Tomatoes Recommended for Good Taste

TOMATOES RECOMMENED BY POSTERS FOR GOOD TASTE

To help select varieties to grow for next season, I paged through tomato threads on this and other garden sites and made a note of those listed as having better than average flavor. While I realize this is a very subjective rating, I thought it might provide some possibilities for me (and others) to try. I know many growers prefer varieties with high yields over flavor, but I’m happy with average yields if the fruit tastes good. To be fair, I appended a - sign to strongly recommended varieties that also had one or two negative comments. Here is the list, grouped by types and noted as being OP or HYBrid. I apologize for any spelling mistakes brought on by eyestrain after going through almost 2000 posts!

RED TOMATOES
OP: Abraham Lincoln, Big Beef, Bloody Butcher, Boxcar Willie-,
Cosmonaut Volkov, Mariana’s Peace, Moreton, Sioux-
HYB: Amelia, Beefmaster, Beefsteak/Bush Beefsteak, Bella Rosa,
Better Boy/Big Boy, Big Beef-, Big Zac, Celebrity, Country Taste, Defiant,
Early Girl-, Garden Treasure, Mountain Fresh+, Mountain Merit, Steakhouse,
Supersonic, Tasti-Lee, Whopper(Park’s)

PINK TOMATOES
OP: Amana Pink, Arkansas Traveler, Barlow Jap, Brandywine (Cowlick’s),
Caspian Pink, Italian Sweet, Kolb, La Vie en Rose, Mortgage Lifter-,
Omar’s Lebanese, Pruden’s Purple-, Purple Dog Creek, Rose
Soldacki/Polish C, Stump of the World
HYB: Momotaro

HEART TOMATOES
OP: Arad’s Pink Heart, Fish Lake Oxheart, Giant Oxheart, Hungarian Heart,
Joe’s Pink Oxheart, Kosovo, Reif Red Heart, Sheryl’s Red Portuguese Heart

YELLOW / ORANGE TOMATOES
OP: Azoychka-, Dixie Golden Giant, Djena Lee’s Golden Girl,
Golden Jubilee/Sunray, Golden Queen USDA, Harless Creek Gold,
Kellogg’s Breakfast-, Sweet Ozark Orange-
HYB: Carolina Gold, Chef’s Choice

GREEN TOMATOES
OP: Aunt Ruby’s German Green, Green Zebra

DARK (Black, Purple, Brown) TOMATOES
OP: Amazon Chocolate, Black from Tula-, Black Icicle, Black Krim-,
Black Prince, Black Seaman. Cherokee Purple-. Paul Robeson

MULTICOLOR / STRIPED
OP: Big Rainbow, Brown & Red Boar, Hillbilly/Royal Hillbilly, Indigo Apple,
Lucky Cross, Mary Robinson’s German Bicolor, Pineapple,
Pink Berkeley Tie Dye, Tigerella-. Virginia Sweets

SMALL (Cherry, Grape, Saladette) TOMATOES
OP: Black Cherry-, Black Pearl, Bloody Butcher, Chocolate Cherry-.
Cyril’s Choice-, Geranium Kiss, Honeydrop, Jaune Flamee, Juliet-.
Mexico Midget, Morovsky Div/Stupice-, Moscow. Riesentraube,
Sophie’s Choice, Tommy Toes
HYB: Chocolate Sprinkle, Coyote, Cupid, Fourth of July, Jasper, Juliet,
Orange Parauche, Orange Zinger, Sunchocola, Sungold, Sunsugar,
SuperSweet 100, Sweet 100, Sweet Baby Girl, Sweet Million

PASTE / COOKING TOMATOES
OP: Porter-, Rutgers, San Marzano Redorta, SuperSauce, Viva Italia

DWARF TOMATOES
OP: Big New Dwarf-

We sell starter plants of Big Beef, Celebrity, Early Girl & Black Cherry. Customers always come back the next year looking for them.
I use Arbason in my hoop houses. Very high demand at the market.

I like Celebrity too. It always is a good producer and does well in the south most years. Early Girl sells well in the south, but I've never liked the flavor all that much personally. YMMV. I think it's mainly popular because it ripens so much earlier than others, which makes a big difference to some, but I could be wrong about that theory.

That is why Early Girl is thought to be good taste. Because it's first garden tomato after all the store bought ones.

I've not been here for several weeks, there are reasons,came today and couldn't get in.Went thru a reregistration process and will be back,but not now,especially to comment on the post having to do with best ones for taste.

