Only one? I can't name only one, but I'll keep the fave list as short as possible. Usually when someone asks for one favorite, I cannot list anything less than 10 favorites.

My all-time favorite for flavor is Brandywine Sudduth. No other tomato has flavor that compares and, every single person I've ever given a Brandywine tomato has declared it their all-time favorite too . However, it produces very poorly in our heat 9 years out of 10, so I don't grow it very often. I consider it a good year for Brandywine if I get 4-6 tomatoes total from 1 plant over the course of the entire season. If I lived someplace that had the milder summer climate that Brandywine needs, I could grow nothing but Brandywine and would be perfectly happy with it.

If we ignore Brandywine since it produces so poorly in our climate, Black Krim and Cherokee Purple have been my favorite go-to tomatoes the entire time we have lived in OK.....and we moved here in 1999. Indian Stripe and JD's Special C-Tex are right up there with them.

For a tomato that isn't black or purple in color, I'd probably go with a pink tomato like Mortgage Lifter, Arkansas Traveler or Dana's Dusty Rose. Greek Rose, which I've grown for the last 4 years now, now has edged those others off my grow list most years.

So far all the ones I've mentioned have been open-pollinated varieties. My favorite hybrid tomato is Big Beef. It also is one of the few non-paste red tomatoes I grow. Close behind it are Better Boy and Big Boy. Honestly, though, if I have a choice of which tomato to eat on a given day, I'll chose a black, purple, or pink one over a red one every time. Generally I only eat the red ones if there are no blacks, purples or pinks ripe that day. Mostly I just give the red ones away to friends.

I don't even have one favorite cherry type because I can't grow just one cherry tomato. I grow SunGold for its unique fruity flavor, Black Cherry for its unique and also fruity flavor and Sweet Million for its traditional red cherry tomato flavor. For a cherry type that tastes less like a typical cherry tomato and more like a red slicing type, I like Riesentraube.

I am sorry I couldn't list only one for you, but with tomatoes (and this is especially true of open-pollinated heirloom types), there are many unique flavors available---comparable to the way there are many unique vintages of wine and I never can narrow it down to only one.

Also, if you 're hoping for a consensus pick amongst the members of this forum that will influence you in selecting one tomato variety to plant, I'd be remiss if I didn't add this: tomato flavor is highly subjective and every person on earth has unique taste buds that perceive flavor differently from everyone else's taste buds. Thus, one person's favorite tomato might not even make it onto another person's list of their Top Ten favorite tomatoes.

Since moving here I have grown over 500 different varieties of tomatoes, searching for the perfect one that has the best combination of flavor and productivity. Along the way I have tasted many tomatoes that are only run-of-the-mill and are nothing special (though any home-grown tomato is better than all grocery store tomatoes), and my favorites, after all that endless searching, still are the O-P types I grew our first or second year here: Brandywine, Black Krim and Cherokee Purple. I think it is interesting to mention that. Had I known it would be so difficult to find tomato varieties that our taste buds preferred to those, I could have skipped the endless searching for something better.

Pale Perfect Purple because it is medium sized, tastes good, is fairly early and productive. I don't think Tania has a good picture of it. I have not noticed a cracking problem. I plant it every year and start it early. I like medium sized tomatoes for every day because I don't like to waste a big one when I just want a snack for me.

Wes is a good tomato, but is later and larger. http://t.tatianastomatobase.com:88/wiki/Wes

Here is a link that might be useful: Pale Perfect Purple

I can only pick one tomato? For everyday use, for every purpose? I'd go with a Roma. From soups to sauces to sandwiches and salads, it'll serve the purpose.

Thanks everyone. I've never seen a purple tomato. Only in pics!! May have to try that. Where can you get the seeds for them without going online?

I couldn't just plant one, but I find that Black Krim is a very good tomato, but I would also have to have a cherry to keep producing through those hot, hot times, so I would plant Sungold for that. Two is as low as I can go and that was hard.

If I was only going to cook or can with it then Roma MIGHT be OK, but I normally don't even plant that one because almost everything taste better to me than Roma, so I would probably choose a different paste type. But as Dawn says, taste is subjective.

