What's your most promising (abundant) tomato so far?

[Dak]

I'm really surprised, this year it's not any of my cherries, it'sCherokee Purple, which in years past has not been all that productive. This year it's already laden with about a dozen fruit.

[b54red]

Some of my most productive this year are German Queen, Granny Cantrell, Red Barn, Akers West Virginia. Surprisingly Spudakee has not been very productive and it usually thrives in the heat.

Bill

[Dak]

I just googled your tomatoes Bill, they all look really good. You're having high temperatures this year too? I'm going to have to put those on my list for next year.

[MrsJustice]

My Cherokee Purple & Santorini are doing Super Great in all this Heat.

[Yak54]

Looks like for me my most productive are going to be POLISH and DESTER

[garden patch]

my opalka is doing best. we have had lots of rain up here in Toronto, but they seem to be a lot slower ripening. even my big beef tomatoes are still green.

[JRinPA]

I don't look at them until they turn colors. A few sunsugar were first. Looks like a rough year for me, we'll see. I didn't plant any big hybrids, it just looks different this way.

[Dak]

JRinPA, you are truly a professional. I can't help but count how many each has, not to mention all my tomato pictures LOL.

[VirginiaClay]

Originally Posted by JRinPA

I don't look at them until they turn colors. A few sunsugar were first. Looks like a rough year for me, we'll see. I didn't plant any big hybrids, it just looks different this way.

Are you still growing Cuostralee as your main (or one of your main) varieties? How is it doing this year? I keep putting it on my tentative grow list, and then it gets nudged out at the last minute by something else, so I still haven't tried it.

[CrazyAboutOrchids]

Any tomato who would produce would be my best producer at the moment. Between the heat, the rain, the smoke - who knows what else - what a weird growing season. I had an incredible garlic harvest, but this week was the first for me to see stuff really getting bushy. Even my green beans were looking sparse, grew up my tee-pee but didn't really fill out, just starting to see beans.

My tomatoes are tall, healthy looking although by now are usually crazy bushy and these are not. I have lots of tomatoes on the vine, nothing amazing, but lots - but they're green. I have pulled a 15 oz. Rozovyi Myod, a small GGWT and about a handful of Sunsugar. Very, very weird year so far.

Amazing garlic though! Planted 100 this year, pulled about 50 last week and then remaining today.

[JRinPA]

Nice garlic, very nice. After I pulled mine last week or so I went through most of the box of year old small stuff and roasted it...great way to use up the leftovers.


Cuostralee is still my favorite, though this year, all still green. I had about...45-55? total plants out in one double row and cuostralee got the prime spot for the first third of one side. But as you say, weird weather, we had a May17th frost that killed some of my transplants even though they were under AG19 row cover. And just a generally cool and dry May and I did not get a chance to remove that row cover and get the trellis up when I should have. So most of my Cuostralee, instead of being single/double stemmed, ended up a lot more bushy and out of tight control. So we will see. But in general Cuostralee is a really nice colored, big Red tomato for slicing that taste as good as they come. The big three for me the last few years are Cuostralee, Sweet Ozark Orange, and Stump of the World, and they are sharing the morning sun side of that double row.


That is the cuostralees there (pic 7/19), and I lost control of them quite early when the ground finally warmed up and they took off.

[zeuspaul]

Once again Early Girl F1 is my most productive tomato. It tied with Bloody Butcher for the earliest. In numbers Bloody Butcher competes with Early Girl but in weight Early Girl is the winner.

[JRinPA]

I guess they taste about the same?



I am up to 3 sunsugars and 1 sungold eaten.



I really need to go back to trenching all my plants in. I still have a bad elbow from 3 years back removing a sungold cage. I had forgotten there were two plants trenched in there, not just one, and in the end of October when they were mostly dead, I very cavalierly yanked the cage out with plant still spread and woven into it. When it resisted, I pulled harder. The plants won and my arm lost. That's how good the root system is when trenched in.


Alas I have done less and less of it for my big tomatoes since I began using this black woven mulch. It keeps the weeds down and the water in, but makes it impossible to trench a plant in properly. I feel that my tomato starts have gotten weaker the last few years because of this.


I gave Cherokee Purple a good shot this year at new impression. Initially I liked it a lot, 2 years maybe, then it faded. I think I gave it 5 spots again this year.

[zeuspaul]

I don't have a sophisticated tomato pallet. I can tell the difference between cardboard grocery store tomatoes and my own. All of my home grown tomatoes taste good to me. I only have had one variety I considered a spitter.

Flavor may depend on growing conditions. Early tomatoes may ripen in cooler times which may affect the flavor.

[Greatgardens]

My earliest (and most plentiful full-size tomato) is Bush Early Girl. An incredibly bushy 18" plant. It's very bushy habit is actually a detriment since many of the tomatoes are buried in the dense foliage, and there are so many, they are difficult to pick. Tasty, but certainly not delicious. Healthy, but so are all my plants thus far. No Septoria... yet, and I think that is from our really dry period with no rain for about 5 weeks. I've only got seven plants this summer, but they are all doing very well. (6 plants in EarthBoxes and one grape tomato in a 15 gal. grow bag.)

Patio Choice Yellow is again a standout. 3 ft tall, with probably 200+ large cherry toms. These are really good. Not Sungold good, but very, very good. They are typically 1" and have very little cracking. First ones were picked June 28. Going downhill now, but it's been a excellent harvest from them. This has been a very good year!