It’s always a bit of a juggling act (in my small garden) but I have earmarked the following for 2012:

In containers:

• Golden Nugget
• Vilma (recommended by Tralamander)

In outdoor beds:

• Green Zebra (my #1 choice for “fresh” eating; IF we get a semi-decent Summer)
• Black Krim (loved this last year even though we had an “indifferent” tomato-growing year)
• Sweet Pea Currant (from a swap with Deanna – curious to try it!)
• Paul Robeson (NickyN sent me this one after reading my rave reviews of ‘Black Krim’)
• Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye (from Anelson)
• Large Barred Boar (from Anelson)
• Sungold: Think this cherry is over-rated but last year was “bad” and now I get to try….
• Riesentraube (freebie from Baker Creek: sounds almost too good to be true.)

And for saucing, I will be growing:

• ‘Purple Russian’ – did great for me last year: prolific.
• San Marzano – unconvinced it’s not all hyperbole (and particular volcanic soil). But growing it to compare & contrast in my PNW climate.

Bring the tomato-growing season on!

This year I’m growing my tomatoes inside of a 10′ × 40′ hoop-house setup with soaker hoses. I’m cutting back to 26 plants this year. I’m going to try some new things this year. I’ll be going with the old proven stand-by’s like the San Marzano for sauce, Brandywine for slicing, the Yellow Pear for salads, and of course a couple of Beefsteak. The other nine plants are experimental.

10 San Marzano
3 Beefsteak
3 Brandywine
1 Yellow Pear
3 Martha Washington
2 Celebrity
2 Hungarian Heart
2 (Undecided)

The San Marzano were incredible last year. I canned 50 quarts of sauce last year and it turned out phenomenal. It’s my favorite tomato. You can’t beat a Brandywine slice on a sandwich.

I have to ask? Straw bales? How does that work?

I’ll be growing a mix of determinate and indeterminate to spread the harvest. Last year I picked the first tom 22 July and ate the last indoor ripened one late November.

All my bottled (canned) ones are eaten so would like to grow more but am not sure where I’ll put them all! Sounds as if i should be giving San Marzarno a go.

• Red Alert – grew 6 (less this year as trying out more new varieties) of these determinates last season, producing 6.628 Kg of small/medium fruits. Earliest ripening outdoor UK variety I’ve come across, very reliable.
• Silvery Fir Tree – another determinate coming close second for ripening and absolutely delicious.
• First in the Field – not tried before but reputed to be early,
• Purple Ukraine – indeterminate so later to pick than those above and an instant taste hit with all the family.
• Vintage Wine – large and delicious indeterminate.
• Nyagous – didn’t do well last season, may have been the poor summer or my cultivation technique so it deserves another trial as the flavour is excellent. Problem: I’ve no idea of the best way to train it for earlier cropping.
• Jersey Devil – as the one above.
• Cosmonaut Volkov – heavy cropping indeterminate with good flavour.
• Black Cherry – new one
• Grappoli D’Inverano – new one
• Malinowy – new one

I already have the seeds of these, some last years, some saved, some new and may end up buying a couple more varieties yet.

This is my list so far:

Cherry Tomatoes:
Black Cherry
Carla’s Cherries (from a friend)
Chocolate Cherry
Green Grape
Jelly Bean
Juliet
Large Red Cherry
Snow White
Super Sweet 100
Yellow Jelly Bean
Yellow Pear

Plum Type:
Roma
San Marzano

Regular:
Beefsteak
Brandywine, Black
Brandywine, Pink
Brandywine, Yellow
Black Krim
Cherokee Purple
Delicious
Djena Lee’s Golden Girl
Early Big Red
Evergreen
Giant Oxheart
Great White Beefsteak
Japanese Black Trifele
Light Pink Oxheart
Omar’s Lebanese
Oregon Spring
Orange Russian 117
Pineapple
Red Alert
Rutgers
Stupice
Tomcat
White Queen

Only a plant or two of each, and I am sure there will be another half dozen to dozen varieties planted by the time I am done.

