Your opinions/comments on...

[tgplp]

Hi! I had to buy some tomato plants (some of my plants died a few weeks back due to frost. ). I bought some plants from a farmer's market, and some from my local garden center (molbaks). Sadly, there wasn't much variety: Sungold, Early Girl, Sweet Million, And Beefmaster were the main tomatoes varieties everyone had! So, I found what heirlooms there were, and a couple hybrids. Here's what I got! Do you know anything about any of these? Grown them before? Growing them this year?
Sungold
Gold Medal
Copia
German Stripe
Sweet Million
Supersweet 100
Chocolate Cherry
Black Russian
4th of July
Green Zebra
Yellow Pear

Thanks much!
Taryn

[recruiterg]

Sungold is a rock star. Very unique taste. Super productive. One of my favorites. I don't have experience with any of the others.

[ContainerTed]

Like said above, Sungold is so good that not many make it from the garden to the house.

Supersweet 100 is a pretty good cherry as well, but you have to let them get really ripe.

Yellow Pear is a huge plant and the fruits are very mild - almost bland to me - and you'll get a lot of them.

Ted

[tgplp]

Thanks guys! I guess I'll through yellow pear in a salad- with dressing, you won't notice the flavor too much.

Anyone else?

Taryn

[SteveS]

Green Zebra everyone knows...Tom Wagner creation, small slicer GWR with yellow stripes on the skin, juicy, some love it, some do not.
Gold Medal & Copia are both bicolors beefsteaks. I have grown both & favor Copia slightly.

Steve

[platys]

Last night, I was talking with a neighbor, who was going on and on about the "little bright orange tomatoes" I had sent over last year. Which, of course, were sungolds. I broke her heart when I told her I wasn't growing it again. (I"m not a cherry tomato fan.)

When I asked about Copia, pretty much everyone who had tasted it hated it, except for a few, who thought it was okay. There's some suspicion that its not a stable variety yet.

[tjg911]

Sungold - the one chery i grow, when you found the best the heck with the rest

Sweet Million - grew it one or 2 times but not as good/sweet as super sweet 100

Supersweet 100 - used to be my favorite cherry until i found sun gold. my x is giving me one from a 6 pack she bought so i'm going to add it to the tomatoes this year. it should be interesting to taste it again, i really did like it, a good producer tho i think it cracked easily.

Yellow Pear - cute looking yellow pulp, i'd prefer to chew wet cardboard. grew this pos many years until i finally realized that it was a pos! ymmv.

tom

[carolyn137]

I'll star the ones I've grown.

*Sungold, a must grow

*Gold Medal, a typical gold/re bicolor, great some seasons

Copia, have not heard much good about it

*German Stripe, another gold/red bicolor, same comment as for Gold Medal

*Sweet Million, lots of folks like it, I prefer other cherries

Supersweet 100, same comment as above

Chocolate Cherry, bred by Aaron Whaley, formerly of SSE, most folks prefer Black Cherry, I haven't grown CC.

Black Russian, good to grow if you haven't grown any so called blacks

4th of July, Burpee hybrid

*Green Zebra, as has been said, strong opinions on both sides, not for me but I do love Green Zebra Cherry which is not from GZ itself.

*Yellow Pear, why not, just once, cute, cute, cute.The Red Pear is better

[dice]

You might find some better ones:
http://seattle.craigslist.org/sno/grd/2405763391.html

If you have to go to Seattle for anything, you would
pass near here:
http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/grd/2393662968.html
(These are good ones, Tomatoville quality.)

[piegirl]

A thumbs down on Chocolate cherry. Supersweet 100 was good. Both were huge, huge plants. CC was a bit slow to set but then wham. Difficult to tell when ripe and flavor was so-so. That was my experience in a midwest garden. piegirl

[JoeP]

I can only agree with everyone else....Sungold - Great, Yellow Pear - Underwhelmed. Haven't tried the rest of your list.

However, depending on where you are in Western Washington there are other options.

In Tacoma the Portland Avenue Nursery has a good selection of hierlooms and some hybrids. Their selection of cherry tomatoes was pretty good. (Black Cherry, Chocolate Cherry, Camp Joy, Green Grape, Snow White, Reisenstruabe, Jaune Flamee and of course the hybrids you already have.)

In Olympia the Farmers Market has several vendors selling hierlooms and hybrids. One lady had over 30 varieties of hierloom tomatoes (Cherokee Purple, Earl of Edgecomb, Persimmon, Northern Lights, Sophie's Choice, Paul Robeson, Black Krim, Eva Purple Ball). Scored a Dr. Carolyn plant there.

In Vancouver, just over the river in Portland, Oregon the Portland Nursery has a rather large listing of hierlooms and hybrids. They have an excellent website that categorizes tomato varieties by canning, slicing, cherry, hierloom. And each list is a pretty good selection. They have told me on the phone that they can't gurantee that they'll have every variety in stock at all times. It depends on what their growers have available to bring to market. http://www.portlandnursery.com/plants/vegetables-herbs/

In Seattle, I googled/dexknows.com search for nurseries and called several that had hierlooms. Some had small selections and some had large selections. I didn't travel that far so I don't have any specific names to recommend.

I did not search further north than Seattle.

Fred Meyer's garden section also has a few varieties of hierlooms. The selection is not great but they have some nice looking plants. I purchased a couple of plants there - one hierloom and one hybrid.

Good luck!