Heirloom or Hybrid?

Hello everyone.
I'm new here. I have recently moved to a new house, with a fair enough big space for gardening. I have always dreamt of having my own tomato garden. Now I would like some expert opinions on which breed of tomatoes should I grow, or will suit to the atmosphere here?

Thanks,
Emily

The best way to find out is plant every variety you can find and then save seeds from the ones that do the best there.

One thing you can do to aid in success is decide how you choose to grow your garden. For instance, a lot of hybrid tomato and pepper plants are hybridized to perform well under conventional agriculture methods, and those plants do very well with regular doses of high nitrogen fertilizers that have their nutrients in readily available forms for the plants to use. These plants will grow under organic conditions, but may not thrive they way they were intended. There are also hybrids bred for organic gardening, and one way to find those is to look for OSSI (Open Source Seed Initiative) seeds. Heirlooms can perform well under both growing styles, but sometimes they can have less resistance to diseases than some hybrids bred for disease resistance. Another thing to consider is if you plan to save seeds. Saving and planting a seed from a hybrid will not be the same plant that the seed came from, as the genetics tend to revert back to the parent breeds that the hybrid was crossbred from. Saving and planting open-pollinated heirloom seeds will always yield a plant and fruit that is the same as the parent it was saved from, granted it did not get cross-pollinated with another variety in the garden. There are simple techniques to avoid cross-pollination of heirlooms so you can save seeds that remain true-to-type. In theory, you buy seeds once, and forever grow them year after year. I hope this helps you make an informative decision on what varieties to grow.

Edited to add words open-pollinated.

Do you have any local gardening organizations? Not only are these going to be full of people with experience gardening in your area, they often support themselves with sales of spring plant starts. Even if they aren't running any kinds of sales, many of them will have a web page or blog that will have things like grow reports. Different tomatoes do better in different parts of the country.

Casie Becker wrote:Do you have any local gardening organizations? Not only are these going to be full of people with experience gardening in your area, they often support themselves with sales of spring plant starts. Even if they aren't running any kinds of sales, many of them will have a web page or blog that will have things like grow reports. Different tomatoes do better in different parts of the country.

I'm new in this area so need to look for such organisations. Thanks for the tip

okay thanks everyone