Top Sirloin tomato

Anybody know about this one? Good for eating fresh or for canning?

Top Sirloin is a hybrid introduced quite a few years ago by Ferry Morse Seeds. Fruits are red, about 12 oz., plant habit is indeterminate.

It doesn't seem to be too popular based on reports back at the places where I post.

Seems to me there's lots of good red hybrids out there that quite a few folks do like and report on very often.

You'll only know if you like Top Sirloin if you grow it in your garden using your cultural methods with your weather conditions, which is the only way anyone can really tell if any variety works for them.

Carolyn

Thanks, Carolyn. The man at the local greenhouse recommended it when I asked him about a good tomato for this area. He has a few in big pots and thinks I should get one to grow in my new greenhouse. He says he sells a lot of them to the snowbirds who take them in their motorhomes to their winter homes in places like Arizona and plant them outside or raise them as patio plants, they seem a bit large for that but maybe against a fence. He gave me one ripe fruit to try, it doesn't look any bigger than the Better Boys I raised this year.

We did a taste test on the Top Sirloin against Better Boy. I gave samples of both to my husband and a friend, simply calling them type 1 and type 2, both picked the Better Boy as having the best flavor, when I tasted them I agreed. The fruit size was similiar but the Top Sirloin was greenhouse raised using liquid fertilizer similiar to Miracle Gro every week, the Better Boy was grown in my garden with organic methods, picked while underripe and ripened on a table in the basement and still tasted better!

MaryE is Better Boy pretty and prolific?

I am thinking I may start a few to try around Feb. Ernie

Mary, your comment on picking "under-ripe" intrigues me, and I was wondering if I could get comments from others on this.

I have often picked tomatoes after they start showing color in their blossom end (after they hit "breaker" stage), and then ripened them on the counter in my kitchen, or in a bowl in my office at work. In both cases, I have found that once they ripen, the tomatoes that I picked "under-ripe" are every bit as good as those that I picked ripe. There may be exceptions to this rule, but it certainly applies to my favorite varieties (the ones that I am best at evaluating for subtle changes in flavor).

Well, anyone else have a comment on the comparative taste of under-ripe vs. ripe picked tomatoes?

Phred, mine were picked underripe out of necessity, hard frost was in the forecast. Ernie, I have grown Better Boy for 2 years now and I like them well enough to say that right now they are my number one choice. The plants were healthy and vigorous, the fruit was only a week behind Early Girl in ripening, and they taste good. Since I do a lot of canning I wanted to find a tomato that is a good size so I don't have to handle so many. My plants still had blossoms on them when the frost hit. I'm planning to try some other kinds next year, Big Beef is one of them. I haven't grown many varieties so my experience is pretty limited. It seems that the greener the fruit is and the longer it takes to ripen on my basement table (at about 54 degrees) the less sweetness there is no matter what variety. A few never ripen at all but they make good compost. Maybe they were just too green.

Yep, if they are green, they will never ripen (in my experience), no matter how long you leave them.

Texture is different in a tomato that is picked early...and nothing compares with one warm from the vine in my opinion...it must be eaten standing in the row and you should be barefoot to get the full effect.

But.....if I have to choose between supermarket cardboard tomatoes and my own green ones that ripened after they were picked..there's no comparison!

Yep, Melody, a lot of my tomatoes never make it to the house, that's an unwritten gardeners privilige, we have to taste them to make sure they are ok for everyone else. Sometimes it takes a lot of tasting to make sure they are ok. Right now summer seems a distant memory, we had a downright wintery day with blowing snow and a high of 25. I'm already looking at new tomato varieties to try.