How Were Your Tomatoes This Year?

[digitS']

It was a good tomato year.

There for awhile, I thought it would be an excellent tomato year.

... then we had a windstorm. But, I'm not entirely blameless for the limits on the plants. I never got back to fertilize with anything, after the initial soil prep.

Gary O Sena did well as usual but the big plants kinda played out. For some reason -- the Sun Sugar have great big cherries this year! I think the seed company has been playing with the parent stock. DW likes the Woodle Witz. I wasn't beside myself over the flavor but our tastes are different.

How about in Your Tomato Patch? Please. Tell us about the Goods and the Excellent and what you won't be growing again and how you were successful or where you went wrong ...

Steve

 

[ninnymary]

They seemed to just do ok. My Sun Gold didn't do as well as other years. My San Marzano, which everyone raves about, got blossom end rot. Juliet did super, lots of tomatoes. I'll try those again next year, along with my favorite Japanese Black Triefle.

Mary

 

[thistlebloom]

Oh boy! This was a good year. For once I didn't feel cheated out of so many potential ripe tomatoes by that mid September frost that usually hits me.
Oh, and plus I actually had frost cloth on the patch so when we did get a little nip or two, they were okay.

There are some tomatoes whose names I can't recall, and I'm probably not going to heave my tired self off the couch to look them up.
@marshallsmyth 's Little Roxy did well, biggish tomatoes that ripened well, and a good flavor. His Yellow Brandywine didn't ripen very many, unfortunately, but I got a HUGE couple off that vine. Should have weighed them.

I had one small salad type that did fantastic, just kept putting them out until I pulled the vines.
Paul Robeson, who I have planted before but don't recall success or failure, did poorly. It had lots of fruit, but they took forever to ripen for some reason. Big fruits on those too. I liked their flavor, but very prone to cracking and had gigantic cores. I put almost all the ripe ones in salsa, and a few went for BLTs.
The Sungold cherrys were over achievers and the chickens got lots of them.

Yeah, it was a banner year for toms in my garden. I don't get the wind like Steve does, so that improved my chance of success.

 

[so lucky]

I still have lots of green tomatoes on my plants. Big Beef aren't big but are fairly plentiful. Kellogg's Breakfast isn't a heavy producer, but I still have some huge green maters on those vines. San Marzano produced heavy, no BER this year. Well, some early on, but mostly not now. The worst problem I have had is cracking and splitting, with the Big Beef and Kelloggs. Not concentric, but from the stem end.
I had Tigerella, Bull's Heart and Purple Bumble Bee (?) that all didn't do squat. I just don't have much luck with those heirlooms.
I don't think I fertilized after the plants got settled in, so that may be the reason the Big Beefs (Beeves?) didn't get very big. We had a lot of rain this summer. I maybe had to water twice, except for spot watering a few seedlings.

 

[journey11]

It began as a disaster with the excessive rains, but things finished up a little better than I expected. I had several new tomatoes I was growing out to increase for seed and to see if I liked them. Managed to get some yield out of about half of them. Considering my garden was hopelessly consumed by weeds and they never got staked, this was better than I expected. Had a few that even were very productive.

Found a couple of new taste favorites this year in Brandywine Black, Chocolate Stripes and Pink Berkeley Tie Dye. Brandywine Black was extremely productive and disease resistant. Also found a nice little early tomato to get me by until my big heirlooms ripen, called Sugar Plum Fairy, ripening in mid-July. I can't find anything more about it online though. It was a good producer too. Chocolate Cherry tomatoes went bonkers again.

Costoluto Genovese has readily succumbed to disease for the third time, so I don't think I'll go there again, even though I am still convinced it's the best tasting paste tomato I've ever grown. It has very heavy yields too, but the fruit is always blighted shortly after it ripens. There's no picking and holding it. Bummer.

 

[buckabucka]

It has been a good year here, but not as good as last year. It wasn't as warm, even with a hoop house. Strangely, we got more San Marzano's to ripen this year. And the sungolds weren't as prolific.

I tried a cherry tomato called Jasper this year. The tomato is good, not as good as sungold, but the plant is beyond vigorous. It has totally smothered the plants on either side, it is pushed up against and crawling along the 10 foot ceiling, and found a crack up high and started growing outside. A tomato monster!

 

[Carol Dee]

It was a good year with little BER or cracking. Never saw a horn worm either. We grew German Johnson, Brandywine and Mortgage Lifter. Mortgage lifter remains our favorite. Large and meaty, slightly pink fruits. @Smiles Jr. these are decedents of the tomatoes we grew from seed I got from you Dad. Planning to save seed again this fall.

 

[digitS']

Fun how Sungold has become so popular. I think of them almost as garden candy.

Sugar Plum Fairy, @journey11 ? NESeeds has Sugar Plum but says it's a 102 day grape. That one couldn't be ripening in July.

My bigger reds, Goliath and BIG Beef did fine. I tried something new and set out my row of later plants on the north side of sunflowers. I just now have very many cherries in there and haven't picked one ripe Big Beef in that row! The BB began ripening in August, elsewhere in the garden. By the way, those northside tomatoes were the ones most severely damaged by the frosts. Better rethink that idea for wind protection ...

Steve

 

[Smiles Jr.]

It was a good year with little BER or cracking. Never saw a horn worm either. We grew German Johnson, Brandywine and Mortgage Lifter. Mortgage lifter remains our favorite. Large and meaty, slightly pink fruits. @Smiles Jr. these are decedents of the tomatoes we grew from seed I got from you Dad. Planning to save seed again this fall.

I know that Dad was really big into seed sharing for many years. In fact, he was a founding member of a seed exchange club in IN, OH, and MI from 1998 through 2009. Not just tomatoes but pumpkins, squash, beans, peppers, and tons of others. There are boxes of tiny envelopes, tiny jars/bottles, name and address books, and journals out in the barn where Dad did all of his seed preparation and storage. It's still a bit daunting to go out there and see what all he did with the seeds and plants with total (well, almost) strangers from internet sites. Mom told me a few years ago that Dad had spent over $120 on postage and shipping for his on-line friends. But that was his pleasure and one of his many hobbies and I'm sure he got much more than his moneys worth.

I feel so inadequate and overwhelmed with my new life here at PlayStation farm. But it's just the end of my first year and I'm learning great things here.

 

[journey11]

Fun how Sungold has become so popular. I think of them almost as garden candy.

Sugar Plum Fairy, @journey11 ? NESeeds has Sugar Plum but says it's a 102 day grape. That one couldn't be ripening in July.

My bigger reds, Goliath and BIG Beef did fine. I tried something new and set out my row of later plants on the north side of sunflowers. I just now have very many cherries in there and haven't picked one ripe Big Beef in that row! The BB began ripening in August, elsewhere in the garden. By the way, those northside tomatoes were the ones most severely damaged by the frosts. Better rethink that idea for wind protection ...

Steve

Yeah, close in name, but it's not the same tomato. Sugar Plum Fairy was the name on the website and on the small sample I received from Wintersown.org. It is not listed on their website anymore because they quit doing free seed offers for individuals, now only doing donations to schools, groups or organizations.

It was definitely early, the first to ripen in my garden, although I don't have an exact dtm since I didn't bother taking good notes this year. I'd pretty much thrown in the towel at that point and didn't expect much. It was a small, round, pink tomato, which weighed an average of 2 oz. It would have come from seed that was donated to them, so it's hard to tell. Maybe misnamed, or maybe someone one selected for it and named it themselves. I will never know, I guess.