Tomato survey

I put in 31 tomato plants this year; a lot for me, but I was determined to get some homegrown tomatos after a disasterous last year in the garden. Thought I'd describe how the various varieties did and are doing for me and see what other folks planted and what varieties they have had success with.

Better Boy

This is the standard garden variety in this area (middle Missouri). If you don't get tomatoes with this one, you probably won't do well with any other. I put out three plants near the end of April, and they survived mild frost. Got my first ripe tomato on about July 4th. Good yield so far, though I've had to water frequently due to an almost total lack of rain in July. Good tasting tomato, though nothing special.

Big Boy

I started three plants from seed directly in the garden. They were last years seeds, and I put three seeds in each hill and got one good plant in each. This is another very common variety here. I've been getting mostly smnaller fruits than usual. Perhaps the hot dry weather is to blame. I do have a few of the big, one-slice-sandwich size coming along now.

Avalanche

This one is recommenced by the local University Horticulture site for this area. First time I've planted it. It seems to be pretty productive, and the fruits are much like Better Boy in taste and size.

Park's Whopper

I planted this one thinking it was an heirloom variety. I've since found that it is a fairly recent product of the Park seed company and is an improved variety of an old standard. The fruits are a pink-red, ripening to a darker red. Good flavor and less seeds than Better Boy and most others. I've gotten only a few I'd describe as whoppers, but many standard size fruits.

Beef Master

This one has been a disappointment. The plants are all somewhat stunted and the fruits are few and small. They taste OK. I do think they may have suffered from their location in my garden. Last fall, I tilled in piles of leaves, and where the leaves were thickest is where my tomatoes seem to be doing best. The Beef Masters are at the end of my tomato rows, and might have missed out on the benefits of the extra organic content.

Show Me

I planted these a bit later than the others. Found them at a local garden center and assumed they had been developed to do well in the local climate, hence the name. The plants are vigorous, but many of the fruit have blossom end rot. Few of the other tomatoes in the garden have shown this, and since the good fruits aren't anything special, I'll probably not plant this variety again.

Roma

The wife does lots of pasta dishes and really likes to use fresh Romas in them. In the past, Romas have been very good for us. They produced many fruits when the other tomatoes were doing almost nothing. They are a determinate variety, so I didn't stake them. In the past, I've used straw under them, but this year I put a black ground cover under them to control weeds and keep the fruit out of the mud. So far we're getting low yields of poor quality fruits. I'm wondering if the combination of the black ground cover and really hot weather might be stressing them. Maybe they'll come back if we get some rain and cooler temps.

Sweet 100 Cherry

These things are nearly bullet proof. The vines this year look spindly, but they still are producing piles of fruits. They're also sweeter than I remember. Good in salads, or just to eat out of hand.

So.....

I'll always have some Better Boys because they are so reliable. The Avalanche look like another good bet. I really like the Park's Whopper, and will plant them again next year. I'll probably try something else instead of the Show Me and Beef Master. I may try another of the plum-type tomatoes next year, though I'll probably still plant the Romas as well, and do something different about a ground cover. The Sweet 100's are an almost sure bet, so I'll do them again.

I tried Brandywine two years in a row with no yields to speak of. I like the idea of the heirloom varieties, which is one reason I put in the Park's Whopper only to find it isn't one. One of my buddies is getting decent yields with Cherokee Purple, so I may try that next year.

So, how are your tomatoes doing?

Chuck

Chuck,
I used to grow Big Boys until this year.
I went with Super Fantastic and Rutgers. Now I'm glad I did. Everyone around here has loved the taste. I'm not a big tomato fan, but I noticed the better taste right away. My great-grandparents grew Rutgers... it's old-timey.
Due to all of the rain, the first couple of dozen had black spot, but that's gone now.

I've got 12 Better Boys, 12 Big Boys, 6 Early Girls, 6 Celebritys, and a couple of Cherry and Roma-types. Early Girls did nothing and I've already pulled them up. Celebritys have pretty vines but I've yet gotten but 3 or 4 ripe tomatoes. I'm getting 6-8 tomatoes a day off the Boys right now. The Better Boys are tastier, juicier, much bigger, and not as likely to be deformed. Fruit the size of a grapefruit that fits a sandwich perfectly and makes darn good salsa. The Better Boys are still blooming but the Big Boys look like they've about burned up. After experimenting for 4 years I'll plant nothing else but Better Boys for fresh eating tomatoes in the future. I just don't care for the taste of the pink shipper tomatoes like Rutgers and Travellers.

