How do you decide what to grow?

[lumierefrere]

Every variety has its cheerleaders and its naysayers. What worked well one year might not work the next. What worked in one garden, might not work in another.

For those with limited space, how do you choose? How do you decide between say Isis Candy and Rainbow bicolor cherry?

Barb

[Tomstrees]

Barb -

I've been trying to chose by : color, size of tom, use, and lastly leaf type (I've never grown PL before; I think they are so cool) -

But each night since Oct. ? The list changes !!!

~ Tom

[angelstiger]

PLANT THEM ALL!!! All 3000+ varieties. Till up the from yard. Till up the back yard. Till up part of your neighbors yard, get rid of the flower garden. Plant them in buckets in the driveway and the walkway. Grow them on the roof. AAAARRRGGGG I am in tomato LaLa Land.

Sorry. My bit of humor for the day. Asking others who have tried the varieties you are thinking of planting, is a good start. For instance: I have never grown "Rainbow Bi-color Cherry" so can't comment. But I think "Isis Candy" is kind of devoid of flavor. Doesn't stop me from growing it though, LOL. Like I said I want to grow them all. Tis a hopeless addiction, alas.

[lumierefrere]

My list somewhat stays the same in that I know what I couldn't bear to be without. Then there's the long list of experiements--and you don't want to be disappointed, you want to choose well.

I'm starting to lose faith in the Isis Candy tho. I was trying to get Isis Brandy and there was a mistake. I guess I could put the IC in a bucket and save the room for something else.

Anyway I try to choose by what seems to work well in the same general area or Siberia--same thing!

[Oldseed]

I did what angelsteiger said to do: till up the back yard the side yard and part of the front yard. then I planted as many as I could.

I will plant Isis Candy this year and hope that it is not bland, as that is not a very good thing with me. Bland or mushy and they probably won't get planted again...that is if the weather conditions were favorable and other tomatoes whso taste i am familiar with did quite well.
I'll always save huge amounts of seed for folks that do like the taste (trading material).

I also try to do some homework before i commit to growing my plants. I would not plant something that the consensus said was not worth it, but at the same time i would not rely on a small sample as definitive because different conditions might lead to much different results.

All in all I like a huge variety of shapes and sizes and colors, but for taste do prefer something a bit assertive. Sweet is OK as long as it is pronounced and not just blandly sweet. This site should be a valuable resource for generating consensus on various tomatoes. To a large extent i use Carolyn's book as a guide if only because she has tasted such a huge sample, and because she grows in my general area, that her opinion carries some weight.

There certainly are some that most folks highly recommend such as Jaune Flamme or Brandywine OTV or Coustralee or the Eastern European type reds which seem to be a good bet.

[nctomatoman]

Ah, the complex process of deciding what to grow! There is a method to my madness....goes something like this....

what do people want in their gardens (= the seedlings I produce)
what new variety WILL people want in their gardens (= first time seedling offers)
what varieties am I nearly out of good seed (= in my garden)
what do we love to eat (= in my garden)
what new ones that have been sent to me need a look/taste (= in my garden)
what projects need to be progressed - growout of crosses, mysteries, etc (= in my garden).

the problem is that for each category, the candidates far outnumber the spaces!

[lumierefrere]

Craig, you're the one who's making me doubt Isis Candy!
I admit I pay quite a lot of attention to what you say--why I haven't obtained CP is something of a mystery--you have such extensive experience. But then your zone is so much different than mine. I'm not confident in those late season varieties for here.

But I am growing the Magnus and Golden Queen on your glowing reports of those. And I have Little Lucky Heart.

The experiments can go wrong, that's okay. I just want some sure things too, as much as anything can be a sure thing. Surer.

[tanagerzoo]

There are so many that I want to try and being the curious person that I am, I threw out last year's list and started fresh this year. I find the planning to be almost as fun as the growing!

All year on the various forums, I take notes of cheers and jeers with regard to varieties. And then when it is time to condense it down to the 26 spots I have, I then start narrowing the list down to a nice mix of colors and sizes.

This season, i will be planting a mix of:
1 white
2 bi-color
3 green
3 orange/yellow
4 black
4 pink
6 red
3 cherry tomatoes

Size-wise:
3 cherries
2 2-4 oz
4 4-6 oz
7 8-12 oz
8 1-2 lbs
2 2 lb

But it is still liable to shift slightly until the seeds are actually planted. :wink:

Christine

[greggf]

We don't have limited space (5 acres and a rototiller), we have limited climate!