Carolyn

A proposal for a Tomato Datasheet

As an aid to choosing which tomatoes to grow this year, I mocked up an Excel datasheet containing abbreviated descriptions of the color, shape, size, season, growth type, parents, height, leaf type, yield, taste, origin and disease resistance of (so far) 500 varieties culled from reference books and web sites (including the list above). So far it seems helpful, but I need your advice as to whether an expanded version would be uof use to the gardening community.

If you have a copy of Microsoft Excel and would be willing to let me know your opinion on this beta-test version, please send me a D-message with your email address and I will send you a copy of the Excel datasheet plus a Word file suggesting how to use it.

P.S. Carolyn, be assured that this is not an effort to define a "best" tomato. It is just a way to collect information on tomatoes of all sorts, and to correlate that information to find varieties that share similar traits. I just happened to start with the above list from gardeners (not me) who said they grew good tomatoes and added information from other sources (including your excellent book!). The explanatory note makes quite clear that much of that information can be affected by local climate and soil conditions or a gardener's personal feelings, so this must be regarded as a suggestive, not definitive, resource.

I just realized I never said what my favorite large tomato is for taste. It is Cherokee Purple, hands down. Love the texture and love the flavor. Favorite small tomato (cherry type) is Sun Sugar with Sweet 100 a close 2nd, but heck I really like almost all of them.

Honestly, my favorite tomato for taste is whatever is ripening from my garden that day! That's been several different tomatoes over the past few years.

P.S. Carolyn, be assured that this is not an effort to define a "best" tomato. It is just a way to collect information on tomatoes of all sorts, and to correlate that information to find varieties that share similar traits. I just happened to start with the above list from gardeners (not me) who said they grew good tomatoes and added information from other sources (including your excellent book!). The explanatory note makes quite clear that much of that information can be affected by local climate and soil conditions or a gardener's personal feelings, so this must be regarded as a suggestive, not definitive, resource.

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OK, then no need for me to go through the different categories and indicate what I like best,or to even add many new varieties,

I'm not as clever as some others so one of my now 7 seed producers put up a spreadsheet where I listed what I had and for them to put an x next to that one under their name seen at the top and it had to be tweaked several times so that all could read it due to almost everyone having different domain e-mail addresses.

Now he has put another one up with headings that denote different traits of each variety for them to fill in since I'm still waiting to get seeds back from several of them, and that should make it easier.

I need that info to be able to set up my seed offer and also send seeds for varieties to the several commercial places for trial, and 3 of my seed producers are listed SSE members so they will be listing them there as well

If seeds for varieties are not shared and grown out then they often become obsolete,which I've seen many times in the tomato section of the SSE Yearbook.

Carolyn, who is glad to be back here since she's been offline for over a week, a Verizon problem,no,not her DSL line

I agree with David my favorite changes and is usually whatever is ripe at the time. Mortgage Lifter and Limmony come to mind ATM.

I love Big Daddy by Burpee.

I'm trying a tomato called Stupice. It's not the greatest but matures in something like 55 days. I have it under lights now. It's about 4 inches tall and very healthy looking. I am growing it because it is supposed to mature early and be relatively cold hardy then, dies due to heat as the summer continues. I just think having an early tomato from the garden would be a treat.
My favorite tomatoes are Cherokee Purple and Gold Medal.

Birder:
     If you like Stupice, you'll also like Moravsky Div, an improved strain of Stupice. Just as early and somewhat better production.

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind. I've never tried Stupice. The two plants that I have were given to me at a lecture I went to.

Stupice (stu-PEECH-ka) is one of my year-over-year varieties. It's usually the first to produce along with Early Girl and the fruit is similar in size, although more pink in color. In years when I planted them both, it beats EG hands down in taste and texture. It's also a pretty good producer in quantity and duration for an heirloom. Enjoy!

I'm counting on early tomatoes from Stupice. It's growing nicely. I just hope I can keep it going until I'm able to plant it outside.

I love sungold, supersweet 100, black cherry, cherokee purple, supersteak, super beefsteak. Still trying to decide which gold or mix large ones I like best of Persimmon, Kellog's Breakfast, Dad's Sunset (new) Aunt Gertie's Gold (new), Old Russian, Old German, Hawaiian Pineapple. I just planted out 6 cherry and 10 large plants in tubs with adjustable drip watering line and cages. I have dropped a lot of newly tried ones.