I just had some corn for supper off my second little patch. Sweet G-69 I believe is what they called it. A little wormy and bird-pecked but MAN was it tender and sweet.

Thanks for the Tomato Report. It's always nice to find out where other people have good reports.

Our tomatos are still in the very early green stage. Different climate. Late start.

Egon

So, what you doing or going to do with all the tomatoes? Dear wifey just blended up about three quarts of mixed tomatoes with cayenne peppers for chili or related stuff. We're waiting for more jalapenos right now, but when they come in we'll probably make more salsa and freeze it. I'm picking 20 or so tomatoes every day. I'm not yet tired of a breakfast of tomato on toast with various cheeses, and BLTs are still good, but we're getting too many for such use right now.

Chuck

We will not have that many tomatoes. They will likely all be eaten as they rippen. We also have a few peppers and some basil.

If there were enough sauce would be made.

As I required a knee operation last April [ very minor] our gardening plans were severly cutrailed. Next year.

Egon

We've frozen about 20 quarts of salsa(all homegrown ingredients except for the lime juice and cilantro) and 20 gallons of whole blanched/peeled tomatos for chili and soup. I'm getting buckets of the most lethal habaneros and jalapenos I've ever nibbled on. The wife refuses to even touch them but I've canned a few pints and I'm experimenting with drying some out but this climate is probably too humid for such.

Now I'm hungry again!!

Egon

This must be a good year for hot peppers. Our jalapenos probably don't stack up to your habaneros for heat, but it doesn't take but a few to make a quart of salsa that's hot enough for the family. I once had my name on the Wall of Flame at the local Thai restaurant, but lately I've preferred to be able to taste my food....as well as feel it.

Chuck

Just got the first 2 ripe tomatoes out yesterday. Not a lot of size to them yet, either. Lots of green ones though. Squash looks like it is going to be the big winner this year. Man, there's a lot of squash out there. [img]/forums/images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]

Steve

I have some (contraband?) beef steak tomatoes from Italy. My grandmother brought the seeds over in '76. Every year my dad kept the first one to ripen and then gave the seeds to the local nursery. In the spring he picks up the seedlings. We gave one to a neighbor last year and she was so freaked out that she weighed it - 6 pounds.

Besides the 7 plants my dad gave me, I have about 10 Big Boys. All plants are doing extremely well this year, but alas, as Egon mentioned, late start/different season - everything is still green. I anticipate a few fried green ones for lunch this weekend, though.

As for what we do with them, the beef steaks are eaten as a meal - sliced 1" thick and drizzled with olive oil, some basil, salt and pepper. The others we can and use during the winter for pasta, chili, whatever. I don't like to add anything to them at the canning stage as that pretty much limits what you can do with them later on.

I hate to reinforce my coming across the net as CrazyJ but my favorite use for tomatoes is a peanut butter and tomato sandwich. Yep, I made that one up by myself when I was about ten years old and I still love them.

Now that is one interesting sandwich.

For me hold the peanut butter and add thinnly sliced purple onions and use bread from the xxyyzz bakery.

The bread used makes a real difference too. We are fortunate to have a few small local bakeries that produce some of the best bread I've ever eaten. One is just 100 yards or so from our house and if the wind is from the right direction the smell of fresh baking comes wafting thru the window at about 03:00 AM.

Egon

A bakery a hundred yards away? Lucky you! I'd weigh five hundred pounds if I had a bakery for a neighbor! [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]

We got a big chunk of pretty decent blue cheese at Sam's, and I've been eating thick-sliced tomatoes on toast with that melted on it. My youngest has a summer job at a bakery/sandwich place and has been bringing home left-over breads. He came home with a tomato-basil loaf the other night. Hooee, that makes good toast for my tomato creations!