Haha, what Dawn said is so true. I'm a novice at gardening still (I'm in my third year). My first year I planted Black Cherry based on rave reviews here and a random red cherry I found in a catalog (Chadwick Cherry). I honestly preferred the flavor of the Chadwick! That's not to say Chadwick is the best ever, but Black Cherry didn't do it for me. It was pretty tasty with some balsamic vinegar, though...

Sorie,

You sometimes can find the seeds for something like Black Krim or Cherokee Purple on normal seed racks. I saw Cherokee Purple seeds yesterday on a seed rack from Botanical Interests that was in a Central Market grocery store in Texas. Some years I've seen Cherokee Purple on Burpee seed racks, but not necessarily every year. I think that the first time I ever grew Brandywine, Black Krim, Cherokee Purple and a couple of other O-P heirloom types, I found the seeds on a section of the Burpee Seed Rack in a nursery...and that section said "Heirloom Seeds" and had packets that were a different color than the hybrid seed packs. That was around 1999 or 2000, but since Burpee offered those on seed racks back then, I'd think they probably still do. If you see seed racks from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds in a store, they have heirloom varieties.

Even Bonnie Plants, which supplies transplants to all kinds of stores, normally has many heirloom types, including Cherokee Purple. If you're in Tulsa during the planting season, you can find great tomato plants at The Tomatoman's Daughter or from Duck Creek Farms (Gary usually sells at the Cherry Street farmer's market and at various garden shows and festivals).

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: The Tomatoman's Daughter

Natural Grocers also carries the Botanical Interests seeds. That's where I get some of my last minute must have.

and my favorite tomato....the one in the jar!
although I must admit I actually enjoyed the flavor of the Cherokee purple over any I tried last year.
kim

Purple tomatoes are usually pink. Black tomatoes are brownish red and sometimes almost purple. It is a good idea to look up images of tomatoes. Tatiana's Tomato Base is a good place to look for pictures and information on open pollinated ones.

Do you not want to order on line because of the shipping? Sand Hill has reasonable shipping. You have to mail your order in and pay by check or money order.

http://www.sandhillpreservation.com/catalog/tomato.html

Here is a link that might be useful: Sand Hill Preservation

I dont have a favorite yet. Which ever one produces best that year i guess. I found Cherokee purple seeds on a small end rack display at Walmart. They were with other organic seeds in a green packages and $0.97. Only had about a dozen seeds in it but all I need is 4 plants. I'm excited. Its my first try of them.

Mike

We live in Grove and never go to Tulsa. Do go to Joplin once in a while. Thanks everyone. I'm more confused!!!
It's hard to choose. Do not like Roma!

Atwood's in Webb City has had a variety of open pollinated tomato plants in past years. Get one or two Cherokee Purple or a Black Krim but also get some pink or red ones like Mule Team or Mortgage Lifter. Atwood's is on North Range Line if you are familiar with Joplin. Just keep going and the road is called Madison Ave. same road though. I am sure you have feed stores in Grove that have tomato plants. Jet Star is a pretty good hybrid and is common. I would not get just one kind or expect to get the best kind of tomato. Lots of them are good. Make a list of names listed here because you may not find them all in stores. Plant a few kinds and develop your own favorites. I don't grow Roma either but I would if I made a lot of salsa. You will find you own favorites for various purposes but you will have a few that don't work out. Like Dawn said you can keep trying to get the best for years and it is fun. There is not one best tomato. If you prepare a good hole and take care of the plants you will have tomatoes out your ears in July.

Thanks helenh. We know where Atwood's is and I believe there is one in Miami I will experiment DH was wanting some a little sooner then Sept. Like we got in Colo. I'll tell him he can have them in July!! We may have to dig another garden plot!!
Thanks again to all who posted here. Lots of good info. for this newbie Ok wantabe gardener!!

Carlene, I am going to Atwoods in Vinita tomorrow. Do you want me to look for a pack of Cherokee Purple?

