recommended tomato varieties

It's tomato-starting season soon, for some, and here's a few of my favourites.
Jaune flamme: an old French salad tomato. Bright orange, early, tangy and madly productive.
Tommy toe: small golf ball-sized red trusses. Tasty, and indestructible plants.
Black cherry: Best Cherry Ever, as far as I'm concerned. Be prepared for 8ft+ plants...
Tomatillo These are so cool! Apparently they must cross-pollinate to set fruit. I have a few plants and they're going bonkers.
I'm still waiting for my 'Cherokee purple' to ripen, but the look awesome!

We are buying seed this week. Drought last year and we have no good seed saved. Our favorites : Black Krim , Cherokee Purple . We are trying the Black Cherry and Purple Calabash - supposedly the "ugliest tomato ever , resembles the tomato pictured in 16th century herbals." We also will grow Amish Paste for canning sauce. I am jealous of those in the southern hemisphere right now.

I currently have Black Krim, Golden Jubilee, Earl of Edgecomb, Black Pearl, Juliet, Sun Gold, Green Zebra, Better Boy, Italia, and Thessaloniki at various stages. I am thinking of adding in a couple more in late Spring for the heck of it.

Some comments on some of the above mentioned varieties:

Sun Gold Truly an amazing flavor, and prolific producer. Unfortunately, it is a hybrid (not open pollinated), so seed saving is out of the question for this variety. In my opinion, it is worth buying seed each year, as it is a great 'cherry tomato'.

Amish Paste Reliable producer, but not a true paste tomato...too much juice & seed. Very mild flavor. Because of its sparse foliage, the tomatoes are prone to sun scald late in the season. Shade cloth may be in order in scorching weather.

I prefer Opalka, which has fewer seeds, and less juice...it takes fewer of them to produce a paste. It has a much more robust tomato flavor than the Amish Paste. Opalka ripens at about the same time. Produces a richer sauce.

Black Cherry One of the truly amazing cherry tomatoes. Great flavor. If you haven't tried it yet, do so. One of the heirloom gardener's all time favorites.

Set your lawn chair between a Sun Gold and Black Cherry plant, and you won't move all summer!

Sun Gold seems to get positive ratings across the board. If I am lucky I will get to sell some extras. I haven't tried saving seeds in years. I do clone though. The three I am most interested in seeing how they turn out are Earl, Golden, and Thess.

I used to hang out with some real tomato nuts. Most of them planted 10, 20, or 30 varieties each year.
They were die-hard OP fans, but most of them did include the F-1 Sun Gold in their gardens.
It is a hybrid from Japan, of all places.

EDITED to add: Sun Gold is one of my best producers here in the Pacific NW, where we don't get enough summer sun for most good varieties. Around here we are pretty much limited to "Early" and "Mid-season" varieties. Not enough heat to do any of the "Late" ones. Good peppers are a lost cause.

I am getting that nutty too. Yes, I grow a mix of heirlooms and hybrids. I have my own outlook on hybrids which I won't bore you with. I'm also growing a bunch of varieties of peppers.

I am located on the Eastern edge of the Great Lakes. We have short summers, overcast skies, and lots of precipitation. It rarely gets to 90 here. Last summer was a fluke. That is why I am always playing around with extending the season and trying to grow plants indoors.

What about you, John? Are you growing any tomatoes?

Hybrids certainly have their place.

I have a market gardener friend living in the Gulf Coast region. He typically puts in a dozen or more heirloom varieties. Between the heat & humidity, sometimes diseases can decimate his crops. He always plants one crop of hybrids (last I heard, he was using Jet Setter) as insurance. In some years when all of his heirlooms produce poorly, the hybrids come through and keep his stand profitable.

I'm in the Seattle area, but planning to move. So, I probably won't get any 'maters in this season. By the time I get 'there', it will be too late for starting any. With 1st frosts likely the first half of September, timing will be critical for tender annuals. If I can get a few tons of green manure plus wildflowers going, I'll be satisfied. Then, I'll have 3 seasons to watch the patterns before serious food plots needs to go in.

More tomatoes...I've got green zebra plants that are looking really, really healthy and productive, as well as 'Matt's wild cherry': bombproof plants, tiny fruit ideal for kids.
And keeping it oldschool with 'mortgage lifter'.
I let my plants sprawl for the most part this year; space and harvesting issues aside, they look really happy.

I don't purposely grow hybrid anythings: I save a lot of seed, and I'm just happy tomatoes basically don't cross, unlike Cucurbits...
All I ask for is a costada romanesco, but this year I have spherical, deeply ribbed 'pumpzini' on one plant, and another with fruit that blow up into ginormous, seedy blimps overnight

I picked up two more. Patio Princess and Long Keeper. I'm waiting on starting the Long Keeper. I only had a couple of the Italia and lost those. I won't start those again this year.

Does anyone have enough black cherry seeds to share a few? I'd love t try this one, but 10 seeds online is 2.99... Ouch!

