Advice on seed list

[Hastings]

I am trying to cover all of my bases equally and would love input and feedback from more experienced tomato growers and tasters as far as your recommendations. I'm trying to keep my list to 25 varieties, but it seems no matter which way I turn it, it's always too long! I want to represent cherry, bi-color, orange/yellow, pink, red, black/purple, green, early (can overlap with the other categories!), canning/paste/salsa/drying (dry/cooking tomatoes). This is what I have for a list and tentatively where I have categorized the tomatoes. Astrik indicates what I believe to be a beefsteak. There's just so much out there! Thank you for any and all advice!

Cherry
Black Cherry (Black)
Blueberry (Blue)
Flortis (Red)
Green Doctors Frosted (Green)
Sungold Select (Orange)

Early
Ben Gantz
Kimberley
Stupice

Canning/Paste/Sauce/Drying/Salsa
Costoluto Genovese
Bradley (semi-determinate)

Red
Gigantesque*
Van Wert Ohio

Pink
African Queen*
Brandywine from Croatia*
Brandywine, Sudduth Strain*
Chianti Rose*
Church*
Cleota Pink*
Depp’s Pink Firefly*
Flathead Monster Pink*
June Pink*
Marizol Bratka*
Purple Dog Creek*
Stump of the World*
Eva Purple Ball

Orange/Yellow
Orange Minsk*
Aunt Gertie’s Gold*
Gigi’s Yellow Belgium
Pork chop (bi-color)

Green
(Emerald) Evergreen

Bi-color
Berkeley Tie Dye
Berkeley Tie Dye Pink*
Beaunty King
Solar Flare*
Virginia Sweets*

Black/Purple
Amazon Chocolate
Cherokee Chocolate*
Cherokee Purple
Gary O’Sena*
Indian Stripe*
JD Special C-Tex*
Paul Robeson*

[Fusion_power]

Eva Purple Ball is pink, not purple.

Green when ripe varieties that are better than your selections include Green Giant, Cherokee Green, and Grubs Green.

While your yellow/orange are decent prospects, Jaune Flamme, Dr. Wyche, Kellogg's Breakfast, and Yoder's German Yellow deserve consideration.

In the early category, I would add Bloody Butcher.

Galina is a very good yellow cherry.

DarJones

[greyghost]

Just a comment on Porkchop as I see you have it listed as a "green".
During ripening, it's yellow with green stripes but ripe only after the
green stripes have turned to gold.

For best photos of the two stages, look at the listing of Porkchop on
Remy's Sampleseed.com site. Nice, citrus taste for us. Darlene

[Wi-sunflower]

I was going to comment on Pork Chop but Darlene beat me to it. Definitely not Green. Yellow on yellow. Good taste and a heart.

I haven't grown Church, but a couple of years ago it was on the cover of the TGS catalog. At that time there was a thread that mentioned that Church didn't have very good flavor. But then again Flavor is often so subjective. What I like, you may think is a spitter.

Carol

[PaulF]

Very nice list. Be sure to bring what you can to the Mid-West Tomato Fest; there are several we have never had the pleasure of tasting.

[travis]

Black Cherry - excellent
Blueberry - unstable, sweet, watery, no depth of flavor
Green Doctors - sweet, herby-grassy flavor, good in salad or salsa

There are better and larger fruited earlies, but Kimberley is decent.

Bradley is an excellent extended yield determinate, but I wouldn't relegate it solely to the canning category.
There are better canners with more meat and less liquid content if you go more into the paste category.
And in the pink tomato category there are better lines from University of Arkansas based on Bradley such as Traveler, Traveler '76, and Ozark Pink, but they are all fully indeterminate.
If you are going for canners that yield in a concentrated set, I'd for something other than Bradley and her Razorback sisters.

