Potato Leaf

[jtharper76]

Ok so I am in year 4 or 5 of growing tomatoes and for some reason I love growing Potato leafed varieties. I am not even sure why, other then they look so full and lush as they grow. I was just wondering if I was the only person out there they likes the look of potato leaf plants? I mean they also give good tomatoes too so that is a bonus........

Now the potato leafs I am growing are all Brandywine Suddeth and what a great tomato it has been down here.

So I guess my question is ..... AM I WEIRD?

[huntoften]

I've had so many customers look at PL plants and say "That's a tomato plant???"

[jtharper76]

For some reason those also seem to do best for me in my garden, not sure if it is the variety or just the shade the leaves offer?

[jsamaha]

I do not have much experience with PL plants, but I am loving my Amazon Chocolate PL's this year. They are the most healthy productive plants so far this year. I have heard they (PL's) hold up better to fungal attacks which would be a major advantage in the humidity down here. I am from Houma, La originally, so I'll have to ask my father if he grew any PL varieties back in the day. I hope to grow more PL plants in the future. How is the productivity with your Brandywines?

[coloken]

I tend to prefer potato leaf. Don't know why. Maybe just because there are so many others that I need to reduce the choices some what. I all so think that a tomato should be round and red, but that might make some people a little up set with me.

Kenny

[b54red]

I like the potato leaf varieties also; but have found just the opposite true as to diseases. I have about 30 potato leaf plants of different varieties in my garden now and all but a couple are having a hard time with blight whereas only a few of my regular leaf varieties have had significant blight problems so far.
Last year I had one potato leaf variety that came through like a champ for me and that was Marianna's Peace. Though most of them developed blight problems they continued to pump out large pink tomatoes til winter.
My Cowlick's Brandywines are being hit rather hard and I don't know if they will make it to the ripe fruit stage. Even with their problems Cowlicks has done better for me than any other Brandywine variety that I have tried over the years. I even have one that is barely showing any signs of disease. Most Brandywines never even make it to fruit set for me unless you count Brandy Boy.

[nctomatoman]

After you've grown many many types of tomatoes, you will likely find out that there are PLs you love and some you don't, as well as RLs you love, etc. For whatever reason, though PLs, being a recessive trait, make up a small percentage of tomatoes we can grow, some of the very best flavored seem to be PL (Stump of the World, Brandywine, Lucky Cross, Little Lucky, Yellow Brandywine, Green Giant, Lillian's Yellow Heirloom, KBX, Aunt Gertie's Gold, Elbe, Grub's Mystery Green are all just excellent tomatoes in my view). As far as disease tolerance, again, after growing so many, I can find relatively bullet proof and look-at-them-crosseyed-they-get diseased types in each category. I don't know of a PL that can compete with the disease tolerance of Cherokee Purple or Red Brandywine, for my location.

What are really attractive plants are the potato leaf dwarfs.....hopefully within the next year some will become available for people outside of the Dwarf project to try out!

[TZ-OH6]

I like potatoleaf plants when they are seedlings, but after they grow a bit I don't notice the difference too much. The first time I grew potatoes I didn't really think PL tomatoes resembled them so much, but after growing potatoes from true seed, the baby plants look very similar.

[lefty_logan]

I like potato leaf plants but I like a nice mix of regular and potato leaf. There are people that grow only potato leaf plants and Bill Malin (who some know as spud leaf willie) has hundreds of potato leaf varieties.

[feldon30]

It's hard to find a bad pink potato leaf tomato.

[nctomatoman]

Here are some PLs that I didn't care for (flavor-wise)

Brandywine from the old Tomato Seed Company - bland
Micado Violettor - small, bland, oblate, pink sack of seeds and gel (most rampant PL plant I've ever seen, though!)
Ruby Gold potato leaf - large, pink, but has that musty, corky, odd flavor that some RL pinks have that I don't at all like.
Hillbilly PL - large yellow/red bicolor, quite bland

I also find Prudens Purple to be a bit too mild for me, and Marianna's Peace produced like crazy but had little flavor the year I grew it.

but that is a small percentage of the PLs I've grown, so oddly, whether it is because I've selected carefully or been lucky, most I've tried are very good to superb in flavor, no matter what the color.

[feldon30]

Originally Posted by nctomatoman

Here are some PLs that I didn't care for (flavor-wise)

but that is a small percentage of the PLs I've grown, so oddly, whether it is because I've selected carefully or been lucky, most I've tried are very good to superb in flavor, no matter what the color.

Oh, there will always be some PLs that suck.

Marianna's was good for me, but I know it's been rather unpredictable. And I won't even get into the pre-sales hype.

But I'm to the point now where if someone hands me an impressive-tasting tomato, I want to know if it's PL or RL for my own edification.

[OneoftheEarls]

They are "purty"

[travis]

I like big healthy loaded down tomato vines both potato leaf and regular leaf.

Seems like I grow about half and half every year. I've run into a few PLs that sucked big time. And a lot of RLs that sucked too.

I have not yet been able to say that PLs are more tolerant of diseases or heat than RLs. I've got a collection of both types that are tolerant of the conditions I need them to be tolerant of, but I can't say that one type is better than the other.

I agree that the potato leaf dwarves are awesome looking but then I have a few normal rugose varieties that also have very interesting and attractive foliage.

PLs are most useful for cross breeding both because of the telltale 25% PL segregation in the F2 and also for bringing clear skinned flavor profiles into the mix.

Another interesting and attractive leaf for to me is cerasiform. And combined cerasiform/potato leaf even more so.

[camochef]

With Cowlick's Brandywine, and Brandywine Glicks being two of my favorite tomatoes you could safely assume that I prefer potato leafed plants. There was a time that being potato leafed would be a deciding factor when I was ordering new varieties to try.
While P.L. plants still seem to do better for me here in south central Pa., leaf form isn't as important to me now as it once was. I prefer to use taste as my #1 facter in deciding what to grow. After all, a R.L. Sandul Moldovan tastes as good as a P.L. Cowlick's and on occasion even surpasses it. Although it has never outproduced it!
Then there's those like Amazon Chocolate that are supposed to be P.L. yet I seem to get a few R.L. every year, from them. Both always taste great thus far, and it's the taste that I want!
If there is one thing I've noticed over the years, it's the fact that the P.L. varieties always seem to produce longer into the season, at least up here. Looking over my listings for this season, I see most of my favorites are P.L. but there are a lot of different Brandywines and Brandywine crosses among them. At this point I'm unsure what the new varieties are as far as leaf form as I haven't noted that yet, but at least a few of them are in the Brandywine family but crossed with a R.L. variety so I'll have to pay attention to what they produce.
Wishing you the best with your efforts, no matter what leaf type.
Camo