What can exspect from amish paste ect

I'M am trying a number of new varieties this year. I am growing a few paste varieties. What can I expect from amish paste, san marzano, and roma. All have set fruit, and so far they all look alike. They all seem to be football shaped. I know these varieties are for canning, and that is the reason I am growing them. Can I slice them, and lut into a salad?....sandwich?....please give me a rating flr each variety......sorry...on my 4g smart phone

Hornstrider,

I tried San Marzano last year and had rotten luck. It may have been the heat or the drought, but I only got a few, tasteless tomatoes. Most of the fruit that actually set didn't make it to full size. The plants were green, and had reasonable foliage, but the few tomatoes that were produced were spitters. I had 8 plants, and they all were consistently bad.

David

I have tried all of them and agree with dreaves completely. To me, MOST of the paste-type tomatoes are tasteless. As my mother would say: They taste like a kiss through the window. I think that means a little flat! They also have a tendancy to blossom-end rot.

I have found one that is very good. It is Christopher Columbus that is available from Gleckers. I was surprised at the taste. I received my seeds from Amideutch last summer. I didn't keep one of the plants for myself, but a neighbor who insists on growing paste tomatoes brought one to me. I also gave a plant to another guy I work with and he gave a glowing report of it also.

This year I started about a dozen of them and I am keeping 2 for myself and giving the others away.

David, LooneyLinda.....thanks for the critique. Well I only planted 3 San Marzano, 2 Amish, and 2 Roma.........Ah well .............grow, and learn. I thought I read that San Marzano, and Amish paste were good choices. LooneyLinda I believe I have read you on other forums. Are you the tomato drying lady?..........The one who adds wine to your dried tomato's?

hornstrider - yes you can slice them for a sandwich.

I've grown San Marzano and roma and, like dreaves, had terrible results.

I tried to buy Amish Paste this year, but Johnny's were out of seeds, so I purchased "Monica" instead. So far I'm not impressed with the seedlings. They are very puny.

My favorite (so far) has been "Viva Italia" which I usually purchase from Burpee.

All these paste tomatoes get blossom end rot, but I have found growing them in soil that stays constantly damp with plenty of crab shell and seabird guano added to the soil cuts back on the problem somewhat. I usually toss the ones with BER towards the fence so the squirrels eat them instead of the good ones still on the vine.

I have never considered Amish Paste to be a paste tomato b'c it's far too juicy, but when some folks named a tomato they did it on shape alone, as in Lillian's Red Kansas Paste, which is not a paste variety either.

We've had many threads here about paste tomatoes and I know I've posted what I think are the best ones that I've grown in many of those threads but can do it again, if needed.

Long ago most of my tomato friends switched from using paste varieties to using hearts and beefsteaks with dense flesh and few seed. And that b'c as mentioned above many of the pastes are susceptible not only to BER but also to Early Blight ( A.solani)

And the hearts and dense beefs have superior taste to any paste variety I've tried, although some are better than others, at least grown by me in my climate, etc.

Carolyn

Carolyn - I had wanted to follow your recommendation to grow heart varieties this year, but could not find one that is "determinant".

At the time I ordered seed, I did not have the 8ft posts in place that I needed to grow indeterminants, so I purchased "paste" types instead.

Next summer, I will definitely grow heart varieties as the 8 ft t-posts are now in place.

But, But, most of the paste types ARE indeterminates. LOL

Carolyn

Carolyn.....you made that suggestion to me earlier, but I had already started my seeds. I guess I should have heeded your advice, and started a different variety. What the heck, we learn from our mistakes ........right?.....It seems every time you pop into one of my issues I get rapped on the knuckles w/ a mater stick. But it doesn't hurt as much now because I have made so many mistakes that my knuckles have formed a callous. Thank you once again....I should have listened when you told me hearts a couple months ago.

This message was edited Apr 4, 2012 3:36 PM

H, All I'm trying to do is to offer my suggestions/advice, not rap on anyones knuckles, trust me on that. When you get to be as old as I am, my birthday is in June and I'll be 73 and you can send me a carrot cake, b'c Ozark promised to do that but never came through with that. LOL

Actually I don't think a homemade carrot cake would ship well anyway. ( smile)

So please, I'm not rapping on kuckles, I just feel that I've grown many more varieties at this point than many of you, have researched a lot over the eyars and I offer my opinions, just as others offer their opinions on tomato issues, whether it be varieties to consider or other tomato related issues.

Carolyn

Carolyn......I was just trying to make light of the fact you told me earlier to try hearts.....I am rapping myself on the knuckles, and blaming it on you because I did not listen........but I did take your advice and only planted one brandywine sudduth..

Interesting thread on paste tomatoes. I, too have had bad luck with them in the past-BER and grainy texture among other problems. But I bought some Romas from Albertson's that were the best texture and juicy flavor I ever tasted. SoI decided what the heck- try sprouting some seeds- they are the best looking of all my seedlings!!! Of course only time will tell if I get any fruit, and what it will taste like. For sure I will take measures to prevent BER when I plant them out. I think it will be at least 2 more weeks before any tomatoes will go out- the next 2 nights here are supposed to be right at freezing-

Carolyn -

In seasons past I had more BER on Romas than Amish Paste. Last season I got less than two dozen tomatoes total with BER and they went to
the chickens.