I too am a victim of nickyn’s very generous nature. I have several varieties coming.
Dr. Wyche’s
Orange Russian 117
White Queen
Costoluto Genovese
Monkey A**
Ernesto
Snow White Cherry
These from Sorellina
Sicilian Russo Toggeta tomato
Pantano Romanesco tomato
Giant Sicilian Paste tomato
Black Krim tomato
Early Annie Tomato
Anna Maria Tomato
And some I didn’t get planted from a swap last year
Earl’s Faux
Orange Heart
Ind. Plum…I can’t remember what the full name was, this was on the packet.
Mortgage Lifter
Banana Legs

I think I am done swapping for tomatoes, lol. This could be a fun year if everything goes according to plan.

sharonopolis…. Keep in mind that seeds from an F-1 will produce 25% Brandywine, 25% Trifele, and 50% Hybrid seeds. You will have 25% (BB), 25% (TT), 25% BT, & 25% TB. It’s not 50% identical Hybrid. In 25% the Brandywine gene (B) will be dominate (BT), and in the other 25% the Trifele (T) gene (TB) will be dominate.

For example, Black Trifele is resistant to cracking, is short potato leaf plant with 6-oz mahogany tomatoes. Brandywines are tall large plants with rich red fruit, with a slight orange undertone and weigh an average of 1 lb.

Crosses don’t always turn out the way you think. You may end up with a short plant with 1 pound tomatoes that don’t split (TB), or a tall plant with small mahogany tomatoes that always split open (BT).

You’re going to have to plant a lot of seeds to get what you like. It’s like flipping a penny. You can flip a tails ten times in a row but in 1000 flips you’ll get about 50% of each. It’s the same way with those seeds. I crossed a Jimmy Nardello with a Carmen Pepper and when I got to F-3 I ran out of space and patience. I was never able to duplicate the original Hybrid.

@redloon—are any of those varieties suitable for planting in containers? I have had really good luck with toms in containers, you do really have to keep up with the pruning and watering, though.

@maggiemom—holy Dina! I’m jealous that you have the room for all of those!

Hmmm… I don’t know if I want to put my list in this thread. Then you will all know that I am nuts!
Ah well…. this is the plan (changes daily):
.
BLACK/PURPLE
Amazon Chocolate, Annanas Noire, Arbruznyi, Black From Tula, Black Giant, Black Krim, Brad’s Black Heart, Carbon, Cherokee Chocolate, Cherokee Purple, Gary’O Sena, Indian Stripe PL , JD’s Special C-Tex, Paul Robeson, Tasmanian Chocolate, Vorlon
.
GREEN
Absinthe, Annanas Vert, Aunt Ruby’s German Green, Charlie’s Green , Cherokee Green, Dorothy’s Green, Emerald Evergreen, Gold ‘n Green, Grandma Oliver’s Green, Green Giant, Grub’s Mystery Green, Humph,Malakhitovaya Shkatulka, Moldovan Green, Spears Tennesee Green
.
YELLOW/ORANGE
Amana Orange, Brandywine Yellow, Bychye Serdtse Oranzhevoe, Dr.Wyche’s Yellow, KBX, Orange Minsk, Orlov Yellow
.
BI-COLOUR
Captain Lucky, Isis Brandy, Joya D’Oxaca, Lucky Cross, Northern Lights, Orange Russian 117, Tuxhorn
.
RED
Crnkovic Yugoslavian, Cuostralee, Donskoi, Early Kus Ali, German Cascade, Gianni, Goose Creek, Granny’s Heart, Justine Heart, Kolea, Neves Azorean Red, Portughese Beefheart, Prue
.
PINK
Anna Russian, Ben Gantz, Brandywine Cowlick, Brandywine Sudduths, Earl’s Faux, Fishlake Oxheart, Hays, Kosovo, Lithuanian, Mazarini, Nicky Crain, Purple Brandy, Sandul Moldovan, Stump of the World, Tehrune
.
WHITE
White Queen, Huang Se Chieh, Primrose Gage
.
STRIPES
Green Copia, Green Zebra, Large Barred Boar, Porkchop, Striped Cavern
.
PASTE/DRYING
Bisignano, Campbells 19, Chili Verde, Costoluto Genovese, Cream Sausage, Hog’s Heart, Japanese Black Trifele , Monkey Ass, Principe Borghese, San Marzano OP
.
CHERRIES
Baccis Luteis, Black Cherry, Blush, Chocolate Cherry, Coyote, Dancing With Smurfs, Dr.Carolyn’s Pink, Green Doctors, Green Doctors Frosted, Guernsey Island Pink Blush, Mini-gold Czech, OSU Blue, Snow White, Sungold, Sun Sugar, Sweetie, Wow Cherry
.
DWARF PROJECT
Barossa Moon (white cherry), Beauty Family (green selection), Dwart Mr.Snow (green fleshed selection)
.
CONTAINERS/DWARVES & DETERMINATES
Beryl Beauty , Black Sea Man, Bloody Butcher, Bradley, Lime Green Salad, Marmande, Siberian, Siletz, Summertime Green
.
GROW OUTS
Indian Market Types? – 2, Lucinda, First Mate, Sandburg, Not Lemon Boy
.
90% of these I am only growing 1 plant – so really it only looks like a big list (right???). A few favourites will hav 2-3 plants & the Dwarf Project & growouts will get 5-10 plants each. I am going to try to attempt bagging everything this year as well. Yes, I am a wee bit obsessed. I’m sure in 2013 the list will be 1/2 of 2012!