In your red category, are you also looking for open pollinated canners? Seems so from the limited list you ask about.
In Nebraska, I go for proven heat setter determinates or compact indeterminates.
Sioux comes to mind, and there are many others.
While on the subject of red canners, keep in mind that canning tomatoes increases the digestable lycopene content.
If you are interested in nutrition, you may want to grow the high crimson, high lycopene types for canners, and the high crimson gene is tightly tied to determinate growth habit, and most of the high crimson types are marketed as F1 hybrids.

Pinks - too numerous to list.
Daniels ranks near the top, in my opinion.
Earl's Faux is excellent but very late.
Ozark Pink is a trooper.
Traveler '76 from Victory has strong, old fashion flavor and does well in the heat.

In your yellow category, Pork Chop is not a bicolor, it's a very nice salad tomato with skin stripes and pure yellow flesh.
Orange Minsk is disease prone early and in cool, wet weather, like in the transplant stage.
Aunt Gertie's Gold has excellent flavor but KBX is a better producer in the heat and tastes just as good or better.
Spudayellow Strawberry is a compact indeterminate that yields a lot of extra large, meaty tomatoes late but earlier than KBX and mostly over a 3-week window.
For a yellow market tomato, Carolina Gold is hard to beat, but it doesn't rank up with KBX for flavor.

In the yellow category, and since you seem to want canners too, you might want to look into the higher beta carotene types.
Two good open pollinated ones are Juane Flamme for fresh use and Caro Rich for a determinate canner.

Greens - Cherokee Green, Green Giant, Aunt Ruby's German Green (in that order, imo)

I don't consider Berkeley Tie Dye Pink a bicolor, but I do consider it the best of the 5 varieties you list in that group.
Oaxacan Jewel was a very good bicolor for me.
Hillbilly Potato Leaf was the worst with regard to disease.
Gold Metal is a nice one.
There are a lot of "experimental" bicolors out there right now at one stage or another of development in the hobby breeder realm.

All the black/purple varieties you list are excellent except Amazon Chocolate which I found very disease prone.
There are a few other purples I've found lately that are better in my opinion than Cherokee Purple, Indian Stripe, and JD's C-Tex, which is really saying something.
One from Texas that ranks way up there currently is called Not Purple Strawberry, and is Cherokee Purple x German Red Strawberry. That right there is a really awesome tomato.

Good luck with your 2012 season.

[Hastings]

I'm open to suggestions on reds. These are the tomatoes that I've been able to narrow my list down to and it just happened to not include a lot of red tomatoes, but I know that there has to be a lot of good red tomatoes out there! The Blueberry, I kinda just wanted to grow for the novelty of it and to see it for myself in person. I really appreciate all of the feedback and suggestions on better tomato varieties. I have tried to pour through other threads to try to find what everyone has made recommendations on previously, but decided to just get direct feedback by showing my list to everyone. This is only my second year getting into tomatoes and I was learning about my tomatoes as I went last year, so this has been a very educational winter and I'm so excited about whatever I end up planting this spring since I will be planting with more knowledge this year!

[greyghost]

Travis mentioned Daniels as ranking near the top for pinks; for what it's
worth, I saw it listed at rareseeds.com (Baker Creek) under "internet only"
varieties. Up to now, it's been very hard to find. I've always seen it
described as an excellent variety.

[travis]

Originally Posted by greyghost

Travis mentioned Daniels as ranking near the top for pinks; for what it's
worth, I saw it listed at rareseeds.com (Baker Creek) under "internet only"
varieties. Up to now, it's been very hard to find. I've always seen it
described as an excellent variety.

To ensure obtaining the correct seed for Daniels, I'd get mine from Robbins at Bear Creek Farms or Darrel Jones of SelectedPlants.com.

[Tormato]

Neves Azorean Red is the best red, for me. There is no close second.

And, as for cherries, I've tried many of the OP "Sungolds", and none compare to the F1 hybrid.

Tormato

[tgplp]

Originally Posted by travis

Black Cherry - excellent
Blueberry - unstable, sweet, watery, no depth of flavor
Green Doctors - sweet, herby-grassy flavor, good in salad or salsa

There are better and larger fruited earlies, but Kimberley is decent.

