What are your OP standard bearers?

[matertoo]

My first year growing heirlooms. So far I have 50 different varieties planted. Cherokee Purple is my favorite of five so far. 45 more to go. Life is good!

Happy Matering,

Paul

[b54red]

The ones that have shown the best disease tolerance, and production while delivering superb taste this year were.

Neves Azorean Red
Berkley Tie Dye Pink
Kosovo
Indian Stripe
JDs Special C Tex
Carbon
Bill's Big Backyard
Stupice
Limbaugh's Legacy

For someone looking for a milder tasting tomato that just produces like crazy I would give top honors to Gregori's Altai and Pale Perfect Purple.

Three that I will grow every year now just for their exciting flavor are Gary O' Sena, Donskoi, and KBX.

[creister]

dh,

I have Hanky Red growing for the fall, I hope it does as well for me as it did for you.

[chalstonsc]

dh-
Hanky Red sounds good, so I'm looking forward to it. How is it handling the heat?

[robbins]

For me to use as main croppers: Box Car Willie, Goliath, Arkansas Traveler, Bear Creek, Red Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Yoders German Yellow, Lucky Cross, and Earls Faux. Plant lots of others but plant hundreds of each of these.
Robbins

[cottonpicker]

WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF hanky red????? anybody know?????

LARRYd

[OneoftheEarls]

interesting range....of listings...I'm in a cool climate, certainly not Texas like, I grow 150 varieties plus at a time. I could list my favorites.

So many I see, I wonder how they would fare in Texas.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by cottonpicker

WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF hanky red????? anybody know?????

LARRYd

Hankey Red originated with Don Branscomb of CA who listed it inthe SSE YEarbook in 1985. Don also listed a Hanky Pink in the same year.

Only Hanky Red is listed in the 2010 Yearbook, from Sandhill.

Don did a lot of tomato breeding and I don't know if this variety was the result of that, or not. I'd go back to the 1985 and see if anything more was said but the 1986 was the last Yearbook where varieties were divided into color classes. Before that they were listed by state and within the state by the last name of the lister and it does take time to plow thriugh all of that.

http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Hanky_Red

tania has no history either.

I think there's an outside chance that your friend Craig may know more.

Don disappeared off the face of the earth several years ago and no one could reach him and several of us were quite worried about that. But he turned up about two years ago when he sent his entire collection to Glenn Drowns at Sanhill who is adding more and more of them to his website/catalog every year.

[cottonpicker]

Thank you, Carolyn....... good to know about Hanky Red and about the fate of Don Branscomb's seed collection. It's in good hands!

Happy Holidays!!!!!
LarryD

[Ruth_10]

Not just great tasting. What plant would you give away, knowing that it has the best chance to survive, thrive and produce, introducing a gardener to the world of great OP and heirloom tomatoes? Someone heard I was growing heirlooms and said they had been given "one of those" and it had produced one tomato. Most people would be turned off even if that were the best tomato ever.

There are some that I love that I *don't* give out to casual or new growers, like Prue. Though it is one of my all time favorites, the plant always looks sickly and I know someone not familiar with the kind of plant habitat that Prue has would panic and do bad things to it. Thus the plants I give out are not necessarily the ones that, IMO, are the best tasting. Given that, they are ones I think will (1) grow well, (2) taste good, and (3) be interesting (color different than red, etc).

I will usually choose from something such as these, all of which do well in our hot, humid summers:

Black Cherry (delicious, different appearance, good grower)
JD's Special C-Tex (does better for me and tastes better to me than CP)
Ramapo (good producer of good-looking tomatoes)
KBX (very tasty and interesting pastel orange color)
Grub's Mystery Green (very tasty and interesting color)
Eva Purple Ball or Arkansas Traveler
Ethyl Watkins Best (tasty, early, prolific round red tomato)
Lime Green Salad (cute container plant, early, tasty)

I rarely give out EF or BWS because even though they are sturdy and productive for me, they're not for many others and I don't want people failing on my very favorites (plus it leaves more plants for me!) I do think EF and Cowlick's are sturdy enough and productive enough that they would make it, so maybe I will start including one of those.

[Fred Hempel]

Our Farm's Standard Bearers (I see definite overlap, but I am surprised some that we grow don't seem to be on any other lists)

Cherokee Purple
Red Brandywine
Hillbilly and Big Rainbow (one always seems to be doing better than the other...)
Speckled Roman
Amana Orange
Pink Mortgage Lifter and Pink Brandywine (again, one always seems to be doing better than the other....)
Our own striped beefsteaks (with names like Jazz and Lithium Sunset)
Black Cherry
Principe Borghese
Spike (a small black zebra we bred) and Lucinda (a big green zebra we bred)
A San Marzano OP variant we selected called "Vesuvio"
Our "Julienne" cherry tomatoes, including Maglia Rosa and Blush

and two hybrids, for good measure
SunGold
Momotaro