Carlene, I bought you a rack pack of Black Krim today and will try to get it to you soon if you want it. We went to Vinita this morning, then to Southwest City MO this afternoon. I put the pack in my purse and before we came home I drove down your street hoping I could spot your house from what I had seen on-line, but it didn't work. If your neighbors tell you that a 2014 red Ford Explorer was seen casing the neighborhood, don't be alarmed. LOL

Let me know if you want them and I will drop them by....that is, if you PM your house number to me. February 20th is the day I normally start tomatoes and peppers, so I will likely be doing that tomorrow but I will also be running some errands and can drop them by. If you have decided on something else, then it's 'no biggie' because I plant Black Krim every year and I will use them.

As Dawn mentioned, taste in tomatoes is highly subjective. If I could only grow own it would be Baker Family Heirloom, which I have offered to others over the years. It's a pretty large, red beefsteak which, in my opinion, tastes just like Rutgers. The plants are much larger and it produces very heavily. It's good for cooking too, but with more flavor than most paste tomatoes. BFH requires sturdy, tall support. Without it, it's almost not worth growing, as many of the fruit will be lost.

Sioux is my other favorite. It is generally a bit smaller. It too is red. Sioux's skin is thinner, which I like when I eat it fresh. But it is somewhat prone to cracking. It's quite heat tolerant and its vines are more multibranched and "bunchy" than BFH. It too, produces over a long period of time. I like Sioux's flavor just a bit more. I pick the fruit before it's fully red, to avoid cracking, and this works well.

Prudence Purple, the strain I've had since 1984, is very similar to Prudens Purple. Some say it's the same. I don't know. Anyway, the plants are more restrained. It sets fruit very well in our climate, for being such a large beefsteak. Its fruit can be really large. They're pink/brick red and beefsteak. Prudence has the best flavor of the three. But still, it's production is not so high and I couldn't use it as a "one and only."

I agree with Dawn about cherry tomatoes. The sky's the limit there. My wife and I REALLY like black cherry. But this year I think we're going to try Ildi.

Roma VF is a FANTASTIC producer and does exceedingly well in our climate. I don't like it as a fresh eating tomato, and if I grew it as a "one and only" I'd do a couple plantings, as it is determinate and makes most of its production in one big flush. It doesn't require support, which can be an advantage. It is just fine for anything cooked. There are a fair number of people out there, including my parents, who think it's delicious as a slicer. This baffles me. But then, as mentioned before, tastes vary!

I don't grow nearly as many varieties as many here. But I grow them over and over, over a period of years. I find I need time to get to know them. Plus, as I learn their idiosyncrasies, they do better for me. I probably won't grow Roma this year. I'm going to do Heidi (for a second year) and Rio Grande (for a third). These are on par with Roma. But I don't yet trust them as much. So, I'm taking a bit of a chance. I like the fresh eating flavor of these two more than Roma. Rio Grande has outstanding quality, with large, uniform fruit, which keep fairly well. Heidi seems quite heat resistant. I also like its flavor more than Roma.

Picture of Baker Family Heirloom

George
Tahlequah, OK

soonergrandmom you have an email.

I had planned on growing Brandywine for my first time this year. But from what okiedawn says about the production, and that I won't plant more than 15 plants total, then maybe its not a good selection for me ???

Or maybe I should only plant one or two Brandywine ?

Brandywine is so good that I think it deserves at least one spot in your garden. While tomato flavor is subjective, I've never had anyone who has eaten a Brandywine we've grown say that they didn't like it. I feel like it must appeal to a broad range of tastes.

Understand, though, that its production is iffy about 8 years out of 10 here because we get really hot about the time it starts to flower and, often, that first round of fruit is the only fruit you'll get from it until fall. If the intense heat arrives in May, like it did in 2011, it can shut down production before it ever really begins.

If you feel like your 15 plants generally give you plenty of fruit and that you'd be okay with giving one slot to a Brandywine, then I'd encourage you to try one. If, on the other hand, you feel like the 15 plants never quite give you enough tomatoes and you wish you could grow 20 plants instead of 15, then maybe you shouldn't waste one slot on a variety that might not produce well.

