Now Ted gives tomato recommendations to you

Teddahlia · 2024-03-23T23:18:45+00:00

We have been growing our Hollyhill Tomato for about 15 years now and it was a chance seedling of Sun Sugar or Sun Gold and of course we loved it because it...

Juliarugula

SteveM In the last several years the trend in OP (open pollinated) tomatoes has been toward the dwarf varieties (3-4 feet) and, more recently to tomatoes with stripes, anthocyanin expression (purple tomatoes), and plants with ornamental features (chartreuse or variegated leaves).

I tried out a lot of tomato varieties with fancy new colors and foliage and … ended up liking very very few of them. The only one that became a favorite for me was Brad’s Atomic Grape, which has an amazing and unique flavor and is a drop dead gorgeous (purple variagated with green flesh) grape tomato, but unfortunately is disappointing in regards to production for me.

I’ve never felt compelled to try dwarf varieties. Why would you want a small tomato plant?

SteveM

Juliarugula a favorite for me was Brad’s Atomic Grape

Brad Gates (Wild Boar Farm) was the first breeder I remember to offer striped tomatoes commercially. I have grown all of his early introductions and particularly liked 'Berkeley Tie-Dye' and 'Black and Brown Boar'. I haven't grown any of his recent intros but I bet he is still setting the bar high.

Juliarugula Why would you want a small tomato plant?

They are about half the size of a non-dwarf plant and are popular with growers with a small growing area of for growing in containers (e.g. on a deck, etc.).

KitCMC

Juliarugula I also like Brad’s Atomic Grape - its beauty & tastiness make up for its very “mid” production 😉 It’s also been a healthy one here.

MissyWeitzel Epic Tomatoes is a great read!

I love growing cherry/grape/small snacking tomatoes. I have particularly enjoyed Rinehards Purple Sugar & Medovaya Kaplya

Emilyp

Juliarugula Oooh, I forgot about Brad's Atomic grape, I grew it for two years, and loved it. Grapette had been my favorite for years. Prolific, tasty, and doesn't split. I like to have them in a bowl on the counter to grab and snack on when I walk by. The ones that split ruin the whole bowl so those varieties get eaten in the garden (I am looking at you Sungold) 😄

MissyWeitzel

This is a fun and interesting read with great photos!

Juliarugula

MissyWeitzel so my library had Epic Tomatoes and I checked it out. Lots of eye candy in that book! Not a whole lot of info I didn’t already know from obsessive internetting, but it did convince me that Nepal should go on next years grow list.

My favorite part was the “competition” index section, but, man, tough crowd! NONE of the trialed varieties got an A+ for flavor? Really?

bloomhjelm

I would like to see the Venn diagram of Tomato People and Dahlia People. And maybe a third overlapping circle for Giant Pumpkin People (Kristine Albrecht can't be the only one.)

I am trying one fresh eater, one slicer and one cherry tomato this year. Wapsipinicon Peach, Mortgage Lifter, and Sungold. I don't make sauce but I make BLTs.

Juliarugula

bloomhjelm I would like to see the Venn diagram of Tomato People and Dahlia People.

I’ve gone through a pumpkin phase too (not giants - more into all the funky colorful winter squash types). No way do I have room to do both pumpkins and dahlias at the same time though!

wildabundancemi

I'm in the middle of the Venn Diagram for tomatoes and dahlias. I definitely cannot even come close to growing all of the varieties I have seeds for. Tried it before, it did not end up pretty, I can't give enough attention to each of the individual plants. My favorite of all time is Black Cherry. And for sauce, so far it's San Marzano. Slicers I haven't yet figured out. When I try and grow the big ones (Purple Cherokee, Thorburn's Terracotta) I can't seem to get them before they crack and sometimes mold. Can't bring myself to care about regular red basics. Green Zebra is pretty awesome though, not too big. Matt's Wild Cherry is great because they just keep pumping until a hard hard frost.

I'll have to try Sungold. And Maramande sounds enticing.

