Looking ahead to 2012

I am asking for input from all you Tomato gurus- every year I try new varieties in search for my perfect one. Note I said "my" since everyone has their own expectations. Here is what I am in search of, along with good procuctivity - The inside should be RED- I have tried other colors and I just don't like the looks of green or purple seeds and gel! Also, the fewer seeds the better- I like very meaty slices. Taste-goes without saying. I will grow mostly Determinates and Dwarfs, but some Indeterminates are OK. Here are the ones I was happy with this year: I think New Big Dwarf is my favorite- huge tomatoes, beautiful slices, a well-behaved plant,too. Early Wonder was good- super taste. Bush Early Girl- good. Moreton, good. Bush Beefsteak, OK. Livingston's Beauty was very good. Please tell me your experiences, and give me suggestions. Thanks in advance--I'm getting my beds cleaned up now in anticipation!

For a plant on the smaller side, you might want to consider Magyar Piros Boker. Great tasting red fruit, fairly early and quite the tomato factory.

For tasty meaty tomatoes with very few seeds, I think of hearts. I don't know of a dwarf heart but it might be out there. Anna Marias Heart is fairly early and oh so meaty. It's suppose to grow in rainy conditions. This year I grew a variety called Monkey A@@. It knocked my socks off for flavor, size and meatiness. There are oh so many great hearts out there.

Sophie's Choice might be good selection for you also. Likes wetter conditions and is a smaller plant. Medium sized tasty red fruit.

Tatianastomatobase.com has a wealth of information, and she has list of by size, growth habit, color. You might want to visit the site.

I was favorably impressed this season with Livingston's Giant Oxheart--although it is by no means "giant". Lots of flesh, few seeds, good flavor. I'm also a fan of Livingston's Beauty, but 2011 wasn't a good season for them. Since you like determinates, Square Paste might please you.

JoParott, I had real good luck with Mountain Magic. It took a cool rainy spring followed by drought and extreme heat in stride and really produced for me. Not huge tomatoes, but meatty and tasty. Its a determinate.

I'll have to look for that Square Paste for next year. I got some good sauce from the above Mountain Magic, but I like to mix the varieties together for the sauce.

I know what you mean by getting those beds ready for next year. I was hoping for a "second season" for my tomatoes, but the drought was a bit much. I had to really scale back to be able to keep up with the toms, veggies, the fruit trees and the roses. So I'm asking for drip irrigation for Christmas this year. I tried T tapes out on one of my beds this year and I decided that I like it. So DH has an easy Christmas list this year LOL!

Danko seems to fit your needs. Well behaved(4 ft.), productive(lots of 6-10 oz. tomatoes), meaty and tasty.

They're great for containers too.

Thanks everyone for your input. I will spend the long winter researching tomato varieties.

I second the suggestion for Danko, which is a smallish red heart on a compact vine, I've been offering it in my seed offer since 2007 and it's commercially available at several places. Just check Tania's website for info on tha tone and any others as well.

There are so many different ecosystems in WA state, as I've found out from others over the years that it's hard to know what your own area is like.

Just noting that both red and pink tomatoes have red interiors, the difference being that pink tomatoes have a clear epidermis and red ones have a yellow epidermis.

If you haven't already grown them I'd suggest some of the more readibly available varieties that have worked well for many in the PNW.

Some might include:

Russian Red
Matina,
Stupice
Sophie's Choice, from Edmonton Canada
Eva Purple Ball, always does well almost everywhere
Pervaya Lyubov, a med pink
Aker's West Virginia, does well almost everywhere


And some grow the parthenocarpic ones that were developed in OR for the PNW and probably the best to try is Oregon Spring. The parthenocarpic ones can set fruits in the absence of self pollenization which is often a problem in the PNW due to cool Springs.


and for cherries:
Mountain Magic F1, mentioned above is a winner, I was distributing seeds for it and Smarty F1 in my seed offer, seeds from Dr. Gardner who bred both of them, and gave me permission to distribute them. Smarty F1 is a grape tomato.

