My wife likes the Sweet 100s she doesn't like cherry tomatoes too sweet. That's what she's told me but I may have to try those.
I like the strong flavored tomatoes to make into sauce, base, and salsa, and its nice to have a variety to mix together to blend sweet, spicy, peppery, and just a concentrated tomato flavor. I've made some of my best sauces from a batch of leftover tomatoes from what we'd picked that I threw together to have enough tomatoes to match a batch.
Size isn't as important to us as production. Why wait so much longer for big 12 or 14oz tomato when we can get a handful of 6oz tomatoes that much earlier? We quickly picked up on this and long gone are the "Boy" hybrids and we tend to do more Early Girls till I found TEG and have I've been pushing hard to get into the heirlooms and away from hybrids. The diversity of flavor is what brought me into the heirloom camp, even though I still grow hybrids. I just haven't found ones to replace the hybrids yet but its not for a lack of trying. Lot of tomatoes I haven't tried yet so I'm sure I'll find my keepers soon enough.
Honestly I like my 60ish - 80ish day tomatoes. Though I tend to be a bit skeptical of the 80+ day varieties. Season just isn't long enough to get good production out of those tomatoes usually. Some of them taste fantastic but if we can't get enough of them to ripen its hard to justify keeping them. Here in Michigan we have it pretty darn good though. We have 4 legitimate seasons and a good amount of rain through out the spring and summer but are protected from the harsher weather including the really bitter winters that the other borders states because of our Great Lakes. They tend to absorb the brunt of the fronts and major weather changes so we still get hit but not the pummelling that others do. We're 3rd in Floriculture behind California and Florida so we're doing something right.
Diverse is important but for us its really about flavor. Production is also important but its gotta be a good tasting tomato. I'm pretty open to shape and colors so long as the flavors there.
Like Jared, I'd like to have a little more control over my choices for the garden without the dependence on the corporations. And, I also want healthy productive plants. I suppose that I should explore the world of pink, yellow and gold hybrids beyond the golden cherries. However, I came to the game at the same time as the color and heirlooms choices were expanding .
Dang it Jared, I predate Early Girls, too!!
Sorry I can't help ya there. I'm 35, there isn't much I predate
