Better Boy has performed very well for me as well - vigorous, productive, beautiful, and very tasty. For now I am experimenting with a new set of heirlooms each year, searching for my perfect tomato varieties. When I get enough land to grow 100+ plants, Better Boys will be among my annual staples.

TomNJ

Better boy has always been one of my tomatoes i can count on.I do plant other varieties to see how they do but i always plant some better boys so i know i will have tomatoes.

Tedln, Please give us a hint as to your geographical location. Zone 7 with two growing seasons... I am envious! I haven't been able to do as well in sunny SoCal.

I grow Better Boys as a backup to my riskier heirloom crop. But last year's Better Boys in my garden were lousy... like Early Girls. I won't bother with them this year.

As Better Boy is a hybrid, with a closely guarded parentage to boot, we are dependent on the seed vendors for the trueness of the strain. Since last year's fruit was small (and tasteless) I place some blame on the quality of the seeds. I'm steering clear this year. Once burned, twice shy.

As Better Boy is a hybrid, with a closely guarded parentage to boot, we are dependent on the seed vendors for the trueness of the strain. Since last year's fruit was small (and tasteless) I place some blame on the quality of the seeds. I'm steering clear this year. Once burned, twice shy.

******

One of the parents is Teddy Jones, a large pink fruited heirloom variety from the midwest.

Big Boy F1 was bred by Dr. Oved Schifriss when he was at Burpee in the early 40's and it was he who used Teddy Jones as one parent of Big Boy.

Also at Burpee at that time was John Peto and he left and went to CA and took seeds for Teddy Jones with him and formed Petoseed, now a subsidiary of Seminis Seeds, where Better Boy was bred, and as far as I know Petoseed still produces all Big Boy ( Burpee no longer produces their own F1 tomato seed) and Better Boy hybrid seed.

Better Boy F1 also has Teddy Jones as one parent and no, seeds of Teddy Jones are not available. All rights for Teddy Jones were initially given to Burpee for $24.

I'm more inclined to think that it may well have been environmental conditions that resulted in the small fruits you got last year Johnpeter, rather than any problem with the F1 Better Boy seed.

Carolyn

I grew some last year. The notes that I have are:

1. Round
2. Very good taste
3. Extremely prolific
4. Disease tolerant (kept going after some others had disease problems)
5. Produced until frost
6. Grow again

I am growing a couple again this year. The only better producers for me were Jet Star and Brandy Boy. I'm also trying Big Beef this year to compare to Better Boy.

Hope this helps.
Rick

I agree with macheske's points above. I grow a mix of heirlooms and hybrids with a few Better Boy every year as a back up and it has been very reliable/good tasting for me in Northern VA.
This year I'm doing my own Red productivity/taste-off experiment with hybrids Better Boy, Big Beef, and Crimson Carmello compared to Abe Lincoln (from TGS), Mule Team, and Ramapo F6. There are many more hybrids and heirlooms I've read about in this forum I'd like to try but that will have to be future years.

Johnpeter,

We currently live about 60 miles north of Dallas, Texas and I am able to get a spring crop and a fall crop of tomatoes from the Better Boy plants which I plant in March. I think I am in Zone 7. At least I am in one of the zone maps I looked at. I originally planted Better Boy when we lived in Amarillo, Texas. I think that was zone 5. In Amarillo, you couldn't plant until late April due to late frosts. The Better Boy plants would live and produce all summer. They would usually die before the first frost in the fall. We then spent fifteen years in Louisiana right on the gulf coast. I would normally plant Better Boy in February and we would have ripe tomatoes in April. By the middle of June to late June, the plants would be totally dead from the heat. We would typically plant a fall crop after the heat let up a little and we would have our second crop of tomatoes.

Ted

I'm planting Better Boy F1 and F2 this year. This year most of my tomatoes are F3. I think they are doing better than the F1 tomatoes.

I think Better Boy is better than Delicious tomatoes. This year I am planting mostly Better Boy. Also Roma, and Burpee Super Beefsteak, says bigger yields. Not a hybrid.

See my Flicker F2 tomato.

Karyl

Here is a link that might be useful: Better Boy F2 Tomato

Better boy is always the only tomato plant I plant every year. The flesh is very nice, the skin is perfect. Amzing juicy tomato. My grandmom cans them and gets ton of juice for canned juice, and tons of meat for her stewed tomatoes. They are great full vines and the fruit just keeps coming. It is a great red too, I love that plant!!!

I know this is a dead discussion, but I feel a comment is needed for people reading it in the future. For those who rely on Better Boy as their standard cultivar, I have tested it intersperced with Big Boy in both Kentucky and Ohio. Here, Better Boy is never as large, neveor quite as prolific, and most important to me, not a fraction as good tasting. Better Boy is fine alone: big plant, lots of tomatoes, better than supermarket taste. But it pales next to Big Boy in my gardens. If you like Better Boy, try Big Boy, especially if you are in this part of the country.

Thanks taroll2011

From all the side by side reviews of the two BOYs , I have gathered that "Better Boy" is superior to "Big Boy" . Or at least they are toss up or 40/60.

