Early Tomatoes

Originally Posted by goodwin

hi Ted - interesting to hear you've been through this way - it's off the beaten path. While the winters are cold (it was 6 degrees just now when I went out to stoke the fire in the greenhouse) the summer nights are warm enough to grow most varieties if you get an early start. Anyway, the seed for Arbuznyni I got from Solana and it's a sure producer early and then lets up a bit in the heat. The plant is compact, RL and the stripes on the fruit are fairly pronounced. They range from 8 to 12 ounces.

We lived and raised the kids in Amarillo. Spent lots of time in the mountains. Love New Mexico.

The photo you attached and your description makes it seem the Solano seed may produce a slightly different fruit than the fruit described in Tatianas Tomato Base. The striping in your photo is very, very bold. Does the striping remain when the fruit is ripe? It almost reminds me of some of Brad Gates varieties.

Ted

[Sherry_AK]

Here are photos of the Arbuznyi I grew this year. It looks a little different than Earl's ... seed gel. Smaller. I found it not to be terribly early (but we had a terrible season, so it's hard to tell) but it was very tasty. It was the first time I grew it, and as I recall it was RL.

Beautiful Tomato Sherry!

Ted

[Sherry_AK]

Thanks, Ted. We enjoyed it ... even though it's only a distant memory now!

Sherry

[rwk_nova]

For tomatoes considered “early” I’ve grown heirloom/heritage indeterminate types Stupice, Matina, Bloody Butcher, and determinates Siletz and Sophie’s Choice. Both Siletz and Sophie’s Choice produced near baseball sized fruit for me with Siletz being a little too tart for my palate and Sophie’s Choice tasting good to but true to descriptions of it died as soon as it got hot in my Northern VA garden. Stupice, Matina, and Bloody Butcher were not baseball size from my garden. The first Stupice’s only tasted ok to me but improved a lot later in the season. Matina and Bloody Butcher tasted good from my garden and, IMHO, indistinguishable as to which was better taste wise. I slightly favor Matina because it has produced slightly larger fruit in my garden compared to Bloody Butcher. I got Matina, Siletz, and Stupice seeds from Tomato Growers Supply (TGS), and Bloody Butcher from Tatiana’s Tomatobase. I can’t remember if I got Sophie’s Choice from Tatiana or Sand Hill Preservation.
Rick

[les matzek]

hi tedin,
what came in early for me was aplause had a lot of fruit the biggest one was 1 pound 1 pounce the rest
was about 6 to 8 ounces, me and my boy really
liked them, the same goes fot sophie's choice not
quite as big about 5 to7 ounce but we really liked
the BLT sandwitches, regards.

les

Hi Les,

I wasn't familiar with the Applause variety, so I looked it up. It sounds like an interesting plant. When you stated the fruit size, I immediately assumed it to
be an OP indeterminate, possibly early for an indeterminate but not comparable to a determinate with smaller fruit. I was surprised to learn it is a hybrid determinate. One guy said he had ripe fruit in under 50 days. That is crazy early for a fruit of that size. One guy said the plant dies at the first sign of heat. Some people may think that is bad. For me, it means an opportunity to plant a hot season variety which has been waiting for a space to become available. It will go on my short list for nest season. I'm trying this year to limit the early varieties I plant to OP. I will replant some of those next year along with some hybrid early varieties. I started my 2011 grow list with only two or three early varieties and a lot of beefsteak blacks and pinks. I've expanded the early varieties to six now. I'm sure some of the blacks will not make next years (2012) list, so i will probably have a lot more room for the early varieties I am locating.

Ted

[b54red]

Ted last year Applause took about 60 days which I found unusual. In the past they never took more than 50 days and one made in 46 days. I still consider it the earliest variety I have ever grown but I guess the weather conditions can make a difference. I agree about it not liking the heat. Even the full size fruits are very slow to ripen if it gets hot. The only thing good about the taste is the fact that it is so early and so big that it will usually be the source of the first good tomato sandwich.

[les matzek]

hi tedln,
i only got one harvesr from my aplause but it was still
green and i waited to get some more flowers but it
never did after two weeks so i pulled it i think we
get about the same heat in the summer so aplause
should do good for you next spring !?!, regards.

les

[Douglas14]

I was quite impressed with Miravsky Div this year, for an early tomato. Hail really put a dent(no pun intended) in my tomato production this season, so my experience with tasting it was very limited. Out of the 20 or so varieties I planted. Miravsky Div was the second to ripen fruit, behind Sunsugar Cherry. It even ripened before Kimbery. The fruits were significanly larger than Kimberly, and I believe the plants were as well. I grew one Kimberly plant and two Miravsky Div plants, all next to each other. Miravsky Div had very good production. The taste and texture were very good to excellent IMO for an early variety. Though I didn't grow Matina and Stupice this year(I have in the past), I would say Miravsky Div was larger than those varieties and better tasting IMO(although it's not really fair to compare varieties in different seasons).
I think it showed very good promise for an early variety.
Kimberly also had a very nice flavor. It was more sweet.

[carolyn137]

I'm glad to see Moravsky Div mentioned b'c it's very very early and taste is excellent, I mean that, compared to most other earlies I've grown. I've been offering seeds for it in my seed offer here and probably will again although I've sent it to several places for trial and expect to see it offered commercially starting in 2011.

Nova, about Sophie's Choice. I sent that variety to Jeff McCormack many years ago when he still owned Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and when he wrote the description fo it he did say that it probably preferred a more nothern growing area to do well. And it does do well for me in my zone 5 area. Also good to know is that I was sent the seeds for it by someone who lives in Hollywood , CA where it was successfully grown way before Barry sent me the seeds, the variety was not named so I asked him to name it but he let the woman who gave him the seeds, locally, name it.

However, folks in every garden area have now grown it and liked it very much and it's really no different from almost all other early determinates in often having just one flush of fruit, but many say it goes much longer than that.

Sophie is from Edmonton, Canada and really no different than Kimberley, also Canadian, or Bloody Butcher, bred in the cool Netherlands or many of the other early dets. Matina was a German commercial variety, Stupice as well, and they and some of the others I mention are ones that warm weather folks grow for their Fall crops.

As for me, with few exceptions I long ago gave up on growing most earlies, b'c in my experience it just wasn't worth it. With an additional week or two I can have some great tasting mid-season varieties that DO have great taste which most earlies don't.

Carolyn,

The term "early" tomato means more to me than just a few extra days of fruit production each season. It also typically means a smaller or more diminutive plant, if it is a determinate. When I started building a garden, I marked an area and erected a fence around it. I could have made the area much larger, but I didn't. I wanted to determine how productive a specific area could be if all the growing conditions were optimized. At first, I only grew hybrid tomatoes along with my other vegetables. The hybrids became boring because everything was predictable. I started growing OP tomatoes because it opened a new way for me to look at tomatoes. I can fit many different plant sizes in my garden which allows me to better utilize my space for a longer time frame. At the same time I arrange my garden layout each year, I can also consider quality in fruit color, fruit size, fruit taste, and production. If one plant is only productive for two weeks each year, I can remove that plant after it stops being productive and replace it with something else. Some varieties also give me the ability to try different growing techniques like straw bale growing. Diminutive plants simply fit on top of a straw bale better than a large plant possibly. I want to find out what will grow and produce well if planted in a compost pile while the pile is composting. While I love a good tomato on a sandwich with some thick sliced bacon, how the tomato got to the sandwich also interests me.

Ted