Yup! My “Sauce” tomatoes definately aren’t restricted to the ones on the list. They tend to be anything that I think will be fun for the kids or husband – Green Tomato Sauce for the Grinch… White tomatoes with White Habaneros for “White Hot Salsa” Plus, I if I get really over run I can put them out on the road side stand & introduce a few people to non-red tomatoes! Although, this year I think I am going to have to get another freezer – copying Hotwired!
.
Plus – just imagine my trade list next year (:

Yikes!!! Thanks I think! Is there a badge for that LOL!!! Maybe this year, but I have a feeling there are a few Folians that have grown quite a few in the past and know what does well for them & what they will use – and aren’t nuts enough to bother with this many.
.
Sadly, I have about another 50 varieties that keep rotating in and out of the plans. If really depends on how much time I find to make more beds in the spring. I think that this bunch along with the regular gardens will be enough!

Wow, I wish I had as much room as some of you!

In years past I’ve grown lots of different varieties for fun, just to see what they were like. I’m sort of moving toward trying to supply all of our vegetable needs. For the last couple of years I’ve been able to feed us during the summer, and last year I even made enough pasta sauce to last the winter. This year I’d like to manage canned tomatoes and sauce, peppers, green beans and squash enough for the whole year.

I pretty much have a limit of 12 container spots for my tomato harvest, so I have to squeeze as much productivity out of that as I can, but still have enough variety to enjoy fresh and keep it fun. I haven’t sat down to plan this out – I won’t start plants until about April 1st – but I do know my must-haves.

Brandy Boy – yes, I know. Heirloomers scoff. Heck, I scoff. But this is the best balance of yield and flavor I’ve ever tried.

SunSugar – I tried an OP orange cherry last year and it wasn’t nearly as good. One more in the hybrid column, but they are really exceptional.

Costoluto Genovese – combining this equal parts with Brandy Boy makes my favorite sauce.

Chocolate Cherry – so far this is the only fresh tomato that hubby actually likes!

Marianna’s Peace – not a big yielder, but my favorite red/pink for flavor ever

Summer Cider – the best tasting yellow/orange tomato I’ve ever grown

A black tomato. The best-tasting black tomatoes I ever grew unfortunately happened the year before I began keeping decent records. I think they were Russian, but that doesn’t narrow it down very far. It might have been Black Prince, Black Krim, Black from Tula…who knows. I’ll keep experimenting.

I want to grow a yellow-red bicolor this year too…any recommendations?

@nickyn—Is there seriously a tomato variety called “Dancing with Smurfs”? If it’s a blue tomato, I will totally freak out!

