Anyone growing Landis Valley Red Brandywine?

[barryla61]

Someone told me this is a very good tomato.
Any comments?

[Randall]

This is my second year growing it and compared to the 5 or so other reds I've grown (not to mention the others I've tasted), I think it's one of the best out there. It always has a good yield, excellent taste and makes nice looking tomatoes. There are a lot of red tomatoes out there though, so I figure it has good competition from some other varieties also.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by barryla61

Someone told me this is a very good tomato.
Any comments?

Yes, I've grown it and let me tell you about it.

The first to get Red Brandywine out of the SSE YEarbooks and offer it commercially was TOm Hauch of Heirloom seeds. And he still calls it his signature variety.

Tom sent seeds to Steve Miller at the Landis Valley Museum b'c they specialized in Amish varieties. And it was Steve who got the rest of the history on it.

When Linda at TGS realized she had to go out and get a TRUE RB, b'c she was litinf two that weren't, she got the seeds from the Landis Museum and said they were a "strain" of Red Brandywine, which isn't true b'c there are no strins of RB. it was jsut the place where she got the seeds from.

There have been some seed sites that have sold WRONG RB's, especially some PL ones, but iof you got these seeds from TGS they should be fine and best to refer to thenm just as Red Brandywine, which is what they are, and not a strain of RB.

Hope that helps, and probably more than you wanted to know, sorry for that.

And I almost forgot that Tom and I exchanged seeds, my RB seeds from the early 90's from the SSE YEarbook, for his, and they were identical in terms of everything that variety should show, and yes, it's a great variety, despite the discrepanices in history given by some which I won't touch.

And stay away from Buck's County Red F1, which is what Burpee did to RB. another long story, actually.

[Cole_Robbie]

I didn't even know there were different types of brandywines, other than different colors. My red brandywine came from Morgan County Seed in Missouri. I also ordered pink, black, and yellow. All are potato-leafed. I have no idea what type they are, other than the color.

I like them all except the black. Yield is low, but the tomatoes are very big. My red bw have smaller fruit than the pink and lower yield. My girlfriend likes the taste of the red but does not like the pink. Her mom thought the pink bw was the best tomato she's ever had.

I'd say the yellow bw seems like the world's lowest yielding tomato, but my Mr Stripey gives it competition for my "waste of space" award. Next year, I want to try grafting them to different root stock to see if I can get them to produce better.

[Douglas14]

I'm growing Red Brandywine from the SSE public catalog. I've grown this variety in several different seasons.
It's one of my favorites. It's has a relatively meaty texture; it's juicy, and has very nice balanced flavor IMO.
This year I'm going to compare it to Wisconsin 55, and see how they compare.

[Sun City Linda]

I can see that Red BW Landis is likely a very good tomato. I had problems accross the board this year with my (cheap) TomatoTone Fert in containers as it does not seem to be very strong at all. I didnt think to keep supplementing it once it had fruit set, which was very substantial. Unfortunately, I dont think the TT ferts ever really kicked in because those big beautiful maters had blotchy ripening and uneven white inside. I decided low K from google research and bought some water soluable ripening blend online and began applying it. The later fruits are more even at least on the outside. I am really hoping that the later ones to ripen will give me an idea of the taste! I really like full body red tomato flavor!

[tam91]

Linda, just reiterating what Carolyn said - there really is no such thing as Red Brandywine Landis - it is just the real Red Brandywine.

Landis is just something one vendor added to the name, it's not part of the real name.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

I didn't even know there were different types of brandywines, other than different colors. My red brandywine came from Morgan County Seed in Missouri. I also ordered pink, black, and yellow. All are potato-leafed. I have no idea what type they are, other than the color.

I like them all except the black. Yield is low, but the tomatoes are very big. My red bw have smaller fruit than the pink and lower yield. My girlfriend likes the taste of the red but does not like the pink. Her mom thought the pink bw was the best tomato she's ever had.

I'd say the yellow bw seems like the world's lowest yielding tomato, but my Mr Stripey gives it competition for my "waste of space" award. Next year, I want to try grafting them to different root stock to see if I can get them to produce better.

Cole I have no idea what you have if you say that all are PL, sorry.

There certainly are different Brandywines and they differ not just by color and leaf form but also as to history, taste, etc.

There's a link at Victory Seeds where Craig went into the background of the three heirloom ones, the red, yellow and pink and I don't know where the rest of that article went b'c I did the ones that were bred, and others.