Here in my part of OK, Brandywine produces best when we warm up early and I can get it transplanted into the ground in March AND when we don't get too hot too early. It also thrives in very wet years, so for me, it is the perfect tomato plant for El Nino years. In the years that it produced heavily, this is the weather we had at our house: (a) early last frost so I could put the Brandywine plants in the ground no later than mid-March; (b) a mild spring without excessively hot days in May; (c) a perfect June with nice rainfall and highs only in the upper 80s and low 90s; and (d) fairly heavy rainfall. It is hard to get all 4 of those conditions. Usually if we warm up early in March, we are roasting by the end of May. That's why I don't grow it as often anymore. When I don't grow it, I really, really crave its flavor and miss it.

If pushed to pick only one, I would have to go with Rutgers. My grandfather grew them in a truck garden back during the depression and it's been kind of a family tradition to include at least a few every year.
This year I'm going to do an isolated planting and see if I can come up with a strain that does well in my area.

Great list! When I told my grandson the types of tomatoes I was planting, he asked if I would plant sun-dried, lol!

lol nowyousedum. Kids!!

A lot of good tomato growth patterns per variety in this post. Thanks!

I don't exactly plant sun-dried tomatoes, but I plant a lot of paste tomatoes both for canning and for dehydrating. There are several on my grow list that were chosen specifically for making sun-dried tomatoes. I make several gallons of sun-dried tomatoes every year. Of course, in our climate. You generally cannot actually dry them in the sun because our humidity is too high and they mold. I have dried them different ways. At first I used a dehydrator that was small enough to sit on our countertop. One year when I had a lot more tomatoes than the dehydrator could handle, I started drying them in the oven set at its lowest setting. Then we bought a new stove that has a convective oven . There is a "dehydrate" mode you can use with the convective oven feature so I started drying my tomatoes that way and sold my small dehydrator at a VFD garage sale.

So, while you can't actually grow sun-dried tomatoes, you can grow varieties that make great sun-dried tomatoes. In this country, most of the sun-dried tomatoes sold in stores are merely dehydrated tomatoes that were not actually dehydrated in the sun.

In a couple of different very hot and very dry summers when we had almost no rain and our summertime relative humidity values were very low, I did successfully pull up Principe Borghese tomato plants covered with fruit and hang the plants upside down in our garage and tornado shelter to dry the fruit. It worked fairly well but took forever. During the time they were drying they were very vulnerable to fruit-eating pests and to mold. In those two years we had total rainfall for the year of less than 19" the first year and a little over 23" the second year. I'd rather just dry them indoors because it is faster and the smell of dehydrating tomatoes makes the house smell incredible.

Several years ago I tried GW member Brokenbar's recipe for wine-marinated sun-dried tomatoes. (She made them and sold them to restaurants.) They are unbelievably good.

We don't even buy cherry tomatoes at the grocery store in winter any more. When we want tomatoes for our salads, I just rehydrate some dried tomatoes in water for a little while and toss them into salads. I have a friend who doesn't even rehydrate hers--she tosses them into their salads dried--sort of like tomato raisins.

Favorite mater, that is a toughie.

I like Black Krim very much, Cherokee purple a close 2nd to Krims.

Brandywine Sudduth's very much, and Giant Belgiums as well.

Sun Golds are awful good, and I like Black Cherry's too.

LOL thats 6, I can't possibly narrow it down to one. :)

Michael

This post was edited by HarvestTime on Wed, Apr 16, 14 at 11:03

Thanks everyone for your ideas.
I WSed several and made the mistake not to cover them in this last freeze so lost a few. But I WILL try again.
Is it to late to start more from seed??

My two favorite cherry tomatoes are Black Cherry and Sun Gold. I tried both of these based on recommendations here and was very, very impressed! They also seem to grow well in our climate. I haven't tried growing any slicing tomatoes yet, but last weekend I bought a couple of Cherokee Purple tomatoes at the farmers' market and they were a-maz-ing!!! I would love to hear more about how well they grow in our climate. Any tips??

Golden Jubilee is my favorite.