Yes, blue! It is more dark purplish black with hints of blue & sometimes yellow streaks. It isn’t a completely stable variety yet. they were F3 last year, so I am assuming that the seeds that I have will be F4. The stems of the plant are high in anthocyanin and have a purplish blue hue. Temperature seems to play a large factor in how blue they appear. Apparently the taste isn’t very good. But I couldn’t resist the name – who could? (:

My list is tiny in comparison to some of the above! I am doing the following :
Alpatiev
Cherry cerise
Marmande
San marzano
Tigerella
Supersweet 100
Alicante
Moneymaker
Capricia
Gardeners delight
Golden sunrise

Not sure how many of each I will be doing but certainly doing at least 5 of the San marzano as I want to try sauce this year :)

Dikoehler – you could try Amish Gold for a yellow plum. It is thought to be from Kentucky, so it would likely do OK in the heat. (:

Erm …. did I say a couple more? Have just bought these – all new to me.

Orange banana
Cream sausage
Sub Arctic plenty
Black from Tula
Black Krim
Royal chico
San Marzano

I just have to fit them all in somehow!

@anelson: had to chuckle at your writing of “got my seeds out to look at them”. I suppose that’s what I do too but when the NG asks what I’m doing (for hours), I invariably respond “just playing with my seeds!”

What happened to the “Pink Tie-Dye”? You sent me that one, along with “Large Barred Boar” so thought it would be on your sowing list.

I’m curious also to know which tomatoes would do okay in containers (aside from the obvious determinate suspects). And what size container would you use? “Green Zebra” (last year) was not a particularly big plant for me so might be a suitable candidate.

Saved from plants that could survive the summer—
Jaune Flammee
Galina’s
Matt’s Wild
Black Cherry
Sungold ‘Heart’ F5 (tiny orange ‘hearts’)

New:
Orange Russian 117
White Currant
JD’s Special C-Tex
Riesentraube
Green Zebra
San Marzano Lungo
:}

@LouiseM—I grew sweet million cherry and yellow pear together in an “earthbox” (29″ × 14″ × 11″) last year. Both did amazing and I got a ton of fruit off both plants. My biggest problem was staking them.

@nickyn at least— I originally got them from a vendor as ‘Sungold OP’. The pointed ones have very full flavor, a little nectarine or tropical fruit with good tomato taste and acid level. zero to five seeds, still produces some rounder fruit with more seeds and a little less flavor. It does pretty well in heat and humidity.

Here is my list for 2012:

Black Krim (heard rave reviews on Folia about being tasty and prolific)

San Marzano (this is the only one I have grown, wonderful for canning, giving another go)

Yellow Pear (heard rave reviews on Folia)

Valencia (no ideas and not a lot of info on Folia, but sounds cool)

Zapotec Pleated (too cool not to give it a try)

Black Cherry (heard on Folia about how good these are)

Big Rainbow (Christian, my 7-year-old planted this himself last year, but too late in the season)

I have a feeling I’ll also have to buy some from Walmart in a more “traditional” variety for my mother and grandmother, though. I’m not sure they’ll be very interested in my heirloom choices, but you never know. My daughter doesn’t like tomatoes at all (unless they’re cooked). I’m kinda hoping that she’ll find a variety she likes. After all, she doesn’t like cherries. But, she’ll eat an entire carton of them if they’re Ranier.

@anelson – we have had great success growing tomatoes in an Earthbox. We got 144 tomatoes from 2 Silvery Fir Trees. The only thing that we had to watch out for was a bit of blossom end rot, which we mitigated with a onetime treatment of hydrated lime applied before they started to ripen. I got a coworker to try a Sun Gold in an Earthbox on his patio. It sprawled to an enormous size and made him very tired of eating tomatoes by year’s end. He was glad when frost came.

This thread has been a hoot to read! I have to play along.

A lot of what I choose to grow is based on need for my seed bank, but having said that, I have so many bloody varieties in there that either need to be grown because the seeds are old, or because I need more quantity for storage, that it’s always fun to do no matter what the variety is (and it’s one of the best ways for me to discover new favourites!).