We're in Boonville, at 1600 feet, on a windy hillside, with temps about 4 degrees cooler than the village of Boonville and 8 degrees cooler than the nearby cities of Rome, Utica, and Syracuse. And because of the lake effect, we have fewer sunny days than any part of the country except for small portions of the Pacific Northwest.

So we've given up the search for the perfect tomato, and instead grow "good-enough" tomatoes. We search for those varieties that ripen well before Labor Day, which is when the flavor begins to go off. Of those that ripen, we recall which tasted "good enough."

So far, our reliables that taste good are UltraSweet (Stokes), Early Pick (TGS and Burpee), and Northern Exposure (Burpee). The latter, I am told, is re-badged "Early Harvest" at Walmart.

I take little pride and gain great frustration at a late season tomato that ripens none or one tasty fruits, and then needs to be yanked up. I'd also rather have a perfect Early Girl than a less-than-perfect Mortgage Lifter

[lumierefrere]

Hey Greggf, I'm to the south- east of you it sounds. Maybe you'll take my spare seedlings as I know I'll have extras--room is an issue here.

I "specialize" in Eastern Europeans that produce extremely well in the amount of time we have here. I'm sure they'll be successful for you, too. Like my avatar, that's Mazarini, a Russian tomato, and is it ever good!

[greggf]

I'll take your excess seedlings if you take my wife's excess wool!! We have four (exceedingly muddy at the moment) sheep next to the tomato patch.

=gregg=

[Gimme3]

Barb...w/me, it's sorta like business before pleasure. I allot about 7 spaces for BigBeef, then 5 or 6 for a German Red SBerry, then 3 or 4 for a grape cherry, then at least 3 for a natural Brandywine, an after that....it's play time
That means i can stick in anything i want to, although as time goes on, certain cultivars like Anna Russian and Opalka are migrating into the Business side ...hehe. Isis Cherry, in my book, is a plant that dont live up to it's hooplah. It IS, a unique spectacle to behold, as a juvenile, but when grown competitively with other newbies in a trying season, it was a waste of time, if not for the joy in seeing a growth habit one has never seen before.

To re-iterate more simply...plant the ones you know an trust, allot them space, then use the rest of whatever room u got, to play an learn on... :wink:

[lumierefrere]

Gregg--I just wrote a book on knitting, I'll take the wool! Good trade.

Gimme--okay, the heck with the Isis Candy, I'll use the space for something else. I was going to score some Amy's Sugar Gem, maybe I'll remind Laurel to send them. My cherries are Galinas, Dr. C, Besser and Haley's Purple Comet. All untried by me but they all come highly recommended so I can't go far wrong there.

I'm on the fence about Prue. It was late for me last year and if we had a normal season I probably wouldn't have gotten anything at all. As it was I only got a couple from it and while they tasted good they weren't great. Nor was it in a primo spot so it could be my fault. I really loved the Mazarini and that was profilic and trouble free. Why take up space for something that I'm not crazy about, right?

[Suze]

I feel like a Total Tomato Nerd for posting this, but here goes:

I keep a spreadsheet, backed up on CD and with a hard copy or two printed out just in case. Some tabs are linked, others are not.

The main tab is basically a master seed inventory list. Name, source, year, growth habit, leaf type, fruit color, fruit size, etc. On a yearly basis, when making my initial grow list, I just open the spreadsheet and go to the master tab. That tab then gets copied and saved as as a new tab for the next year. Next, I go through and quickly highlight everything it remotely 'feels' like I might want or need to grow in the following year. Then it gets set aside for a while.

When I pull the spreadsheet back up a couple of weeks later, I start comparing it to any notes kept in the prior year, especially favorable mentions of 'new' (to me) varieties.

Many of those new ones get thrown into the mix of next years grow list as well. After that, I start sorting the list and looking at it based on color/leaf type/etc for a reality check. Then, of course, the difficult part comes where I've got to pare that list way, way down.

Generally, I want about half of the varieties to be the familar dependable tasty ones I wouldn't be without, like CP, Jaune Flammee, Sungold, Red Brandywine, etc. And for others, it's time for their rotation -- I need fresh seed, they're pretty good varieties, and so on. What's left is are my 'play' slots. Never enough play slots...

[montanamato]

Suze,

My husband has been strongly suggesting I get mine on a spreadsheet too. I think all my notebooks are driving him crazy.

I like to make all my logical choices and then when I am ordering, usually try to find a variety or two I have never heard of and have no biases towards. Suprisingly they often turn out well...maybe because I have no great expectations of them. I also don't want to grow the same thing everyone else is.

Jeanne