Tomato Picks and Pans

I grew 27 different kinds of maters this year, most of them heirloom. Here is a synopsis of many of them so far this summer

Crnkovich Yugoslavian-huge pink fruits with great taste. Medium to heavy fruit set, earliest tomato this year. Very similar to German Johnson, better than pink Brandywine. Will save seed

Nayagous-beautiful black tomato. Top notch taste, very little cracking, no catfacing, good set of fruit. Better than Black from Crim by a country mile. Will save seed

Amish Paste-great set of fruit but very slow to ripen. Did have some BER problems early on but not as bad as I did with Opalka which this is replacing. I have not used these much but did make a killer pasta sauce last Thursday so they do have good taste.

German Striped-big misshapened fruits that look just like a striped fruit I have that came from a pink brandywine x opalka cross, though not as good tasting. Will not save seed

Costoluto Florintine-this is supposed to be a huge red, round mater with the best flavor on earth. Not. These are horribly misshapened, medium red tomatoes with so so flavor. I grow average red hybrids with better flavor. Lots of cat facing and cracking with these babies. Will not save seed

German Johnson-these are really nice, heavy set of fruit, nice shape, good pink color, earlier than Pink Brandywine, better flavor than BW. will save seed

Red pear-poor flavor and these have a real cracking problem. I have been growing these for 4 years and trying to breed out the cracking with only some success. They are pretty and contrast well with yellow pear.

Egg-I got these in a trade so I do not know what they are supposed to do. I have red saladettes on plants that have succumbed early to blight (or something). Will not grow these again.

Glick's Pride-this is a mater I have been growing out for over 11 years. I go the seeds from a friend who's grandfather-in-law had bred in the 1940's. She found 10K seeds and got 3 or 4 to germinate and gave me some and I have been saving and growing them ever since (as are some folks at SSE growers network). Nice round red fruit with good taste-very rare.

Dr Wyche's Yellow-huge orange fruits, great taste. An improvement over Russian persimmon (which we also grow).

Yellow Taxi-very early lemon yellow fruits with a pink blush on the inside. Nice refreshing clean flavor, prolific for a determinant.

I got several seed varieties in a trade that were supposed to be white, black, big, small but all seem to be either sungold cherry tomatoes or a bright red saladette tomato.

A friend of mine gave me 7 or 8 heirlooms-black from Krim, a white, a yellow banana and few others. These were deeply shocked when we got them and have not been producing well but after 6 weeks in the ground are putting on new growth and we may get a good September harvest.

I also have several homebred "heirlooms" that I am breeding out. One is a beautiful striped mater. I am in year four and I believe '09 seeds will be a stable OP. This year 95 percent came back true to type. This is called Boulder Belt Striped

I also have a pink brandywine x sungold cross that I am developing as a pink cherry tomato. Right now I get either a pink saladette or pink cherry and I believe it will be another 3 to years before I get stable cherry seed seed stock. I am in year 2 of this project. I call this one Cherrywine.