Here’s what I’ve grown before and are favourites:

• Orange Strawberry
• White Currant
• Garden Lime
• Pink Zebra
• Sophie’s Choice
• Stupice
• Silvery Fir Tree

And here are the brand-new-to-me varieties:

• Cuostralee
• Zomu
• Green Grape
• Kazakh Schalavije
• Calabacito Rojo
• Platillo
• Americke Pyramidni
• San Marzano
• Teton de Venus
• Purple Calabash
• Thessaloniki
• Uncle Charlie’s Giant Italian Pear
• Poma Amoris Minora Lutea
• Oaxacan Jewel
• Coyote
• Eva Purple Ball
• Weeping Charley
• Delicious
• Russian Persimmon
• Jack White
• Aunt Ruby’s German Green
• Beauty King
• Shokoladnyi
• Wapsipinicon Peach
• Purple Plum Paste

I’ll also be growing AP2 (my own bad designation until I come up with a better name). It was a cross (I believe) that came out of a packet of seeds I got from PGRC, absolutely prolific producer for me last year, which was no small feat since we were hit so hard with La Nina. I’ll be growing it out again this year to verify that it is a cross, and if it is, I’ll work the next few years on stabilizing it, because it’s a fantastic producer.

I’ve attached a photo for you all – the colour on my camera isn’t quite right, the colour is quite a bit more pink than this (some fruit being extremely light, others being a darker pink).

mmmm tomatoes (: Nice lists everyone!

@maggiemom – I’ve grown SunGold, SunSugar (related to SunGold), and an OP Orange Cherry that purported to be like SunGold (it wasn’t). My favorite by FAR was SunSugar, and is what I plan to grow this year. I just bought a new packet of seeds from Natural Gardening Company and I’d be happy to share them with you. Just send me your address if interested.

And I love reading everybody’s lists too, except it’s giving me fits of tomato envy! So many I’ve heard of and meant to try, and even more I haven’t heard of and need to research!

@kelly Any advice on stabilizing crosses? It sounds like you’ve done this before.

That’s a great example. Unfortunately some genes are dominate and others recessive in each plant. Crossing a yellow bell pepper with a red banana pepper may give you a orange pepper but it could be a bell, banana, or something in-between. The hybrid shape may be matched with a true red or true yellow, or orange. Crossing two heirlooms can result in many different varieties. The example shows what happens to one gene when crossed. That’s why I gave up. You need a very big garden to get to F-9 with the right combinations. I harvest a lot of seeds, and plant a few. If I like it, then I have a lot more F-1 for future years. I have a 3500 sq.ft. garden and it wasn’t big enough to produce a stable hybrid.

@maggiemom – I’m totally sold on Sun Gold and have planted them every year for at least the last 10 years. That is not to say that I have not had issues with them from time to time. Sometimes I would get a batch of seeds that wasn’t up to snuff. One year they all split before I could pick them, etc. Of course weather, watering, and other environmental issues all played a part too.

The best seed source that I’ve found, that always gives great results for Sun Golds is Johnny’s Seeds. I’m planting them again this year. My plant last year produced 454 tomatoes!

@JosephsGarden Thank you for sharing. I found your website very interesting.

I feel like a total under achiever. Heh.

This year, I’m going with cherries only, and sticking to only two varieties: Fox Cherry and, because I need at least one Russian tomato in my garden each year it seems, Koralik. I’m hoping the cherries mature a little faster than the larger toms. I’m also changing location in my garden to a slightly sunnier spot. Between that, and giving the plants more room, I hope they do a little better with ripening.

These both are supposed to mature early. We’ll see if they do!

Wow janezee! You’ve got a lot of interesting varieties that I would love to try. Maybe when you have saved the season’s seeds we can work out some trades!

Thanks, I’ve spent most of the winter reading, researching things that I thought would do well here, and trading to get them. I just got my envelope from a round robin, and it had 27 new varieties in it. What to do?
Let’s have one in the fall, because for some of these, I’m just trialing them, and pruning them to get some fruit for tasting and saving seed. I’m not going for production, just taste, earliness, and disease resistance, since I have late blight every year. I live in a fog pocket.
I’m so excited to see so many new varieties here, too. Lots more research in my future, I see. LOL

I freeze my tomatoes when I am feeling too lazy to try other methods of putting them up for winter. Usually I blanch them to take off the skin and then freeze them either whole or roughly chopped in freezer bags. You can actually easily grate a frozen tomato for a nice puree-type texture.

Fhaith – What you do with the victory garden is truly inspiring! (:

Also growing Speckled Roman for the first time this year. My package looks just like Fhaith’s. They are so pretty!