I have some French heirloom pumpkin that I'd be glad to share!

Nechda, maybe post here.
Black cherries are well worth seeking out. If you like a tangy tomato, I recommend looking for jaune flamme. They're really tasty and very pretty.
My Cherokee purple's ripe. Meh. Really impressive production, but I mustn't have the heat it needs to develop good flavour. It's not bad, but it's certainly not great.

You might be right Leila. Cherokee purple have been a disappointment here in Seattle...not enough summer warmth to grow a decent tomato.
Black cherries do fine here...I think they'd do well anywhere...one of the best out there.

Almost all cherries do well here, but full sized toms are another story...we're lucky to get 2 weeks over 20* C (68*F) here.
(Peppers are even worse...they want several weeks over 30*C...the locals would be in the Emergency Room with heat stroke before I could get a decent crop of peppers...Grandma Gladys [native of Arizona 30 years before it became a state] would roll over in her grave if she knew I wasn't growing peppers at home.)

The short season tomatoes don't work either? I know there are varieties that were developed for the PNW. Off hand, I think one is named Oregon Spring.

wayne stephen wrote:We are buying seed this week. Drought last year and we have no good seed saved. Our favorites : Black Krim , Cherokee Purple . We are trying the Black Cherry and Purple Calabash - supposedly the "ugliest tomato ever , resembles the tomato pictured in 16th century herbals." We also will grow Amish Paste for canning sauce. I am jealous of those in the southern hemisphere right now.

hello Wayne:

I just joined Permies.com today and read your above post.

I also live in Zone 6 B and would be very happy to send you some Black Krim, Cherokee Purple seeds and others if you wish. I don't have Black Cherry or Purple Calabash but have some extremely tasty Italian heirlooms.

If interested, please email me w/your address and I'll gladly help you get re-started.

Good luck and good growing,

Ralph

I am trying purple tomatillos this year. I love salsa verde, maybe Salsa púrpura will be good too. I think it would be fun to do all purple ingredients. Purple tomatillos, purple onion, purple peppers, and uh... do they have purple cilantro?

Black Krim, Sungold, Gardeners Delight  Red Zebra (also known as Tigerella)have all done well for me here in Gloucestershire UK. Gardeners Delight can be variable though, if you get a good strain save your own seed!

Always grow "Carbon" tomatoes here in the Seattle area.  Also any purple varieties and especially the cherry tomatoes which ripen quickly here in our short season.

This may be a little off topic, but a fun story nonetheless. Many years ago I lived in a little town in Puerto Rico called Lajas. The sewage treatment facility would treat the "sludge" anaerobically, then aerobically, then dry it. They ended up with a wonderful, odorless, black fertilizer. If you called and asked, they'd deliver a pickup load for free. We used it liberally to revive the moribund Puerto Rican soil in our garden (Puerto Rico monocrops sugar cane so everywhere the soil is depleted). There is only one caveat. It seems that tomato seeds stay viable through digestive tracts and most sewage treatment schemes. So we had volunteer tomatoes coming up all over the garden. We'd pull them where they weren't wanted, but let them grow elsewhere. The trick is to not think too much about where the tomatoes in your salad came from.

Reading through the thread the strong recommendations for black cherry should tell you something! I can confirm that it is a winner!

The advice to plant some hybrids is also sound. I have mostly heirlooms BUT they will let you down sometimes. Last year Park's Whopper
saved the day for me and over the season I had enough heirlooms to make it worthwhile to grow them too. Last year Costoluto Genvese
produced well for me, as did Georgia Streak, Amana Orange, Mortgage Lifter and Swartze Sarah. Many other heirloom varieties I tried were not worth the
effort. Matt's Wild is a sure enough permaculture plant that consistently re-seeds itself.

In previous years I have enjoyed Earl of Edgecombe, Aussie, Moonglow, Delicious and many others. Brandywine varieties have all disappointed with the
exception of the Platfoot Strain/Brandywine Yellow.

Last year we planted 4 varieties, one plant each: Early Girl and Cherokee Purple from transplants; Rutgers and Arkansas Traveler from seed.  Of course the Early Girl did best, then Rutgers, which seems to store better; Cherokee Purple was a great sandwich tomato and Arkansas Traveler did poorly as it always has for us.

I love heirlooms because I can save them from year to year. I usually grow mortgage lifter, old German, Aunt Ruby's German green, yellow pear, Brandywine, orange Tumbler, Black Krim, purple Cherokee, a yellow slicing variety which I have lost a name for, Amish paste, and a small round red tomato with green streaks which someone gave me seed for. I love tomatoes. I was planting them today in my plastic jugs to put outside for winter sowing. They are in the cold frame and will start growing when they're ready.😍😍

I have intentions of trying to grow "Upstate Oxheart" which is said to have fruits up to three pounds. I also am planning on trying out the "New Yorker" simply because I like in New York. Otherwise, I have a heirloom assortment that I have had decent luck with in the past that I will utilize again.