I still haven't segregated my various tomatoes for a taste test. When I go out to pick, it's been so hot my brain gets over-heated and I forget to keep them separated. The only ones I can tell later are the Park's Whoppers, which really do have a good flavor.


Chuck

Oh my, you just made me think of one - the super-duper sandwich (what my family calls it):

Toast, olive oil, big thick slice of tomato, salt, pepper, more olive oil, another piece of toast on top, and more olive oil. If it doesn't drip down the sides of both your cheeks when you bite it, you didn't make it right. Yeah baby.

We are making marinara sauce just a fast as we can. We finally discovered the secret to great flavor. Fresh lemon basil, grown in a basket hanging on the back porch railing.

Wife had basil & thyme growing in pots on our deck. I realized just the other day our goofy lab was doing his best to "overwater" them for us so I built a bench to set them on. Didn't have the nerve to tell her the real reason after she'd used it in gallons of salsa, just told her I thought it looked nicer.

I usually make my best tomato sandwich creations open face, but that's at least partly because of my beard. It is remarkably difficult to get tomato juice and seeds out of my beautiful white beard.

I just picked another basket full of tomatoes. If I keep them watered, they are apparently going to keep producing until frost. There's about half a bushel on the kitchen counter at the moment. The wife has put up salsa, and basic sauce with onions, and plain tomatoes enough to do us through the winter. She used cayenne peppers in some, for chili, and we have a nice bunch of cayennes drying on a thread in the kitchen window, also mainly for chili. About all that's coming from the garden now, besides tomatoes, is onions....assuming I can extract them from the concrete that used to be dirt! It's completely overcast this evening. If it actually rains, we'll probably go out and dance in it.

Chuck

Great source of nitrogen! Now they'll probably die on the bench.

Chuck

It a wonder the ammonia didn't kill 'em already. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]

Ok, so ten days later, things are starting to come together. Tuesday, I picked a ripe one. Wednesday, 2 more. Yesterday, 5. I'm estimating that by the end of this weekend, I'll be bringing them in by the bucket.

We planted 12 Big Boys and 12 Arkansas travelers this year. Margie has canned 50 quarts of tomatoes and made a lot of salsa. We quit watering them and they have all but died now. We had all we needed any way Here is a picture of the garden in the spring. The plants grew about 2 feet above the stakes and broke over.

Gotta say those stakes are a little short. I set an 8' landscape timbers bout every 4 plants and tamp in good then run wire across the top about 6' high. Then wire 8' stakes punched about 1' in the ground to the anchor wire. Lots of work but it makes a solid trellis. Tomato worms are up so high now I can't reach them so I got my little trash picker upper gizmo and plucked them off yesterday. After the weekend showers I got blooms again.

I can't tell if that's squash or zuchini on the left but there's enough there to feed a small city don't ya think? Rich looking river bottom soil makes me jealous.

Nice looking garden but where's the rocks?

Egon

That sure is a neat looking garden. Mine is a mess right now. We had two weeks of really hot weather at the end of almost two months without rain. I kept the tomatoes and okra going by watering, and we got lots of tomatoes. Over the weekend it finally rained....I measured about eight inches in my gauge. The okra is now really starting to come in, but the wife says she's already tired of it. We just about only eat it fried, so I guess it might get old, but not to me yet. I'm thinking of trying some beets and turnips for a fall crop, and I'd better get them in the ground if I want them to beat the first frost!

Chuck

2 rows of yellow crooked neck squash on the left and 2 rows of cucumbers and a row of okra on the right of the tomatoes. Sorry no rocks in this delta soil. We put up 10 gallons of 14 day sweet pickles and 16 quarts of dill pickles and 14 quarts of bread and butter pickles

Lazy J, what city are you near. We must live pretty close.

Born and raised in Cabot but I live just west of N Little Rock now. I like all them White River towns, never far to go to hunt or fish.

My tomoto patch is killing me... I think I've already got more from 2 plants than I did 36 last year...they are everywhere and just falling off the vine. We've ate, given away, canned and they just keep producing fruit. It wasn't nothing I done, since the rest of the garden really was bad (except the weeds).

Next year. 1 row of beans. 1 row of tomatos and peppers (my bell peppers were awesome too) and a few rows of taters and corn.