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Sunday, August 19, 2007

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.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I replaced about 1/2 of my normal Opalka planting with Amish Paste this year, but both have been very slow to ripen. Not even a little pink on the fruits yet. Since this is the first time I had this problem with Opalka, gotta believe the heat and dry are causing it. Amish Paste will get another try next year.

Looking forward to buying Boulder Belt Striped seeds someday.

Walleye

Etiquette Systems said...

I had no idea that there were so many types of tomatoes.. Sounds delicious!

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