Juliarugula

KitCMC I have particularly enjoyed Rinehards Purple Sugar & Medovaya Kaplya

That was the part of the “Kraft Green” name I was forgetting! It was Rinehard’s Kraft Green! It’s a truly delicious green-when-ripe oxheart. It’s somewhere between an old fashioned tomato flavor and the bright tartness of a typical green-when-ripe (like Green Zebra). You have to be careful when harvesting, because it really doesn’t change color at all (most green varieties get a goldish tint when ripe). You just have to test for ripeness by feeling it.

KitCMC

Juliarugula I will have to try that one!

calico20hill

Juliarugula It makes one wonder just what an A1 tomato would taste like! Growing up in Western Washington we could not even ripen tomatoes. Since I moved to the Puget Sound area (And perhaps better seed lines developed), I could get a few nice tomatoes some years. Now in NW Oregon I had 3 or 4 weeks of good tomatoes last year. That is enough to make me happy. I get BLT's and Salads and sliced tomatoes with basil. Then we make soups and sauces. THen the heat is over with, along with the tomatoes. I really have no idea about what a tomato should taste like when grown in a good tomato climate. I do know what I consider yummy....

MissyWeitzel

Juliarugula I feel like an imposter. 😅I don't even like raw tomatoes (except in salsa!). I do love growing them, looking at them, cooking and canning them. I mainly grow them for my husband. Parkinson's has stolen a lot of his sense of taste, but sometimes he can really taste tomatoes, and especially if they're homegrown ones.

blown_dry

MissyWeitzel I don't like them for fresh eating either! (except in salsa) I actually like the tomato hornworms more than the tomatos because I am a bug girl. One year, grafted tomatoes were the great new thing. I guess the root stock could tolerate colder soil? Anyway, I hear they grew like tomatoes never grow around here, but perhaps the market was not big enough for them.

Juliarugula

MissyWeitzel I’m definitely a lover of fresh eating tomatoes! Gosh, when tomato season rolls around and lunch can be a big plate of salted and peppered colorful tomato slices with a drizzle of olive oil?!? chef’s kiss! I actually don’t like cooked tomato sauces much at all…

blown_dry gross. (Hornworms). Eww. I like bugs, but not those bugs.

Emilyp

blown_dry We love seeing the hornworms too! I know they are a pest but, boy are they interesting. The moths that they turn into are pretty fun to see too. The kids and I know when to look for the hornworms when we see birds flocking to the tomato patch.
We once had a compost delivery to our garden that must have been super full of nutrients (they must have given me the good stuff- not the basic stuff I ordered.) The tomatoes grew to be 8ft tall, and kept growing! Once they grew taller then the supports they flopped over and essentially made a giant tomato tunnel. It was amazing, and all my neighbors wanted to know what I did 😆.

Teddahlia

Grafting is very time consuming and people do not want to pay $10-12.00 for one tomato plant. They do grow a lot better and it is like grafting an apple tree onto the roots of a giant sequoia. Huge plants that have to be staked up.

blown_dry

Emilyp I was growing indeterminate varieties and my yard was very tiny then, a little square on the back of a townhome, so I felt like the those gigantic, beautiful hornworms were doing me a service in keeping the vines trimmed and tidy. Plus sphinx moths are some of my all time favorite bugs. And not a single dahlia. I didn't even know they existed. I was managing a database of utility and mining companies instead. How times have changed. 🙂

bloomhjelm

I bought more strawberry plants then I probably should have thanks to you fine people. In addition to the standard eversweet, I'll have white Carolina pineberry and Quinault strawberries.

Dahlia and veg planting marathon begins this afternoon and goes all week. Thanks to a sudden turn into sunny and 60s.

Teddahlia

Seascape everbearing has been a favorite strawberry here. Bought three new ones and can remember the name of only one: San Leandro. One new one had a ripe strawberry on the "display " plant and I looked around and saw no one and ate it. Do things taste better when you do this? It was beyond wonderful. Name later.

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