Regarding large/small early/late varieties aforementioned.
I grew Koralik last season in deep containers and they made huge sprawling plants and though sweet and delicious were quite slow to ripen. Maybe if I’d pruned them some it would have made a difference but as they were new to me and determinate, I just wanted to let them do their thing what ever that might be.

However 3 other varieties all ripened long before K.
Red Alert, determinate, (container grown) produced a compact plant harvested at 87 days.
Silvery Fir Tree (again in container) was much less sprawling than K, producing well flavoured medium to large fruits which ripened appr. 95 days.
Tamina, cordon, med to large fruit, ripened at 97 days.
And that was in our rather sunless summer last year.

@Nickyn (thank you!), Ericinthebakery, and Maggiesmom –
Speckled Romans are very beautiful – mid to late season, and tasty. I used them in salads, sauces, slicing for sandwiches…. anything a grown up tomato can do. But everyone’s tastes are different!

I unfortunately can’t find the seed from last year and wonder if we accidentally threw it away. So I am going to look for another tray of starts.

One thing I am going to try this year is putting a growing ruler (for education) on a tomato plant this year to see how quickly it grows and document.

Hey guys,
I plan to plant 27 different varieties.
I just sowed the following 12:
1884
Abe Lincln
Amana Oranga
Arkansas Traveler
Red Fig
Black Ethiopian
Cream sausage
Glory of moldova
Old German
White Queen
Yellow pear
I planted 6 of each variety:-)

AspenMeadows, you ask what we all do with all the tomatoes.

If I get a good germination, I give all my extras that will fit and grow for the summer in pots to the food bank. No reason that everyone can’t have one tomato plant to call their own for the summer. 8)

For the tomatoes, first it’s family and friends, then its the freezer, drier, and hanging up until ripe. I might try canning this year, since I’ve received a new-to-me pressure canner. I have lots of jars. I’d love to have sauce that I made.

If I have lots, they’ll go to the food bank, too. The last two summers didn’t give us much in harvest. My freezer’s empty of tomatoes now.

jane

@Fhaith Thank you so much for that piece of info, I’ll surly look out for that :-) heres a pic 2weeks after planting

It was agonizing trying to decide because I wanted to sow one of everything (and I ALMOST) did do that!
This is what was sown today:

Tomatillo
Orange Russian 117
Yellow Pear
Guernsey Island
Banana Legs
Bison
Jaune Fammee
Purple Russian
Aunt Molly’s Ground Cherry
Sweet Million
Costoluto Genovese
Native Sun Orange
San Marzano
Roughwood Golden Tiger
Emerald Evergreen
Sweet Pea Currant

Whew! I did 2, 3 and 4 of each depending on how much seed I had.
Now I’ll just have to wait and see!

My new motto is: “sow now, find room later!”

My interest has perked here with the Food Bank discussions…

Yes! Please donate to your local food pantry or regional food bank! Food Pantry’s are allowed to take donations of fresh grown produce – and often call for “Plant A Row” activities for gardeners to grow a row of beans, etc to donate. It’s a worthy cause. Thanks for that plug!! My experience is unless you have dozens of bushels of veggies to donate to the FB – going local is best and goes quicker and reaches out to your own local community. Going to your local food pantry is my suggestion.

This will be my second year to do hydroponic tomatoes in vertical towers. I always use heirloom varieties, starting my own organic seeds. This year it’s:

• Viktorina
• Bush Beefsteak
• Black Cherry Tomato
• Atkinson
• Black Krim
• Black Sea Man
• Heinz
• Rutgers
• Gill’s All Purpose
• Cherokee Purple
• Paul Robeson
• Green Zebra

jane—that’s an amazing list!
I read somewhere that if you want to try more varieties than you have room for, you can plant 2 to a cage—the growth of each plant will be stunted but the overall yield wont be reduced that much.
I have grown stupice and skorospelka, whihc weren’t huge plants, and jaune flammee, which wasnt very bushy but did grow tall.

