ceresone, The green and white tomatoes are a different story. They look pretty sliced on a plate and in a salad. At least i thought so.
vickie

ceresone,

Oh my! Life is for living and being open to new experiences! You are sooooo missing out if you limit yourself. You've been trained to think that a tomatoe is supposed to be bright red, totally uniform in color, and perfectly spherical with no blemishes. Do you know what is lost in this hybridization?

FLAVOR.

The best tomatoes are not perfectly shaped or perfectly colored or even red. Have a friend blindfold you, cut up a variety of heirloom tomatoes, number them, slice them and feed you a sample. You won't be sorry and it may change your life for the better.

*wink*

LOL-- I've planted over 50 kinds of heirloom tomatoes this year, but to my taste, the stripe ones taste best. I've planted black from tula, hoping flavor is good, but I have every color I could find this year.

i ended up with only black cherry for a purple/ black because of the late freeze. taste is my number one priority. there is a great picture in the SSE catalog of black sea man. think i have seeds.

picked my first tomato yesterday. silvery fir tree.

william

cersone- do you eat orange and yellow watermelons?

william

I will-- I'd eat watermelon any color!--But-- I really like the red best--and i dont eat the green cantalopes, different kind?

The best tomato I ever tasted was an orangey/yellow one that had streaks of red running inside. It was given to me by a friend and was a very late one. I saved seeds a couple of years and then lost them. I intend to try a few new next year. There seem to be several described like it.

William and Ceresone, please let us know what is tops in your taste test this year....save the rest of us from trials!

I still don't have any ripe ones...not even my Early Girls. I am getting anxious. The Arkansas ones in the store now aren't super.

Hi Y'all!

I grow a huge variety of heirloom tomatoes every year, and grow them in every color imaginable, including black, purple, pink, orange, yellow, red, white and green when ripe. I have about 90 varieties, mostly heirlooms but about a dozen or so hybrids, in the spring garden, and will be trying a lot of different ones in the fall garden.

I have grown heirloom tomatoes for about 15 or so years, and the black ones tend to have a wonderful flavor that is addictive, although some blacks are better than others. The black tomato that consistently tastes the best when grown in my garden is Black Krim, a Russian tomato from the isle of Krim in the Black Sea. Black Cherry, now in its third year in my garden, is a close second. Whereas Black Krim is a marvelous, thick, heavy dense beefsteak type tomato, Black Cherry is more of a sweet, fruity one. Black Krim and Black Cherry are heads and shoulders above the rest, but the other black ones are still good to excellent in flavor. If I had to rank them in order of preference, for me the listing would be like this: Black Krim, Black Cherry, Black Plum, Paul Robeson, Pierce's Pride (new for me this year), Black From Tula, Carbon, Nyagous, Black Pear, Black, and Japanese Black Trifelle (also new in my garden this year and not yet impressive). I am also trying Black Pineapple and Black Zebra this year, but haven't had ripe ones yet. I tried Black Ethiopian this year but the non-stop rain wiped them out so will have to try them again next year.

I agree with Violet that you have to get past the idea that the only good tomatoes are red, round, uniform balls from which the flavor has, for the most part, been bred out. I have to BEG people to take one bite of a black tomato, but once they try it, they are the ones begging for more. It was hard for me to get enthusiastic about the GWR (green when ripe) tomatoes since we all grew up equating green tomatoes with unripened tomatoes. Once I tasted a few GWRs, esp. Aunt Ruby's German Green, though, I developed a new attitude towards green when ripe tomatoes.

I still have a hard time with the bi-colors and tri-colors. Most of the ones I have tried have not been as tasty as I had been told they were, and they take forever to get ripe in my garden.

Of course, tomato taste is subjective since everyone's taste buds 'taste' things differently. Even tomatoes that I really, really like will taste better some years (the dry years) than they do in other years (the really wet years), even when grown in the same garden spot.

Happy tomato growing and eating!

Dawn

gldno1- try cherokee purple, german red strawberry and brandywine suuduth strain. after trying this, you will look no longer!!!!!!!!!!!!

forgot aunt gertie's gold.

william