Shelley, Cherokee Purple grows just fine here. One thing to do is to be careful about harvesting them too early or too late. Because they are a non-traditional color, it can take someone a few tries before they harvest a CP at the proper time. It was my favorite for a long time. Well, it and Black Krim. Now I have a whole stable full of favorites that are similar to them. The first time I gave a CP and BK to a friend of ours, he thought I was giving him rotten tomatoes---until he tasted one.

I not only grow Cherokee Purple but the similar Indian Stripe, and some years I have grown Cherokee Green and Cherokee Chocolate. This year in addition to CP, I am growing Cherokee Purple Heart and Indian Strip Burson. I have a whole bed that is nothing but blacks, pinks and purples. Other than paste tomatoes, which mostly are red, I actually grow a pretty small number of red varieties. We like the blacks, purples and pinks a lot more in terms of flavor.

If you like Cherokee Purple, I think you also would like Black Krim or JD's Special C-Tex. I grow them all. They grow the same way all other tomatoes do. You just have to learn what shade of color indicates ripeness.

Dawn

I am going to follow suggestions of ya'lls favorites. Been just planting what they have at our garden store. Thanks for your ideas.

I just wanted to revise this thread to comment on Black Krim. This is the first year we have grown it (and only the second year of gardening in Oklahoma, although I need some gardening in New Mexico before we moved here). For our palates, the Black Krim is amazingly good. I definitely like it better than Cherokee Purple, and it's giving Brandywine a run for it's money, flavor wise. Black Krim plants were hard for us to find (and I'm really, really bad at starting seeds), but we finally found some this spring at the Norman Farmers' Market. We only planted 2 BK plants this year, and we will certainly be planting more next year! Thanks everyone for the heads up about this tomato.
Krista

Krista, I'm glad you gave Black Krim a try. I see it in the Bonnie Plants section at big box stores most years, but I grow my own from seed.

Since your brought this thread back to activity, I want to comment on this year's Brandywine plants. I planted 2 Brandywine's at the very end of March, using them to fill in the end of the bed where I already had planted all the early, purchased plants, hoping for a harvest beginning in latest April. They grew really fast under that frost blanket and bloomed very early. Each plant has set between 30-35 fruit and we've been enjoying them so much. Not only did they bloom early and set fruit early, but the fruit also matured early. It is like the Brandywine plants had read my comments on how poorly they produce in our heat most years and were determined to have a good year. The first few fruit were huge, but with little rain falling, the fruit that set later has been on the small side. Still, their flavor is delicious.

I planted DixieWine and TexWine a month later, likely around April 20th or so. Both were very slow to sprout and very slow to grow, and they had the great misfortune to be in the bed hit not once, but twice, by 2, 4-d drift. That stalled them for a while but now they are huge plants flowering and setting fruit well. I can't wait to see how they compare to the Brandywines.

Since Brandywine has done so well here this year, I'll probably grow it again next year. Maybe the key to success with it here is just to push it into the ground as soon as soil temperatures allow, protect it on cold nights, and hope it can set a lot of fruit before we get too hot. Still, the weather has to be on your side. If we'd gotten really hot in May and stayed hot, they likely wouldn't have set nearly as many fruit as they set. They even set some fruit in June during the rainy spell we had.

BW still seems to be more prone to foliar diseases than some others that I grow, but produces well despite that.

Other big faves this year (in addition to Black Krim, which can do no wrong in our garden) are Pruden's Purple, Cherokee Purple, Brad's Black Heart and Indian Stripe Burson/Indian Zebra.

See there? Not a red fruit on the list.

Dawn

Its strange how peoples taste differ. I have not like any black tomatoes I have planted. I am trying Cherokee Purple again this year, we tried them and other blacks year before last. I told Madge that we just had to try them again, we cant be the only people in the world that does not like them. I have grown Brandywine 2 times and loved them, but they seemed big, slow, and lazy.

My fruit set has been bad this year, the plants act like they have had too much nitrogen, if they have had too much nitrogen it had to have come from compost because they have had nothing else. My tomatoes don't taste as good this year, it seems to be from too much rain. I expect the taste to improve as the heat goes up.

Larry.

Larry, it is funny how different people's tastes are!

