I tried about a dozen different red varieties last spring in my first season of high tunnel growing. Big Beef was the winner for me. The other varieties seemed to produce nice-looking tomatoes, but they were hard as rocks; they would sit on a counter for weeks without ever becoming soft.

For an orange high tunnel tomato, I had good luck with Orange Blossom F1 from Johnny's. Taxi was my best yellow. I also liked growing Northern Delight, which is a red saladette, and Terrenzo, which is a compact red cherry tomato.

for red tunnel tomatoes i've had good success with BHN 189, 589, and 1021. for orange BHN 871. i;ve also grown ramapo, oregon spring, and a wide variety of heirlooms inside.

nineallday00 hi, i was planning to plant geronimo and rebelski in my upcoming GH as the main beefsteak varieties but just found out that these varieties have this green core problem. Did you find any solution or have you switched to some other variety? Thanks.

I've grown both of those varieties and have not noticed the problem. I believe Potassium deficiency might be a possibility but I'm not certain.

Many don't recognize these as greenhouse indeterminate varieties with yields similar to Big Beef but with a few added disease resistance benefits. Two others you might try are Caimen and Big Dena. I feel that all 5 varieties are great in many aspects including a prolonged harvest that you won't get with determinate varieties.

The core is STRUCTURAL ... it's what holds the tomato onto the stem and supports the pulp.

If you could breed a HUGE tomato with little or no core, it would probably fall off the stem before it was ripe.

Barrie, In my county only one university is growing these beefsteak and cherry tomatoes for research and commercial purposes on 5 acre hydroponic farm for 8 years, but they are not willing to help anybody except themselves personally and don't share any type of data or knowledge even with their own students. So i don't have any other option to get help except from reading books and asking questions on this forum. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer the questions on the
forum which benefits hobby growers and wannabe commercial growers like
me. Really appreciate that.

Rebelski is the most reliable tomato we grow. It is leaf mold and powdery mildew resistant and it has a vigorous and consistent growth habit that lends itself perfectly to trellising to a single leader. But it’s not the best tasting tomato out there, and it does have that annoying white core problem that a few customers have complained about.

Trial Torero as a possible replacement for Rebelski. They are very similar in growth habit, with Torero producing slightly heavier yields of slightly bigger fruit. It‘s better tasting than Rebelski as well.

Caiman is our go to tunnel tomato for taste. It produces heavy yields of large deep red tomatoes that have that classic beefsteak look inside, but doesn't have as long a shelf life as Rebelski or Torero.

Neither Caiman nor Torero have powdery mildew resistance bred into them. This was quite obvious to us last season when PM swept through our tunnel. The row of Rebelski stayed green and healthy while the Caiman and Torero on either side quickly succumbed to the disease.