Chadwicks' Cherry, aka Camp Joy
Gardener's Delight, aka Sugar Lump

Those are a few you might consider and why don't you share with us what your gardening zone is, and what the weather is like where YOU live, b'c as I said above, WA has so many different ecosystems.

Do you have problems with Late Blight ( A. solani), as many do in the PNW, and that's as opposed to Early Blight ( A. solani) which is one of the common foliage pathogens.

Finally, if few seeds really is a priority, in addition to trying some hearts other than Danko, and I'd be glad to list some other heart possibilities, Nancy has already mentioned Anna Maria's Heart, seeds to me from a friend in Germany but Nancy, I didn't know it did well in rainy conditions, if it were me re the few seeds I think I'd try some paste varieties that do have good taste, which isn't true for most pastes and some of those might include:

Heidi
Mama Leone
Tony's italian
Sarnowski Polish Plum
Opalka
Kenosha Paste, a new one I've been offering in my seed offer but don't know about my 2012 offer since the seeds went fast and I didn't get it planted for more seeds. I need to send it to those places for trial where I usually do and that's where I know the owners well and trust them. Egads, I almost forgot that Victory Seeds is in Oregon and Mike features quite a few that do well in the PNW, so check there as well if you have time.

..... to name just a few.

Hope that helps,

Carolyn

Wow Carolyn- thanks so much for your info! You are one busy-and extremely helpful person. I just joined Tville and read that often, too. But being more familiar with DG- keep coming back here.
Now- let me see if I can tell you anything useful about my own little climate zone. First I am in the Columbia Basin High Desert- pretty alkaline soil, not much rain (I have inground irrigation,and also use drippers and hand watering). I have been here almost 4 years and the weather has been different each year so far! This year we did not reach 100, but got close. Lows get to maybe 15 in the winter. My beds are all raised and heavily amended. At the moment I am collecting leaves to grind and add for next year. We have many periods of strong winds, so I have to use strong supports for my verticals-which most of my plants are.
This year I grew about a dozen tomato varieties and have chosen several to eliminate- mostly because of too many seeds. Those that did very well are New Big Dwarf, Early Wonder, Oregon Spring, Bush Early Girl, Livingston's Beauty (seeds from Russ Martin),Medford & Bush Beefsteak. Not happy with Silvery Fir Tree, Black Krim (because of the interior color), Florida, Hilltop & Mr Stripey.
Here is my garden all cleaned up and ready-we just had our first freeze two nights ago. All I have is 18 heads of Buttercrunch Lettuce in cinder blocks, some Tristan strwaberries a,d some Cutting Celery and carrots growing.

With the high winds maybe you should consider some of the nine new dwarfs that were released by the Dwarf Project at Tville.

Excellent reports back, see that thread, and see the thread for Heritage Seeds since Steve is selling seeds for ALL nine of those.

Whoops, I don't think many of them are red or pink, but take a look anyway. Because as you know, the more compact the plant the better it can withstand windy conditions.

Carolyn

Carolyn, that's why I grew New Big Dwarf and Early Wonder- and they both did great. Big Dwf got so dense I had to prune out a lot of branches to pick tomatoes! For a small plant-(3' tall) it was great. And it just kept on going. Maybe it was you who posted that although a "dwarf" it is not determinate- I had rooted a cutting but the freeze got it. I have looked at the dwarf project- don't think I will grow any of them, since they are not reds!

No, none of the 9 new Dwarf releases are pink or red. One of the major purposes of the project was to develop varieties that were other than pink and red b'c there are already are quite a few ones that are that color.

Another purpose was to develop varieties with different fruit shapes and hearts and others will be released pretty soon.