In New Mexico, I generally had good luck with Brandywine as long as I put it in early with a Wall O water (there is snow in early May every single year in Albuquerque). I did that this year and everything looked promising, but then the plant and the fruit got very disease-y looking and I pulled it. I almost never pull a plant with fruit on it, but this one just looked so bad that tomatocide seemed the best option.

I have my first Arkansas Traveler sitting on the counter now to eat for breakfast. Looking forward to seeing how that tastes.

Larry, I agree that it is amazing how different people's taste buds differ. I do think you're right that too much rain is watering down the flavor of your tomatoes. In 2004 and 2007 when we had lots and lots of spring and summer rain, the tomatoes didn't develop good flavor until late summer after we had gotten significantly drier.

Krista, Love, love, love the term "tomatocide". It is such a great tomato year here that I can't even keep up with harvesting and putting up the harvest and we are buried under tomatoes. For the last two weeks, I've started every morning with thoughts of tomatocide. I just didn't have a name for it. So far, the only plants I've yanked are the ones that didn't survive the herbicide drift, but I'll soon be committing tomatocide as I start the process of removing plants that are finishing up their highly productive period. I grow so many that I can yank out all I want once my canning is winding down, and we won't even miss them.

The weather is about to get hot and miserable and I expect the tomato plants will go downhill fast anyhow.

Dawn

Wow. I actually have a favorite tomato. It'll probably change, but.. yeah! Russian Black Mauri. :D

lol lol lol

I posted a photo for you on its own thread so I could maybe get you interested in branching out and trying another variety---not that there is anything wrong with Black Mauri, just that there's thousands more varieties out there just waiting for you.

My favorite tomato tends to be whatever one I have eaten most recently, so at the moment my favorite one is called Dolly Parton. (And, no, I am not making that up.)

This really is a favorite, now. It's definitely for cooking. And, I guess, "paste" is more appropriate in the manner I use it.

This Russian "black mauri" (also by other names) marries BEAUTIFULLY to beef. And a little goes a long way.

It is now a staple in seasoning taco meat. Yes, I mean "seasoning". I can cook 2 lbs of hamburger meat, add 2 cloves of mild garlic and add in 6-8 of these little guys without their peels and it is truly one of the best taco seasonings I've ever had without any further addition of cumin, red pepper, e.g.!!! Adding just one or two to my beef stew is now a secret. Okay, not a secret to ya'll, but WOW. Seriously, it tops my grandmother's canned tomatoes for a beef stew base and much less is needed. And it add just the right amount of acidity to the stew base for tenderizing and that old-fashioned stewy goodness.

It is not anywhere near as acidic as roma tomato making it disappear into the stew leaving behind a remarkable aroma that compliments a hearty beef flavor.

For serious tomato paste quantities, something else will need to be used. I think black mauri would be awesome when added to another type of tomato paste bringing about a distinct paste with a hint of mauri's flavor. They're small, so another tomato would be needed for bulk paste collecting.

Just thought I'd let everyone know how powerfully wonderful this little mauri is and in what ways I find it wonderful. Haven't tried it with chicken, because it's just meant to be "beef". I have eaten sauteed with garlic and salt and seasonings in a thick paste that I scoop with pita bread. The best I've ever had. For now I haven't enough supply to eat it this way on a regular basis as I need it for seasoning family meals. I've saved seed (hopefully) and will plant gobs more, if I can. Just peel and freeze in the portions needed later on.

Growth:

It survived my lack of watering. I really did not water sufficiently. Oddly, blossom end rot began to occur in later blooms, but it went away very quickly when I added epsom salt. And it's still going strong. No more BER. My garden in this area is a complete mess and it looks horrible. I absolutely must give credit to the plant. We've been cool and wetter than normal so new growth has kicked in over bug damage and flowers are blooming again. Oddly, it performed better than any other of my tomatoes in unamended (but decent) soil. It did not disease like the san marzano and cherokee purple. (I let all my tomato plants sprawl this season).

I'm no expert. For now, I'm going to assume it is drought-hearty and does not require being spoiled.