Gardener’s delight will grow okay in a container (minimum 12" diameter, same depth-wise).
I’ve also grown 2 plants, of indeterminate habit and therefore managed by pruning, per large pot (16" diameter, 14" deep), both with separate supports – helps to have a well developed root system prior to final planting.

My Cosmonaut Volkov in large containers/pots did very well last year.

I do a lot of pruning. And still always get plenty of tomatoes. I have found that it blighty years, well-pruned plants tend to stay healthier.

Ooooo, so many answers, thank you!

anelson, thanks. I wish I had some of my old cages, but they didn’t make the move here 2.5 years ago. I’m thinking bamboo stakes for the short ones, Florida weave for the slightly taller ones, and the single string method described by hotwired for the tall ones.

nicky, I’m afraid that this is already with planning for pruning. Last year, I had 16, this year I’m going for 60. I laugh at myself every day. Every day.
I have no idea for sure about Green Ghost. I am guessing that it’s a sport or mutation of Ghost cherry, since the person who gave it to me just said that it was an interesting variation on a salad tomato, not a cherry. Ghost is a pretty large cherry, so I’m guessing. He did say that it ’wouldn’t take over the whole garden.’ Whatever that means! 8-D

maggiesmom, I’m so glad to hear that! I have late blight and powdery mildew every year, because of the fog and damp. Like nickyn, I find it hard to take off any part of the plant, but then, when I see good results, I’m afraid I just might go too far in the other direction on occasion.

Erik, thanks for that, because I’ve read it, in articles, but it’s better to get first hand experience talking. Don’t believe half of what you read on eHow.com, and be very suspicious of the other half!

janezee… That’s pretty much what I’m thinking of doing. I’m going to be running a 24"wide raised bed down each side of a 10′ × 40′ hoop-house row cover, and dropping heavy twine down from a 40’ long PVC tube mounted overhead, so I have a 2’ wide walkway on all sides of the beds. My San Marzano tomato plants were all over the place last year in 40" high wire cages. I had to use 72" metal fence posts to hold up the cages. No cages this year. Everywhere that the plant touches the wire I get what looks like fungal diseases. I scrub them with Clorox and it still doesn’t help. I just got in 5 cubic yards of compost for the beds.

By the way, I really enjoy this thread. Some of you might just have seen that I posted it twice. Nice.

Hotwired, that is one lovely HH. I will be so interested in following your exploits in there! I just love it when people spend so much time on plans and following through on them. Give me hope for myself!

My plans are to have 4 panels, 4’4" wide, tied together to make it 17’4" long. The panels are originally 16’ long, which would make it a little too short for me, so I’m building skinny raised beds, on the outside, with a lip to hole the panels up another 10" on either side, and then skinny (15") beds on the inside along the sides, then a 4’ wide bed down the middle. It will only give me about 22" of room in each aisle, but with the extreme pruning, and only lower plants in the 15" planters, I should be able to get through OK.

janezee – pots for CV were 14" diameter, 10" deep. The plants, one grown as single stemmed cordon, the other as twin stemmed and both with side shoots pinched out, grew to about 5’6", when I stopped them so the fruit would swell and ripen before the colder days & nights set in.

We are limited here to a maximum of five plants, since we grow in a raised bed inside an unheated greenhouse to keep the tomatoes healthy (we get a lot of rain and early morning fog here), so we have to be very selective in what we choose. We also have an extremely short growing season (even with the greenhouse), so many of the late season heirlooms don’t get a chance to set much fruit before it’s starting to get cool.
We grow at least one that did well for us in the past, and then try new varieties to see how they do for us, and how well we like them. If we like them enough to repeat, that variety will make a second appearance the following year.
This year, we’ve chosen:
Sub Arctic Plenty (new)
Legend (new)
Gold Nugget (repeat from last year)
Siberia (new)
Black Krim (repeat from last year)

Yes janezee… we are just about a mile (as the crow flies) from the south end of Puget Sound, in a river valley (hence the morning fog).
I think you’ll enjoy the hoop houses… we use them to do nearly year round gardening with selected plants :)

Just did the starts a couple of days ago. It’s the year of the yellow, as I’m trying to find a good freezing yellow and a good paste yellow. We don’t tend to eat uncooked tomatoes very much, so I’m not that interested in slicers; I usually just grow one or two. Here’s the list:

From kelly for saving
Aunt Gertie’s Gold
Yellow Lemon

Other yellows from Tomato Growers
Golden Queen
Virginia Sweet
Plum Lemon
Also had a Yellow Banana (?) which I decided not to plant this year. Ran out of space.