I tried to link to Tania's data base but I'm back on IE and I can't do it, but many others have linked to her website, and scroll down until you see the special links, click on that and the click on Dwarf to see lots of Dwarf varieties already known. SOme available commercailly, some not, many over looked and when you click on a variety scroll down to see if there are any seed sites that sell those varieties,

As I recall Tania herself sells seeds for quite a few of them.

Yes, I did say something about Dwarfs vs determinates but forgot what I said but I'm pretty sure I just cut and pasted either the link to the thread at Tvill where Craig discussed that or perhaps at Victory Seeds when you look at New Big Dwarf.

Carolyn

I recently posted in a thread about New Big Dwarf, too. And yes, I posted that dwarfs aren't necessarily determinates. NBD, when I bought the seed from TGS was listed as an indeterminate last year; this year it has been changed to determinate. However, at Tania's and other sites it is still being shown as indeterminate.

As for me, I loved it! Great flavor, nice compact growth habit. Unfortunately for me I was hit by some serious foliage problems and the plants bit the dust around the end of July and I got rid of them...in other words I can't specifically state they produced all summer, which would've been into September or later.

JO, you're right, New Big Dwarf is a very dense plant (foliage/stems) and I planted mine so close together it was difficult to find and/or pick the tomatoes. Next years I'll space them further apart.

Shoe

Probably the difficulty with links to Tania is the ":88" that is now in their URL.

That is something like a "non-standard port number". If I ever figure out the IE security feature I need to disable, to see her site again, I will post it everywhere I read about tomatoes.

Corey

Hmm, I seem to get to it very easily. Does this link work for others?
http://t.tatianastomatobase.com:88/wiki/Main_Page

Shoe

Yes Shoe, it works for me but I know what Corey is talking about b'c a few folks have not been able to to her website b'c of what he mentioned.

Corey, Tania knows about it and in a thread at Tville gave suggestions to those who have problems with it , it's some kind of patch, don't ask me b'c I'm computer illiterate. LOL

I don't think I can find that thread at Tville so if you want me to I can e-mail Tania and ask on your behalf. Just write below here what you want me to ask her so I can cut and paste it and get back to you.

Quite a few of us sometimes have problems with the alphabetical way of searching for varieties b'c when you click on a letter it doesn't go to varieties that start with that letter.

She explained that one to me as well, but forget it, not for me. Her husband is a computer specialist and her one son the same and Tania is not far behind in that regard.

Carolyn

Thanks, Carolyn, you motivated me to dig deeper.

I found these in T'ville, quoted below, they may already be what you're referring to.

Of course, at work they don't allow me to log in to proxy servers that work around the security systems they rely on. I tried that just now.

If I can't make it work from home in the next few days, I will post again and ask if there's another workaround. I had hoped there would be an IE security setting for home use like "allow use of non-standard ports/services".

>> "Her husband is a computer specialist and her one son the same and Tania is not far behind in that regard.

I guessed that. Experts tend to make choices that "everyone should understand", because they understand it.

I like the way Kelly Bundy explained it, when she found the directions for making Jell-O too complicated:

"It says here: 'Stir into boiling water' Like everyone just knows how to do things like 'boil water' and 'stir'!!"


Dice:
"That ":88" at the end of the hostname means "tcp port 88"
(usually used by kerberos). Not surprising if organizational
firewalls filter it. Their rule is usually "if it is not a destination
port for a well-known service that we know we need to allow
through the firewall, filter it."

If you are at work, and they generally let out port 80 or 8080
www connects, you can get there via an anonymous web
proxy: http://proxy.org/

Your web browser will connect to the proxy on port 80,
the standard http port, and the proxy will connect to the
TOMATObase on whatever port the dns redirect specifies
(tcp port 88 in this case).

edit:
I do not know if the www proxies pass everything. They
commonly filter ads, embedded scripts, etc. If you need
to order something or log in somewhere, be sure to check
to make sure that the lock icon in the address bar on your
browser is showing that indicates an encrypted ssl connection.
"


Tania:
"
All links to TOMATObase (new and old) should work for home computers, if you have not change any default firewall settings. If the link does not work for you, it likely means that your firewall blocks http traffic on port 88.

