Tomatopalooza™ 7 Event and Pictures

[Lee]

Here's the thread to describe your experiences for this year's
event. I will have more to say later once I've had time to
unwind and absorb it all. I've still got to put together the
variety lists and the results of our best tasting voting. (You will be surprised of the outcome of this one!)

Overall a good day with good weather, and good company.

Check out some photos at http://www.tomatopalooza.org/

Lee

[Barbee]

Look at all that tomato heaven!
So 2 caught my eye..Kristina Bulgarian and Turkey Chomp.
Very nice looking tomatoes

[nctomatoman]

Thanks so much for the hard work by Lee, Lori, Brian, Brett, and many others who set up, sliced, brought tomatoes...(brought us a cheese steak....was a delightful dinner, stormy!)....our surprise guest....I am shattered tired so won't say much more right now (off to the airport at 5 AM tomorrow for a week vacation in Seattle). Location was great, weather was great (but hot!), tomatoes (number and variety) were plentiful, and I would guess that 125 or more attendees stopped by for a little or a long stay. It was a great day! (yes, I overused the word "Great"!)

[PNW_D]

Wow, I never get tired of looking at tomatoes

and good to see the dwarf growouts side by side - some really nice looking fruit - Summertime Gold, Dwarf Emerald Giant - amazing

[gssgarden]

Had a great time yesterday at TP7. Weather was great, thank goodness for the pavillion, and the company was great. It's nice to meet people from here and just talk tomato. Wether it be talk about varieties, methods, or taste, it's much easier to talk in person than on-line.

Thanks to Craig and Lee for doing what they do. It was worth the three hour drive. Also to everyone else who helped out, Craig's wife, Sue, of course and any other I forgot.

Thanks to Howard, TheClaw here at TV, for his samples, his finger licking raosted tomato sauce, and his beef jerky.
Howard, I'm going to try it this week!! Great all around sauce. I can picture myself standing over it with a half a loaf of Italian bread dipping for hours.

Now for the tomatoes..

From the Drwarf table, these I think I will try next year purely based on taste with out looking them up....

Rosella Crimson
Dwarf Wild Fred
Frosty

I'm going to look into Plentiful

From the big tables, my favs were...

Shannon's - Yes, I'm being bias but I think it had a really strong flavor that alot of others didn't have.
Marriannna's Peace - My best year for it. Another 'strong' flavor.
Brandywine Sudduth - Great texture and flavor. Didn't produce well when I grew it. MIGHT have to gice it another whirl.
KBX - NOTHING shy about this one.
Beefstake - Surprisingly good flavor
Regina's Yellow - Probably will try it next year. I need some more color in my garden. Grew too many reds this year.
TheClaw, Howards, Purple Haze F2 - A reallly smoooooth tomato

Cossack Pineapple Tomatillo - Everyone loved these. Little bites of candy.

I'll leave the spitters to myself. There were a few.

Only got one useable picture. When I had it in my pocket, the little dial must have moved so most came out blurry. sigh.

Greg

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[stormymater]

DH & 2 DFs & I all thoroughly enjoyed Tomatopalooza 7 yesterday! I am blown away by the skills, knowledge & conviviality we encountered. It was so much fun to meet a bunch of Tomatovillians I know & enjoy from postings - you know who y'all are! What a bunch of wildly interesting folks; who, I am proud to note, are of stout enough constitution to pony right on up to the Peach Habanero-Cayenne Jam! Based on the looks & tastes of those maters - this was a collection of folks with some mad mater growing skills too!
LOL - the single solitary spitter in my book was a Sara Black I brought up (thank goodness my other blacks taste nothing like that one - may the rest of those Sara Blacks taste not like that either ).
On the ride back down to the coast Dh & I compared notes - he was very enamored with the flavor of Witty F3 A & B (somehow I missed them - go figure with over 200 tomatoes to taste!) - need to try to grow some of these for next year. We are late on our reds, pinks & bicolors/yellows (like everything except blacks LOL) & I was plenty excited to taste some varieties we are tending to now that have greenies... like a prequel (omg Purple Dog Creek)! New additions to next year's grow list based on tasting include - Tennessee Black, Turkey Chomp, Bradley(s), Tennessee Surprise, Regina's Yellow.
We had a ball - thank you so very much. Today's plan is to get those seeds fermenting - I plan to start the "customization" of my Tomatopalooza T-shirt with this very process! BTW - Tomatovillians are welcome here at the beach anytime!

[stormymater]

left off Kristina Bulgarian for awesome goodness...Of course the KBX, Abe Lincolns, Eva Purple Ball, Marianna's Peace, Great White... that Nepal was really good & bold too with some sort of little incensey after taste - so glad we took notes!

[gssgarden]

Here's my guess on favorite. Since Lee said we would be surprised, I'm guessing either a Hybrid or Cossack Pineapple Tomatillo.

Greg

[Lee]

Well, as I said it was a good event. There were a lot more
varieties there than I expected. We had 160 different varieties. (Of course some may say 4 different Tasmanian Chocolates F5 don't count as 4, but alas I do! )

Anyway, here's the results of best tasting... I did not vote this year, because I didn't really get to taste much. Too much going on to actually trial everything. Maybe next year!
Plus, most of the ones I trialed were quite bland and watered down, flavor wise. Even Cuostralee was not at its best flavor for the event!
I did like Summertime Green and Gold. SG has got a nice tangy flavor to it that I really like. In contrast to Dwarf Emerald Giant, which is more of a sweet flavored tomato.

So, coming in a #5 was Purple Haze F2 - Seed was saved from last year's event from PH F1.
At #4 was Tennessee Black - This one was a few people's second favorite.
At #3 was Regina's Yellow
At #2 was Marianna's Peace - Greg brought a great one here according to the reports (I didn't get to taste it!)
And at #1..... which really ain't a tomato, so this may not count, is Cossack Pineapple!
I think the fruity pineapple flavor of this one surprised many folks.

Well, there you have it. Any other comments from those that attended are more than welcome.

Here's the list of what we had represented.

Lee

[celticman]

I am always surprised at what tomatoes other like. I had a good time.
Celtic

[gardenmama]

Thanks again to Craig and Lee for the organization and to Sue and Lori for all the behind the scenes work. It was great to see everyone again and getting to taste all the tomatoes and sample KBX from other gardens. It was fantastic, and I am still amazed at how much regional conditions can affect the flavor nuances. There were fruits from I think 3 different gardens and all were similar yet one had more "assertiveness" and one had more of a lingering afterglow.

Morgan, Craig, Lee and I think Greg, all had a chance to taste a new project of mine, a grow out of a RL Japanese Black Trifle that showed up in 2008 (only one out of 40-50 plants) and had heavy production of globe fruits in the 3-4 oz range. I'm growing out 6 plants this year. 4 are PL 2 are RL. The one I took to the tasting is PL with a pleated/ruffled dark chocolate fruit. They all gave it head nods and fairly high eyebrow raises as they tasted. Not sure what that equates to on a scale of 1-10 but I took it as a positive and am saving seeds for further trial and hopeful stabilization.