Yellow Brandywine is a large yellow beefsteak with RL foliage

Brandywine is alarge pinkbeefstreak with PL foliage

Red Brandywine is red with RL foliage and is oblate,(flattened), and more round''

Black Brandywine initially arose as an accidental cross in the growing fields of Seeds by Design in CA was introduced by Tomato Growers Supply but turned out to be very unstable so Linda pulled the listing.

A second so called black was introduced by Will Weaver at Baker Creek, and there's a thread about it in the Legacy Forum here, note that many of us are skeptical of that one.

Joe Bratka initially introduced something he called Purple Brandywine and tried to pass it off as an heirloom, I knew better and convinced him to change the name to Marizol Bratka, since one of the parents was Marizol Purple.

OTV Brandywine was the result of a cross that occurred in Craig L's garden, he'd sent out some Yellow Brandywine seeds and got back seeds and a picture of some huge red beefsteaks.

Since I had more room than he did I set out to make selections and genetically stabilize it, which I did, but it took me out to the F5, or 5 years to do so.

There are many other varieties now with Brandywine as part of the name but none that I know of that are true heirlooms, just ones listed with a person's name after the Brandywine, such as Glick's, Joyce's , Sudduth/Quisenberry,and many more, then we have Brandywine from Croatia, and Cowlicks's Brandywine, named for a nursery where plants were purchsed and on and on.

My fave is Brandywine ( Pawers)...... that was due to a typo error b'c the person listing it was Roger Wentling of PA, so his SSE code name was PA WE R. Ah, I love it.

[Sun City Linda]

Well, with all the "different" supposed Red BWs out there, I have gotten used to calling it BW Landis.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Sun City Linda

Well, with all the "different" supposed Red BWs out there, I have gotten used to calling it BW Landis.

So just call it Red Brandywine.

The only not Red Brandywines I know of are the two that Linda at TGS lists and still does despite my pleading with her b'c she says that lots of folks love them.

And then there are , or were, several seed sites that were selling seeds for a PL RB, no doubt seeds from Seeds by Design in CA, but I think that's over now and everyone I know of has cleaned up their act.So Red brandywine will do it, without the Landis moniker which Linda called a strain, but it's not.

If anyone is interested in what a strain is or is not, just do a search here and look for that thread. As for me, I don't want to go over all that stuff again.

[tam91]

If they're nice tomatoes and people like them, fine. I think I grew one once by accident, and it was good. But call them something else for goodness sakes, not what they aren't. That's really irritating honestly. Caused me to waste my money once.

[Cole_Robbie]

Interesting, Carolyn, thank you for all of that. I grew a few hundred seedlings of each type, and then put them in 6-packs with black cherry and Mr Stripey and sold them as "heirloom color mix." I remember very distinctly that four of the plants in every 6-pack had potato leaves.

I really like the seed company where I bought the seeds. They are some old-time farmers. I should ask them if they know what type of brandywine they have. Here is a pic of a black next to a pink. The little green guy is a tomatillo.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

Interesting, Carolyn, thank you for all of that. I grew a few hundred seedlings of each type, and then put them in 6-packs with black cherry and Mr Stripey and sold them as "heirloom color mix." I remember very distinctly that four of the plants in every 6-pack had potato leaves.

I really like the seed company where I bought the seeds. They are some old-time farmers. I should ask them if they know what type of brandywine they have. Here is a pic of a black next to a pink. The little green guy is a tomatillo.

Wouldn't they have listed them as:

Yellow Brandywine
Red Brandywine
Black Brandywine
Brandywine

And the traits of those are well known as to color size and leaf form.

But what you wrote above is:

(My red brandywine came from Morgan County Seed in Missouri. I also ordered pink, black, and yellow. All are potato-leafed. I have no idea what type they are, other than the color.)

And if all are PL then you don't have what you thought you had, is about all I can say.

Every Memorial day there's a village-wide tag sale and more in the village nearest to me and one person whom I know well, he was actually my seed source for the wonderful variety Neves Azorean Red, sells tomato plants.

A close friend of mine bought some plants form him and when I asked her which varieties she responded, yellow and red and pink. Ahem, not exactly reassuring but one has to know Chuck to know that cananddoes happen. I was asked to give an adult ed course on heirloom toamtoes and at the end of the course I gave out seed packs of known varieties to everyone who attenended, so I know Chuck started out with known varieties but then, well, what happened, happene. I keep offering new seed of many varieties to him, but he's having fun, and as long as folks think what they got tastes good, what's the harm?

But those folks aren't selling them, they don't save seeds, so there you go.