Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Thursday, January 22, 2009
2008 Tomato Review
Better late than never. I planned to post this a few months ago, when the tomato season of 2008 was fresh in my mind but stuff happened. I didn't get it done. Now I'm making out my seed orders for 2009 and thought a review might be helpful. In 2008, I grew one plant each of 10 tomato varieties - some of them old favorites and some newcomers.
First the old favorites:
Striped Roman (aka Speckled Roman) - A long, paste-type tomato. Red skin with yellow streaks. Deep pink-red flesh, very solid, with wonderful flavor. Even though the fruit is susceptible to blossom-end rot, I'll always grow this. (Unless I discover something with better flavor, which is hard to imagine.)
Kellogg's Breakfast - Very large yellow-orange beefsteak-type tomato. You often see it written that this variety has great flavor for a yellow tomato. I would change that to "this variety has great flavor".
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| Striped Roman, Kellogg's Breakfast, Matt's Wild Cherry, Principe Borghese |
Black Russian - A medium-size tomato of the black/brown/purple color family. I love this one for it's deep rich essence-of-tomato flavor. And I hate it because I lose so many fruits to cracking and rotting. I'd love to have this flavor in a tomato that doesn't crack. I'm still searching. Anyway, 2008's crop disappointed me in two ways. First, the tomatoes turned out pink, not black. The seeds were from the same packet I've been using for several years, so I assume this particular plant was an oddball. Second, the yield was very low, even without the cracking and rotting. Still, I plan to grow this again in 2009, for reference if nothing else.
The newcomers:
Mortgage Lifter Improved - This is supposedly Mortgage Lifter with improved disease resistance. I didn't have any particular problems with disease in this tomato, so maybe that's true. It produced a nice yield of large beefsteak-type tomatoes. I thought it was just OK, flavor-wise, but with a persistent tobacco aftertaste to it. I don't plant to grow this again.
German Johnson - A very large pink-red beefsteak type on a potato leaf plant. Wonderful flavor, but I had a lot of cat-facing and sunscald on this. I can grow it unstaked and unpruned to help prevent sunscald, and I can ignore the cat-facing (and just not show it to anybody else). I loved the flavor, so German Johnson will be back for 2009.
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| German Johnson (front) and Mortgage Lifter (back) |
Black Prince - Another of the black/brown/purple ones. This one was maybe a little sweeter than Black Russian, but I couldn't compare directly in 2008 because of my oddball Black Russian plant. It's smaller than Black Russian and I didn't have too much trouble with cracking and rotting. I'll probably grow this again in 2009.
Piriform - I wish I had taken a picture of some of these before slicing. A medium-size red tomato of strange shape; almost looks like a tomato that's sagged - heavy and rounded at the bottom and ridged at the top. Piriform means pear-shaped, in case you didn't know. This one had green shoulders when ripe, and the green shoulders were sugar-sweet. I liked it well enough and will probably grow it again unless I'm short on space.
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| Piriform |
Persimmon - The beauty contest winner for the year. I didn't get many tomatoes from this one, but the few I got were just beautiful. The flavor was average; we liked them in BLTs and this is one of the best slicing tomatoes (great for sandwiches) I've ever grown. It's probably going to be crowded off the list for 2009, just because there are so many others I'd like to try.
Update 27 February 2009: I have reason to believe that the tomato I grew may not be the same 'Persimmon' offered elsewhere. Explanation here.
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| Persimmon |
Principe Borghese - Small egg-shaped red tomatoes. Supposed to be THE tomato for sun-dried tomatoes. I dried most of the yield from last year, but haven't tried cooking with them yet because I keep eating them as snacks. Makes me wonder if I really need to have any dried tomatoes on hand. I did get a lot of tomatoes from one plant, and 2008 was a difficult, droughty year. Still thinking about whether to plant this one in 2009.
Matt's Wild Cherry - I'm wild about Matt's Wild Cherry! This is the only cherry tomato I've willingly eaten after the big tomatoes have started to ripen. Usually I lose interest in the cherry tomatoes as soon as I can have the big ones, but not last year. The tomatoes were tiny bursts of tangy flavor with just a hint of sugar. Smaller than most cherry tomatoes these days, but larger than a currant tomato. Will definitely grow this again and again.
So there it is. Looking over my list, I only see about 3 open slots, and I've already ordered seeds for 4 new varieties. Maybe I'll squeeze in a couple extra plants this year...
PS. I just looked at my 2007 tomato review and found that I wrote almost the same thing about Black Russian then as now - "essence of tomato". I need a thesaurus.
Labels: tomatoes
7 Comments:
I had the 'Mortgage Lifter' and it was a great tasting tomato. I didn't have much problem with disease. Do you have room for some 'Green Zebras'? I loved the tangy taste of those. Can't wait for next year's tomatoes!
Layanee: So maybe I should try the unimproved Mortgage Lifter before writing it off?
I actually bought a plant of Green Zebra a few years ago, but it turned out to be something else. I never tried again - don't know why. Maybe this year. I need to make room for some plain ol' red tomatoes too, but I'm having so much fun with the others... ;-)
Do you grow these all from seed? If so, do you get all your seed from one company? I'm very interested in the wild cherry, but I wonder if it would grow here in Austin.
Vertie: For the last couple of years, I've grown all the tomatoes from seed. I think Matt's Wild Cherry came from Johnny's Selected Seeds, but I get seeds from a lot of companies - Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Nichols Garden Nursery, Thompson & Morgan are some of the others. I'm trying Sand Hill Preservation Center this year, and thinking about Tomato Growers Supply. We picked the first Matt's Wild Cherry in about 2 months after setting out the plants, so I'd think they would mature in Austin before the weather turns hot - if you want a few seeds to try, email me your address at kthatte at aol dot com.
Hmm, I've never heard of black prince but I'll have to keep an eye out on them. I've been thinking of doing a couple of new tomatoes this year because I lost my seeds. So thanks for the review-it will come in handy.
Hi, how very nice to finally find your blog. I have had you as a favorite in Picasa for a long time and follow all your updates. Love all your photos! Both wildlife photos and all your lovely tomato and chilli photos of course. I'm a huge fan of both T&Ch. and grow a lot of them, this year I even ordered some nice Heirlooms from Rare Seeds. Last years favorite was Green Zebra, Crnkovic and Czech's excellent yellow. I'm so please to have found your blog.
Take care/ Tyra
Mr Brown Thumb: I keep searching for the one perfect black tomato. If everything works as planned, I'll have reviews of more varieties this summer.
Tyra: Welcome! Only recently, I realized that people wouldn't necessarily find my blog after viewing my Picasa photos. I haven't used many of the Google social networking features - must try harder on that!
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