Can't beat that!

bon

PS It outlasts my neglect as it sits on the counter taking a really good long time before rotting.

I too have a long list. If I had to pick a single favorite, I couldn't. I could probably pick two though: Brandywine and Cherokee Purple. I usually won't plant the Brandywine because they just suffer and die, lol. Cherokee Purples always do well for me though, and they are amazing. For cherries my favorite is hands down the black prince, but most of my family like the Sweet 100. I think my very best producers every year are the Better Boy plants, and they are pretty tasty as well. This year I planted Marrions for the first time, and they have down really well, too.

Hippy, I love both BW and CP but seldom plant BW any more because it is so hit and miss in production. This year, though, I put two BW plants in the ground about the first week of April, and then covered them up on the late cold nights that recurred through the first week of May. (My average last frost date is March 28th, but you know how the weather is...it does as it chooses.) This year, the Brandywine plants apparently enjoyed our pathetically dry spring (6.33" of rain for the whole year through the end of May, though I tried to water enough to make up for the lack of rainfall) and each plant produced at least 30-40 fruit before the heat shut them down. The plants look pretty pathetic now, but have a couple of small fruit on them so we may even have a few more ripe Brandywines before the first freeze.

For me, Brandywines only seem to do well about every 3rd or 4th year or every 5th or 6th year, but this must have been that year. I also planted TexWine and DixieWine and they've produced really well.

Almost every variety I grew this year produced well, but Cherokee Purple and the closely related Indian Stripe, as well as Cherokee Purple Heart and Pruden's Purple produced loads of tasty fruit in the most perfect tomato color of all. I love CP and never will be without it.

Better Boy had a good year too, but Early Girl (which is never really early for me) outperforms it every year. BB seems to slow down at mid-summer and Early Girl just keeps pumping out scads of fruit. It isn't the best-tasting fruit, but when you're out there harvesting them on a 100 or 105-degree day, you've got to appreciate that this plant seems to laugh at summer weather....and the EGs taste better than all those heat-setting types like Heat Wave, Sunmaster, etc.

My Sweet Millions probably are more prolific than SunGold and Black Cherry, but I'd rather eat SunGold and Black Cherry. I often give away the Sweet Millions (which for me are much more prolific than Sweet 100s, and I guess the name is a clue, lol) but keep all the SunGold and Black Cherry for us.

A couple of surprisingly big producers in our garden this year were Brad's Black Heart (similar to CP but very meaty heart-shaped fruit) and Dolly Parton.

If Brandywine would produce consistently heavy and stay healthy, I'd grow it every year....but some years it is just a waste of space.

I found my all-time favorite tomato from a street vendor in Athens, Greece. Has anyone else been there and tried them? How can I grow a tomato that good? How can I find the variety. will post a pic

Jim, You can try posting a photo, but there's many thousands of varieties of tomatoes and a lot of them look a great deal alike, so getting an ID based solely on a photo may prove impossible.

Since you were in Greece, you might want to check out the tomato varieties Thessaloniki, Santorini and Domata to see if any description or photo of them resembles what you remember. I've grown a large pink tomato from seed from TomatoFest that was superb. It is called Greek Rose.

I've linked a thread from the Growing Tomatoes forum that lists a few other Greek varieties. You also could ask your question about Greek tomatoes at the Growing Tomatoes forum as someone there may know exactly which tomato you're talking about.

Good luck finding the tomato variety you seek.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Greek Tomatoes mention in this thread

I found my all-time favorite tomato from a street vendor in Athens, Greece. Has anyone else been there and tried them? How can I grow a tomato that good? How can I find the variety. will post a pic

I lived in Athens for 2 1/2 years but don't recall any outstanding tomato. Actually I lived in AnoGlafadia, and if you had a car you could shop in a different market everyday of the week during the growing season. I spent lots of my lunch hours roaming the street markets for food; fresh produce, bread, and almost always fresh flowers.

One of our children was born in Athens and for the few weeks I stayed at home there was a little peddler with a horse and wagon loaded with produce that rang the bell on my gate a couple of times a week and sold me his home grown produce. He always wanted me to buy dandelion greens, and couldn't understand why I wouldn't buy those when I was willing to buy everything else. I fell in love with artichokes while I lived there, french fries cooked in olive oil, and big plates of fried squid.