If this is the case, please use a proxy server, i.e., http://helpmesurf.net/, or any other proxy server that Dice linked to in his post above. Just go to the proxy web page and type tatianastomatobase.com in the text box there.

Our order system should also work. Let me know if it does not work for you.

Another suggestion that Tania posted was:

============
Can you try the following?

- Go to http://proxify.com/
- Uncheck 'Remove all scripts' checkbox
- type http://tatianastomatobase.com in the text box there and click 'Proxify' button.
==========

That worked for someone, but this time I got a much more ominous warning from my IT Department.

Corey

Corey, I have no idea how you manage to get me so confused on absolutely every level. But your so funny it's entertaining and I actually look foreword to it. LOL

The fourth or fifth proxy server I tried let me part way onto her site, after many ads and rejections and error messages and proxy-servwer hyper for Internet privacy that made me feel like a terrorist trying to hide my own IP address (which surely must put anyone onto someone's "hot list").

Anyway, the best success I had was to be able to see Tanioa's Russian nesting doll (and ads from the proxy server, then ads began coming out of my computer speaker and I gave up).

I totally respect and adored Tania's site when I could get to it, but unless I figure out what friewall setting or browser security setting to change, I'm not going through any more proxy servers unless I need to download A-bomb plans from somewhere annonymously.

Corey

Hmm - maybe this, but I'll think tomorrow morning before trying it.

Windows Firewall |
Exceptions |
Add a port |
port number & protocol

Name (Tania?)
88 (or :88?)
TCP (not UDP?)

Maybe I'll see what happens ...

Corey

Wouldn't this proxy subject be better dealt with in the Computer forum? This thread was about Tomatoes originally.

Jo, it had to do with access to Tania's site which IS all about tomatoes. ( smile)
And it's a site that many of us depend on to research varieties and many order their seeds from Tania as well.

Just speaking generally, seldom are there threads here that stay on topic for the length of the thread. I know I've answered someones initial post and then that's it, and then I look later and see there are 100 posts in the thread. LOL

I seldom follow a thread after I've answered a question, and that usually means a factual question with a factual answer as opposed to an opinion type question and answer.

Corey, if you were seeing the nesting dolls at Tania's site, be it known that several months ago those were removed and she posted a picture of herself. This was shortly after she had that first episode where she thought she'd had a stroke, and still no Dx after many MD visits.

Carolyn

Sorry, I guess it was too early in the morning for me to be posting- :-) no problem.
Can anyone tell me about Dwarf Caitydid Tomato? I have seen reference to it but can't find any info.

Thank you, Carolyn. Tania's website IS the gold standard.

I'll post again if I succeed; it may be useful to people using the standard Windows firewall.

Corey

Jo- .Corey might get a better answer on the computer forum. I actually think in his posts "he is thinking out loud".

I really enjoy reading every post- I guess I just commented because I have seen times when someone made remarks about threads going *off topic*. We all have things to offer and share, and all of us benefit from it. So, please forget what I posted and keep on contributing. I have learned a lot of valuable gardening info here, and hope to continue. Day by day now with freezes coming, I am busily preparing my beds for spring. My Tomato list gets longer, and longer--!

I do tend to run off at the mouth a lot!

Rick-you have Dmail-

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=19253&highlight=dwarf+caitydid

Jo, that variety is a work in progress and is part of the Dwarf Project at Tville, as indicated above. Named for Craig's one daughter, slightly altered name, when you read the above link.

No tellinghow long it will take to stabilize and join the 9 commercially already released Dwarfs from the project so if you read the dwarf project data at Tville you'll see that there are many other ones that are still being worked on by various participants in the project.

Carolyn, and to understand the Caitydid one you have to go back to the Pesty one, if you want to. Looks like a gold/red bicolor dwarf on the way up/