From seeds I saved
Paste
San Marzano (yes, the hype is true)
Goldman’s Italian American (and I’m going to get to meet Amy Goldman!)

Slicers
Black Krim (my backyard cultivar, year 10 on saving these seeds)
Green Zebra

I started 12 to 36 of everything, but will only plant out 1 to 5 of each (total plants about 20). The rest I donate to the plant sale at Peterson Garden Project, and to their Grow2Give project for food pantry donations.

Chicago is quite hot in the summer, don’t be fooled by the typical winter. It’s not unusual to have strings of 80s and 90s for several weeks, and overnights in the 70s and 80s. Although tomato season is basically considered Memorial Day to Labor Day (barely 100 days) I figure by starting indoors on April 1, and praying for a hot September (which is typical), I get 150 to 160 days.

As to the SM, it absolutely explodes at the end of the season, and ripens beautifully off the vine. I would think in Zone 8 they’d do really well.

Yesterday I transplanted my tomato seedling from the seedtray to small 3" pots. As these plants are mostly the small types I’m going to grow a lot of them on my balcony. All three varieties came as swaps & they are all F1 varieties. This will be the first time I’ve ever grown F1 varieties & also the first time I will have grown dwarf types or yellow ones! A lot of firsts with these seeds! Another first is sowing them in a propagator as I’ve always had to start them off in a warm cupboard before.

One packet came with only 8 seeds in it! I think I had 7 germinate! Another packet had only 5 or 6 in it & again the germination rate has been almost 100%! The biggest packet had about 15 seeds in it & I think I got about 12 -14 to germinate.

Varieties that I’m starting for this year…

-Brandywine
-Marvel Stripe
-Green Zebra
-Pompeii
-Super Bush

All of these are new to me, so we’ll see how they do! I’ve had a couple of bad years for tomatoes… First, the soil we got for the raised beds when we put them in has WAY too much sand. :/ And then last year I was spread too thing and had bad things happening in my life, so the gardens suffered. The ones in the raised beds died, and the ones at the other house I was planting at grew huge (big enough to break the supports!), but the fruit rotted on the vine because I just didn’t have the time for them.

Hopefully this year will go better!

I started my seeds a bit late for my zone this year for health reasons (bah, humbug!), and have supplemented by purchasing a couple seedlings. Mostly I chose to try again several varieties that I really enjoyed last year (which was my first year at this place), plus a bunch of new-to-me varieties that supposedly have interesting shapes, colors, and/or have fun names. :-)

I’m aiming for mostly heirloom and open-pollinated varieties in my garden (and trying to avoid anything related to GMOs and Monsanto) with only a couple specific exceptions.

The enjoyed-last-year list:
Green Grape — last year’s very first tomato, reliable producer and very tasty
Yellow Pear — Mom’s Granddad’s favorite tomato, it produced in my garden fairly well and was great for snacking on
Casady’s Folly — gorgeous, tasty, worked great for cutting into spears and using for dipping, worked great in stir-fry dishes, very decorative coloring
Jaune Flamme — sweet, lovely color, reliable producer in my garden into November last year
Vorlon — incredibly rich-tasting beefsteak, amazing flavor
Viva Italia — my Dad’s favorite tomato, this hybrid produced in my garden very reliably and I was still harvesting in late December last year (even a few into this January, before I finally pulled the plants out!)

And the new-to-me list:
Aunt Ginny’s Purple
Dad’s Sunset
Moonglow
Blondkopfchen [Little Blond Girl]
Ghost Cherry
Snow White
Green Doctors
Magnus
Optimus
Egyptian
Isis Candy
Enchantment (I’m trying this disease-resistant hybrid in a location that was problematic for my Weisbehaarte last year… rest in peace, Weisbehaarte…)

I’m also trying some purple tomatillos… I am dreaming of incredibly-multicolored salsas and sauces and soups this supper and autumn!!