Early Det. Mkt Varieties

[Cole_Robbie]

I had good luck with some Early Girls in buckets in my greenhouse last spring. The flavor was surprisingly good for being two months ahead of outdoor soil crops. I am going to grow more of the Early Girls because now I know I like the flavor. I don't want to sell something I don't like to eat.

What I don't like about Early Girl is that the plant is not a true determinate. I have been looking at commercial varieties, and I wanted to ask everyone here if they have any experience with them. semena.org (I know Monsanto owns them) has Debut, Dual Early, and Sunrise, all of which are about 60 days and recommended for early culture in greenhouses. The Terrenzo cherry that I like so much is 70 days, but I think I will still grow them anyway; the taste is excellent.

The only true spitter that I grew this year was "Container's Choice." It was not an early tomato, but it was mealy and not sweet at all. I'm looking for a more professional variety than Early Girl, but still something with a decent sugar content that tastes similar. I don't ship, so I don't care about thick skins or firm texture.

[clkeiper]

I haven't grown early girl myself, but a neighbor has some and they are about 7' tall. Not quite as short as I thought they would be.

On the Containers Choice.... I grew it a couple years ago and it was a complete waste of space and time. Not at all what they implied it was to be. I wouldn't eat it. Tossed them all.

I do grow celebrity in a high tunnel and it does well. Not too tall to worry over. The FarmMarket up the road grows Bravo, but I think it's flavor is bland.

Have you tried Ultra sonic? I had some from a friend just a few days ago and they are still producing and the taste was good. Nice softball size tomatoes. It is classified as a staking tomato.

[Tania]

I am not sure what is 'more professional' means, but here are some good tasting determinates to consider:

Belye Nochi
Glacier
Golden Bison
Kalinka
Kanopus
Kootenai
Lyana
Manitoba
Manö
Mountain Princess
Northern Delight
Orlovskie Rysaki
Pipo
Reine Claude Rouge
Scotia
Siberian
Sibirjak
Sibirskiy Skorospelyi
Taimyr
Titan
Volgograd
Wilford
Yaponskiy Karlik

They are very productive and most are earlier than Early Girl in my garden.

Among compact dwarfs, I'd recommend Yukon Quest and Sleeping Lady.

[Cole_Robbie]

Thanks, both of you.

I have grown Manitoba before, but the others on that list are new to me.

When I say 'professional,' I mean that I want to have enough yield to make the high tunnel worthwhile. But at the same time, I still want at least decent flavor.

[Tania]

Then the ones on my list above should be fine, as they are very productive.

[montanamato]

Cabot
Early rouge
Basket Vee
Victoria
Scotia

All outproduce Early girl in my garden and all taste much better, except for possibly Scotia which is a touch blander...

Jeanne

[Cole_Robbie]

awesome. I will try a lot of these, I'm sure.

[Keger]

Red Rocket was pretty good, and only about a 30" plant.

[Cole_Robbie]

I looked it up, and that is another good suggestion. Thank you.

[ContainerTed]

I think you should also consider some of the releases from the Dwarf Project. Iditarod Red, Yukon Quest, Arctic Rose, Sweet Sue, Summer Sunrise, and Kelly Green are early enough. Many folks will try a few Yellow/Gold tomatoes just for the presentation factor in salads. After tasting Sweet Sue and Summer Sunrise, you'll have more demand (Yes, the taste is that good).

Kelly Green is just plain sweet and full flavored - maybe the best GWR I've run into. Arctic Rose will fill up your baskets earlier than any other.

The Dwarfs can give you more production in less garden space and deliver the crop earlier than most of the hybrids available.

[Cole_Robbie]

I wish my customers knew as much about tomatoes as you guys, but especially in the early spring, people are going to think anything that isn't red is picked too early, mostly because that is how everyone else does it. The one guy I know selling early tomatoes is growing a commercial variety like Celebrity, picking them green, gassing them with ethylene until they are pink, and selling them for $4/pound. I will let you guess as to how those things taste...