Bradley is an excellent extended yield determinate, but I wouldn't relegate it solely to the canning category.
There are better canners with more meat and less liquid content if you go more into the paste category.
And in the pink tomato category there are better lines from University of Arkansas based on Bradley such as Traveler, Traveler '76, and Ozark Pink, but they are all fully indeterminate.
If you are going for canners that yield in a concentrated set, I'd for something other than Bradley and her Razorback sisters.

In your red category, are you also looking for open pollinated canners? Seems so from the limited list you ask about.
In Nebraska, I go for proven heat setter determinates or compact indeterminates.
Sioux comes to mind, and there are many others.
While on the subject of red canners, keep in mind that canning tomatoes increases the digestable lycopene content.
If you are interested in nutrition, you may want to grow the high crimson, high lycopene types for canners, and the high crimson gene is tightly tied to determinate growth habit, and most of the high crimson types are marketed as F1 hybrids.

Pinks - too numerous to list.
Daniels ranks near the top, in my opinion.
Earl's Faux is excellent but very late.
Ozark Pink is a trooper.
Traveler '76 from Victory has strong, old fashion flavor and does well in the heat.

In your yellow category, Pork Chop is not a bicolor, it's a very nice salad tomato with skin stripes and pure yellow flesh.
Orange Minsk is disease prone early and in cool, wet weather, like in the transplant stage.
Aunt Gertie's Gold has excellent flavor but KBX is a better producer in the heat and tastes just as good or better.
Spudayellow Strawberry is a compact indeterminate that yields a lot of extra large, meaty tomatoes late but earlier than KBX and mostly over a 3-week window.
For a yellow market tomato, Carolina Gold is hard to beat, but it doesn't rank up with KBX for flavor.

In the yellow category, and since you seem to want canners too, you might want to look into the higher beta carotene types.
Two good open pollinated ones are Juane Flamme for fresh use and Caro Rich for a determinate canner.

Greens - Cherokee Green, Green Giant, Aunt Ruby's German Green (in that order, imo)

I don't consider Berkeley Tie Dye Pink a bicolor, but I do consider it the best of the 5 varieties you list in that group.
Oaxacan Jewel was a very good bicolor for me.
Hillbilly Potato Leaf was the worst with regard to disease.
Gold Metal is a nice one.
There are a lot of "experimental" bicolors out there right now at one stage or another of development in the hobby breeder realm.

All the black/purple varieties you list are excellent except Amazon Chocolate which I found very disease prone.
There are a few other purples I've found lately that are better in my opinion than Cherokee Purple, Indian Stripe, and JD's C-Tex, which is really saying something.
One from Texas that ranks way up there currently is called Not Purple Strawberry, and is Cherokee Purple x German Red Strawberry. That right there is a really awesome tomato.

Good luck with your 2012 season.

Travis,
How come you don't consider Berkely Tie Dye Pink as a bicolor? I'm a newbie, so, just curious.

Thanks,
Taryn

[travis]

Because the interior flesh is solid red rather than yellow streaked with red, or green streaked with red, etc. The exterior exhibits two colors or two tones directly beneath or in the subcutaneous tissue because of the gs gene. A bicolor tomato has the second color extending deep in the interior flesh rather than directly under the epidermis, most typically red streaks penetrating into yellow flesh.

[tgplp]

Oh, a bicolor has to be bicolor on the outside AND inside. Got it!

[rnewste]

Hastings,

This is what your Berkeley Tie-Dye will look like:



Raybo

[Hastings]

This is what your Berkeley Tie-Dye will look like:

I'll be very excited if that is what my Berkeley Tie Dyes look like

My list is a little lop-sided as I have a lot of pink tomatoes. As I narrowed it down, these seemed to be ones that people really liked and ones I should consider for myself. Are there some red tomatoes that I should add in place of some of these?