still may grow again anyway. When you pick one you have to do the Rebel yell

I’m thinking about giving up on Brandywine Suddth and Caspian Pink. I have sentimental attachment to both but for the past few years they haven’t lived up to my memory of them. Also, they both can produce huge non-uniform fruit which I find hard to use in anything other than sauces.

I won’t grow “Sugary” (a cherry tomato) again. I got it because I wanted to try something different and it was an AAS winner. I found it rather ho-hum, and hard to judge when to pick. Seemed even when ripe they had green near the stem, or what on a larger tomato you might consider shoulder area. Try leaving them on longer to see if the green goes away and they’ll fall all over the ground. The plant carried a lot of tomatoes, but it looked spindly in a way, and not as much foliage as I’d have thought it should have had. Anyway, not huge on cherry toms to begin with so even though I’ve only tried growing it once I’m moving on…

I also don’t believe I’ll grow Wisconsin “55” Gold again. I’ve said that before and then after a couple years I’ll try it again (since I have the seeds…) and every time it sorta disappoints. Taste isn’t bad, but fruit is always damaged, early cracks etc., and we’re not huge yellow tomato fans anyway so there’s no point in taking up the space.

For my first year growing Brandwine Sudduth I was intrigued, but disappointed. They tended to crack quite a lot, and there were precious few for how big the plants were. I am not ready to give up on them after only one year though. Still, they’re going to need to step it up some next year of I’ll probably not stick with them. I can live with a shy producer if it has a memorable flavor, but it already runs a distant second to Neves Azorean Red in my book, and all of my NAR plants seemed to want to show off how many they could produce. The would split some too, but not nearly as frequently, and the NAR’s were just overall a better tomato for me. Of course NAR is a red & BW a pink, so there is that difference. But for a pink, I found Rose De Berne pretty nice. They are a more globe shaped tom without the odd shapes that BW gives you.

1 Like

Part of the fun though is figuring all this out, what works, what you like, what grows well. When you find some decent ones after so many so so toms it’s all worth it. Although I like to make sauce, so I don’t mind and will use all one way or another.
I’m not that big on cherry tomatoes either. I like them in salads. I grew Carbon Copy this year and it looks just like Black Cherry. But it is sweeter, plant has more vigor and cracks less. Disease resistance about the same, not great!