Several of those dwarfs are listed as indeterminate. Are there any early, red determinates in the dwarf project? It would be neat to grow them next to some of the Monsanto/Semena commercial varieties and see how they all fare.

Do you think there has always been an inverse relationship between yield and quality in regard to commercially grown tomato varieties? Or is that a more modern occurrence, and if so, about what decade did commercial varieties start tasting so bad?

[Keger]

I grow a lot of Celebrity, they are among the favorites of my customers. Cant get 4 bucks a pound for them around here though.

I dont think commercialy grown stuff is an issue. I think the problem is what they have to do to the stuff to ship it halfway across the country. To me thats the difference, the taste and freshness of the local/home grown.

[ContainerTed]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

Several of those dwarfs are listed as indeterminate. Are there any early, red determinates in the dwarf project? It would be neat to grow them next to some of the Monsanto/Semena commercial varieties and see how they all fare.

Arctic Rose is definitely a pink determinate. But when the dwarfs are called "indeterminate", we're still only looking at a 4 foot tall plant. That is smaller than most non-dwarf determinates.

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

Do you think there has always been an inverse relationship between yield and quality in regard to commercially grown tomato varieties? Or is that a more modern occurrence, and if so, about what decade did commercial varieties start tasting so bad?

When I was a young teenager, I used to ride with the owner of a roadside market down thru Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi to buy fruits and vegetables. We always picked out the product that was "near" ripe in the fields. We used to pay 6 cents each for 30-50 pound watermelons. The tomatoes were pink to red on the vine and many times I participated in the picking. That was back when most veggies had some taste. That was back in the late 1950's and early 1960's.

Tasteless veggies is a more recent invention. They are harvested full-sized but unripe and then gassed to bring on color. The growers also love the biologists who developed tomatoes that keep longer, thus giving more time to get the product to market. They didn't seem to care that the products were tasteless.
They accepted the loss of taste for the ability to have more transit time for the product and they hoped we consumers wouldn't notice. When we did notice, they concluded that we were a captive audience and had to buy their junk anyhow. It would seem that we have been proving them right for a number of years now.

However, I've recently seen articles stating that now they are going to try to put some flavor into these cardboard excuses and they're gathering up lots of heirloom tomatoes to use for cross pollinating. U.C. Davis is one of the leads in this effort. I hope they succeed. It would be nice to have good tasting fresh tomatoes all year round. But, I'm willing to bet that the new good tasting cardboard will come to us at an inflated cost. They charged us more for providing bad tasting tomatoes all winter long. Why would they not charge us more for returning what they took away???

[Keger]

Well Ted,

Honestly, most people dont know the difference. Or care.

There is a small percentage that do, and that really is our customer base. I try to keep a list of customers, keep in contact, and so on. Fortunately I am near a monster city so I can get a lot of folks on board.

As for the big guys, well, I guess feeding 300 million people can be a challenge, and in their defense they have to do what they can to provide food to the masses.

So I guess there is a balance and a niche market, and that niche market has quite an upside.

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by Keger

Honestly, most people dont know the difference. Or care.

So I guess there is a balance and a niche market, and that niche market has quite an upside.

I am not so sure about that. Maybe some of the younger generation don't know the difference, and since they don't know they don't care. But I think most people do know and care. The problem is 2 things as I see it.

1) People are told there is no other way. They are told the only alternative that doesn't involve tasteless mass monocrop veggies and other foods shipped across the country or around the world is world hunger. So they accept it, even if they don't like it.

2) Alternative sources are more expensive. So if they're budgeting they choose the lessor quality, again even though they would prefer not.

There is some validity to both, but they are only 1/2 truths. There are actually alternatives that can produce enough to feed the country and the world. Also the actual cost of some of those alternatives is actually less when "hidden costs" are factored in.

One key factor is that taste = nutrition. Further better taste increases consumption. We all know that increasing consumption of more nutritious veggies instead of processed junk foods is good for health. Anything that increases health decreases health care costs. So the real cost is significantly higher for that tasteless low quality produce. That's even before you factor in the ecological costs, which are many.

So I would say in my opinion it is a bit more complicated than just "people don't care"