Paste tomatoes I now grow are Purple Russian http://t.tatianastomatobase.com:88/wiki/Purple_Russian and San Marzano Gigante 3 http://www.territorialseed.com/product/11180/237 . The Purple Russian, a black tomato, tends to split when over watered or if it rains. The San Marzano Gigante 3 is not a heavy producer but the fruits are of a nice size.

It is not uncommon for paste tomatoes to be mealy but that can be a good thing for canning and making sauces.

I recently saw in a seed catalog an F1 Roma that might be interesting to try.

This message was edited Apr 5, 2012 9:28 AM

Jo- that's interesting about your store bought tomato seeds. Please keep us updated. It's a useful and interesting experiment.

Hornstrider, I just read your post asking about drying tomatoes. I have only dried tomatoes once and I didn't use wine. I do work with a Respiratory Therapist/Terrorist who got on DG when I had to go take care of a patient and he asked if anyone had a recipe for tomato wine. Maybe you're referring to that comment. You have to be careful of the goofy people you work with.

LooneyLinda........it was on another web site. I think she is sort of an expert at drying tomato's. She is from Montana also. Probably the reason I got you mixed up with her. Sorry about that.

It sounded like the situation I had with my "friend" at work. If he couldn't tease he couldn't breathe! Like when I was taking a test in Advanced Cardiac Life Support and I looked away for a minute. He answered the last three questions and pushed Enter. It's a good thing he got those questions right. What do you do with a guy like that?

He might just need life support. Lol

LooneyLinda...it was on another web site. I think she is sort of an expert at drying tomato's. She is from Montana also. Probably the reason I got you mixed up with her. Sorry about that.

******

You may be thinking of Brokenbar, Mary, who used to live in Montana but she and her DH relocated to Mexico a couple of years ago for several reasons.

And she still made a huge SASE offer at Tville this year for ones for sauce and drying.

If someone HAS to have paste tomatoes I still think that the following ones are good to select from:

Heidi, a fave of many, from Cameroon
Mama Leon, ditto, originally from Italy
Opalka, lets forget the dittos since I'd be doing the same for almost ALL of them. LOL From Poland
Sarnowski Polish Plum, from Poland
Martino's Roma, originally from Italy
Tony's Italian
Wuhib, from Ethiopia

..... and the exciting thing to me is that at Tville there's a thread about Tadesse. THE varieties Tadesse and Wuhib were brought back from Ethiopia by a former student of mine, Tadesse Wuhib, and so I named the two oh so cleverly. LOL

There is NO place on the internet that there are correct seeds for Tadesse. So I found my vials of both T and W from 1994, and sent seeds to four folks and ALL of them got up seedlings of both, and so soon I hope that Tadesse will be back in business again. Both of those are excellent pastes as well.

The original thread at Tville was started by some folks from TX and nearby, and they all liked Wuhib and wanted to find Tadesse. The main interests were heat tolerance and good taste.

The real Tadesse got his MD at Johns' Hopkins, served as head of pediatric medicine in Armenia for a year, spent a year in Africa learning local folks medicine, then got his advanced degree in Epidemiology, then served on the CDC special rare disease team, and is now back at CDC.

Ok, I wrote too much but I'm very proud of what Tadesse has accomplished. OK, he's a concert pianist and when I knew him his Uncle was the Bishop of Ethiopia and I met him at graduation.

Tadesse and several of his relatives had moved to the US at the time when the Communists ruled the country.

Carolyn

Carolyn, Would you know if the Wuhib seed that Sustainable Seed Co is offering is the same as the Wuhib you reference in the above thread? http://sustainableseedco.com/Wuhib-Tomato-Seeds.html

No, what you show is not Wuhib and actually that same kind of small globe red picture is bing used to also describe Tadesse, which is also wrong.

http://t.tatianastomatobase.com:88/wiki/Wuhib

The fruits are plums, not round, and while Tania calls it an indet,, I think it might be better to call it a semi-det.

Here's what I wrote when I first listed it in 1994:

80 days, small, det, 18 inches high bush spreads to 3 ft in diameter, regular foliage, prolific set of plum ( 4 oz) tomatoes, very good taste from Farmer's Market Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, via my student Tadesse Wuhib.

At Tania's site you'll see that she hasn't updated many pages for seed sources for 2012, so I'll have to take a look and see, well, I have the Sandhill catalog nearby, just checked the 2012 and Glenn has it right with semi-det, RL, huge set of red PLUMS, meaty with few seeds, great for sauce, and then the source.

There's something in the back of my tomato brain that is lurking and has to do with Sustainable Seeds, in a not positive way. When I get time I'll go to the website and see what I see and if anything clicks.

Carolyn

Carolyn.....you are correct it was Brokenbar......I saved her recipe for dried tomato's, and I just found it.

I have a question for off topic........What is the optimum PH for tomato's?. I have always heard around 6.0 or 7.0. .