My favorites from last year were the Barnes Mountain Yellow from baker creek. It was beautiful, had amazing flavor, and the color was stunning, especially on the plate it brought a really nice highlight to a lot of dishes.

To go with that I also love the Paul Robeson tomato, once again an amazing color and very large in size. I sliced both of them thickly and layered with giant basil. Over the top a drizzle of really lovely olive oil and a balsamic reduction. They definitely stole the show this year.

My favorite tomato I grew last year was Green Zebra, but maybe that was the novelty. It produced better than my CP :( but not as prolific as the Yellow Pear and some other type of yellow cherry tomato. We were up to our ears in yellow tomatoes.
The Green Zebras were small, though, 1.5" and smaller, and I had to learn when to pick them since they never turn red (and then a lost bunch to blossom end rot trial and error). But they were SO delicious and attractive! The only seeds I saved were basil, marigold, and these Green Zebra tomatoes.
This year we are diversifying much more including some sauce tomatoes like Roma (ho hum) and Rio Grande. Haven't ever grown a pink tomato but I can't wait to expand into the Ukrainian black tomatoes like Black Krim and Paul Robeson... excited to hear some of you all have have good success with those varieties.

Karo, I love Green Zebra, and would suggest you give Aunt Ruby's German Green a try one of these days. It has a superb flavor. The clue that helps you figure out when to pick green-when-ripe tomatoes is that they change from the hardness of unripe tomatoes to the softness of ripe ones. It doesn't take much "squeezing" to master knowing how soft is soft enough, and after that, you could pick your tomatoes blindfolded merely by touch. Also, and this is different with each variety, but some GWR \ tomatoes turn either an amber color or a blushing pink color as they mature. On some fruit it is only on the blossom end of the fruit.

When you start growing black ones, just remember that they each have their own sort of odd purplish-maroonish-blackish look as they mature, but the squeeze test will never fail you. Some blacks have green shoulders that persist even when the fruit is ripe too. I have about a dozen black types on my list for this year, and it is more than that if I list all my purples/blacks/browns together. I'm not sorry either. Their flavor is out of the this world!

Pink, purple, black and brown tomatoes are my favorites and I grow tons of them every year. This year after I looked at all the tomatoes on my 2015 Grow List and then listed them in groups (Yellow, Orange, Black, Pink, Purple, etc.), I barely had any red ones at all so I had to force myself to go back and rework the list and add some reds. To me, each variety of a good, well-grown, tasty tomato picked at its peak ripeness is as unique as a fine vintage wine, and it is easy to forget to grow red ones because I choose based on flavor and productivity more than anything else. It isn't that there aren't some great red tomatoes, but just that I already had grown them forever before I started growing heirlooms of different colors, so with the red ones I kinda have a "been there, done that" type attitude at times.

We prefer the flavor of "Ildi" to "Yellow Pear",but I grew Yellow Pear for years and years because my husband's boss (now retired) loved them. Now I can just grow Ildi for us.

I have tried to cut back on how many different varieties I grow each year, and not very successfully. There's just so many good ones. I canned over 200 pints of Annie's Salsa last year (we give away a lot of it as Christmas gifts) and, while some of them were made purely of paste tomatoes, I also make them from all varieties of tomatoes mixed together. I have a machine that peels the tomatoes and de-seeds them, so mixing together a bunch of different shapes, sizes and colors is as easy as it can be and they give you a superb flavor. (Granted, the flavor is more obvious in pasta sauce or pizza sauce because in salsa, the over-riding flavor is from the peppers, onions, garlic, seasonings and spices.)

I never met a tomato I didn't like, except for those pathetic things the grocery stores try to pass off as tomatoes. When I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, you still could get tomatoes with great flavor and texture right there in grocery stores (though my dad generally grew ours every summer) but you cannot find good tomatoes in a grocery store any more. I preserve our tomatoes a lot of different ways so we have them to tide us over during the non-gardening season.

Dawn