bicolor tomatoes

[Christa B.]

My favorite bi-color and tomato overall last year was Texas Star. Big Rainbow is also a great one. Northern Lights is decent for an earlier producing bi-color. Below is photos of one of my Texas Star tomatoes from last year.

[Gardeneer]

Christa, that looks so nice.
It has resemblance both to Pineapple and Big Rainbow but more pretty.
I will be growing Old German which looks similar.

Gardeneer

[travis]

I have grown many bicolors hoping to find a few that yield well, stand up to hot, humid summers, and are reasonably disease tolerant. Those parameters have been nearly unattainable for me so far.

Lucky Cross reigns supreme in terms of flavor, in my opinion, and delivers sound fruit, but boy is it a late and stingy yielder.

One that I found will stand up to the weather I experience is Willard Wynn, an Old German or German Yellow type from Rockcastle County, Kentucky, I think, and available from Dr. Bill Best, Appalachian Sustainable project. It is the sweetest and fruitiest bicolor I have ever eaten, so sweet that the tomato worms seek it out over all others in the garden. It has a short internode structure with highly serrated leaflets, and appeared similar in structure to Neves Azorean Red vines. Bad news: I had a few bull plants from the seed batch I received, but other plants were generous with extra large tomatoes.

WildThyme GWR is superb. Captain Lucky also is superb. No complaints with either of them, although they are both green when ripe types, rather than yellow/red bicolors.

There is a WildThyme yellow/red bicolor that came out of the same F2 segregations as did the WildThyme GWR, and has very similar growth habits and yields.

I have had no luck with either RL Hillbilly or PL Hillbilly here in hot, humid, S.W. Indiana, Lower Ohio River 6b climate. And that Russian #117 tomato was very disease prone in my garden ... septoria and early blight took it down fast.

I only grew Little Lucky once, in 2006, and apparently I got a still segregating seed batch because my tomatoes were heart shaped red with green shoulders.

I have grown that original tomato from which Lucky Cross originated, something about Brandywine x Tad, and have gotten some fantastic results in terms of yield and flavor, but boy have those been short shelf life tomatoes. I had to eat them the same day I picked them. Beautiful tomatoes though in the F2, F3 and F4. Not only bicolor but had red/yellow skin stripes as well, and some very large fruit.

[Christa B.]

Yes TS is prettier than Big Rainbow and Pineapple, I have grown both. All of the pictures I have seen of Old German are so pretty.

[Gardeneer]

Thanks Travis .
I love bi colors. The one shown in my avatar is one. I bought a heirloom tomato from store, in winter of 2013 and save seeds from it and have been growing it last couple of years. I didn't know the name but then I thought it must be Ananas Noire. It is more than bi color as you can see :
GREEN, YELLOW, ORANGE and RED.
It has fantastic taste. Good candidate for BLT or just sliced by itself.

Gardeneer

[travis]

Gardeneer, I wish I could grown Ananas Noir successfully here.

I love the colors and the flavor. And the plant itself has great structure. But my experience has been that it greatly out-performs other GWR bicolors in terms of early and massive fruit set, but consistently goes down to diseases in my garden just as the tomatoes begin to ripen. It has not been able to stand up to septoria and early blight, my two plagues.

Others that I continue to grow are more able to outgrow or sustain themselves unitil mid-July when the conditions that foster septoria and early blight have passed.

Currently, I am working on some bicolor lines, both GWR and yellow/red, that include inputs from a disease resistant breeding line. But they are still in the development stage. The GWRs are determinate and semi-determinate, and yield well. The yellow/reds are indeterminate, RL and PL, but I am still selecting for greater fruit yield, a goal that seems a bit evasive in yellow/red bicolors in general.

[charley]

Travis that brandywine cross tad sounds interesting do you still have seeds?

[charley]

It seems to me that there aint very many prouctive tasty bies out there. Maybe i will try to make some new productive bies
.maybe cross old german with a prodictive prudens purple.i wonder what you could expect to get from somthing like that

[barefootgardener]

I have been growing Old German for over 25 years and to me it is one of my favorite Bi-colored tomatoes. 10 for flavor!! It has never been an overly productive tomato in my garden, but, it is productive enough for me to bring it back to grow most years. That is how good it is!

Ginny

[Gardeneer]

Originally Posted by barefootgardener

I have been growing Old German for over 25 years and to me it is one of my favorite Bi-colored tomatoes. 10 for flavor!! It has never been an overly productive tomato in my garden, but, it is productive enough for me to bring it back to grow most years. That is how good it is!

Ginny

Thanks, Ginny
Thats great. I will be growing Old German for the first time this year. Like yourself, I am not looking for a workhorse. I'll be happy with a 8, ???...fruits. I have plenty of other varieties/plants for production.

[Cole_Robbie]

Originally Posted by travis

Lucky Cross reigns supreme in terms of flavor, in my opinion, and delivers sound fruit, but boy is it a late and stingy yielder.

I agree about Lucky Cross. It's a shame Orange Russian #117 didn't do well for you. That one is so good, it might be worth one more shot.

Besides OR117, Northern Lights is my best bicolor right now.

[bower]

I've grown Northern Lights side by side with Oaxacan Jewel PL (originally from Solana Seeds), couldn't tell the difference between their fruits except NL were mostly fewer and larger with a bit more prominent ruffles, as for taste they were equally good. But OJPL was much earlier and bore a lot more fruit. It's a very healthy plant and was pumping them out from early until late.

Of course it can't be mentioned without someone saying, OJ should be RL and late, not PL and early, but what can I say. I don't know how Solana came by it, but it's a big favourite here.

People have mentioned that taste and texture of the bicolours vary a lot from season to season but I haven't found that to be the case. I did find that the seed quality varied a lot from year to year, they were almost seedless and very tiny seeds in a really hot year. Also didn't find that the fruit don't hold well after picking or ripen and quickly turn to mush, I saw that with Pink BTD the same year but not with OJPL or with Northern Lights either. Of course, we aren't subject to the same intensity of heat as other tomato growers. There's always a cool spot to keep the tomatoes after picked.

[Gerardo]

Any word on Couer de Boeuf Bicolor? Much appreciated.

[travis]

I forgot about Oaxacan Jewel. Grew it once in 2008, two plants, both RL, in poor shallow soil. Very good tomarto. Large to jumbo bfstk.

[travis]

Charlie, seems my phne doesnt like the private message function.send me your mailing address