In the process, I became familiar and interested in "Big Beef". I have just one plant this year but probably I will plant several of it. It is early and good producer.

I would like also to grow just one Better Boy to compare to Big Beef. . Maybe I will grow one "Big Boy " as well to see which one does better for me.

Sey

Petoseed still produces all Big Boy ( Burpee no longer produces their own F1 tomato seed) and Better Boy hybrid seed.

Well then, does Peto also do the seed provision for Burpee for Brandy Boy, if you happen to know ? Brandy Boy is the only hybrid tom that I routinely include in me Tiny Townie Tom Patch. Simply a matter of curiosity (aka, nosiness) on my part.

I had 2 Better Boy plants this year and they are still producing 3-4 12-16 oz ripes every day, unlike most of my other varieties, which have about stopped producing by now because of the cool nights. They have been a staple in my garden for many years. Love the taste, never any BER except for 1 year when I planted in containers. The groundhogs love em too, I always throw them a couple so they stay the hell out of the garden. Seems to work.

Thumbs Up.

I think - by now - most of you know that I like to speak with photos. I can't think of a better way - on a forum - to bring credibility to what one says - than photo documentation. Gardeners talk a lot - but until one sees what they say in a photo - I am skeptical. I agree with PC's comments:

"If that person means to speak authoritatively, then I would require a bio on their growing experience (not the typical 'been growing for 30 years), the protocol, conditions and photo-documentation of individual plants of the tests especially when they make a statement that is potentially at odds with the experience of thousands of home gardeners."

I am not at odds with "Better Boy"! Better Boy has always been a performer for us! Here's what I am talking about -

"I can't think of a better way - on a forum - to bring credibility to what one says [with photos]"

Hudson, don't forget all that eye candy makes us hungry too! Thanks for the excellent pics and taking the time to post and write about them.

Dang, those Better Boy tomatoes look so, so good, and the plants are workhorses. I'm might just get some mayo to eat straight from the bottle (no tomatoes here except a couple of currant types now on their way out) and pretend I got some on the cutting board here.

Was that a leaf mold attack or your normal lower pruning?

Cheers

PC

PC - maybe there was some leaf mold there - as I harvest the lower part of the plant and fruit sets up higher - the lower leaves start changing colors and appear to burden the plant. I just cut them off because they appear to be more of a liability than an asset. The upper part of the plant does not appear to be affected by the loss of the lower leaves and appears very healthy and aggressive. I haven't read anything that I can recall about pruning the branches/leaves so high - but it seems to help.

I have grown one of them boys in the past, probably 6 years ago.

Now looking at Hudson's pictures , I think it was Better Boy. They were roundish and about 6 oz average. I have read that BIG Boy fruits are a little flat and not as round. I am sure it was not what I had.

I think that I will try a Better Boy. Bonnie sells the plant in my my area.

QUESTION: What is the plant size ? As I think back mine was not very big plant.

Sey

Hudson, my Better Boys are always very susceptible to leaf mold, but nothing abnormal. It has more to do in my estimation with the more productive plants that put it all into fruiting always suffer more from mold and the bottom leaves have trouble keeping up which seems to give mold a good home. Hey, I'm not knocking the pruning. I've got a Better Boy transplant or two right now and I might even follow your example.

Sey, Better Boy that I grow generally is not a tall indeterminate. But let me explain my take on that since it can really get tall for others. My experience is always in containers of different sorts. Better Boy is another one of those that really gets roots growing. So mine are limited and with all the yield I get vs. others, so they aren't the tallest. On the other hand, since it is an indeterminate and capable of really letting loose if you give it lots of space, you could read up on what Charles Wilber did with it (25 feet?) ... he recommended nothing less than a barrel, and that wasn't for the extra tall ones, it was just to play. Barrel's something between 30-50 gallons --far larger than I use anywhere. In that situation the roots can develop and support the vegetative and high fruit yield better so he got it to grow and grow... and grow. But in a 9 gallon container here it yields well for me but the heavy fruiting starts to hold it back and it seems to settle in at 8 feet, something like Hudson's beautiful plants, but not in a beautiful GH!

Cheers

PC

I had always grown Better Boy's, but they didn't seem to produce as well as years ago. Last year I planted Bonny Best from Rare Seeds and they produced great and tasted great (thin skin and "real" tomato taste), but got every fungus there was and died by the end of August. This year I went back to Better Boy and they are still producing, however the skin is thick and they have very hard green shoulders. They just don't seem the same as years ago. The weather here in North Alabama (7b) has been strange all year. It has been very warm for each season for several days and then very cold. Does that seem to be the problem? They certainly don't look like Hudson's beautiful tomatoes.

Sey - you probably did grow a Better Boy a few years ago but our Better Boys are more round than flat and average about 8oz with the larger Boys around 13-16oz. Jersey & Brandy Boys are more flat than round as I think can be seen in this photo. The skins on our Better Boys are thicker and I don't have to be as careful picking and carrying them into the house without punching holes in them. In our GH - the Better Boy plants are aggressive and grow as tall as I will let them up to 16' (the height of our GH). I usually top the plants at about 8' - 10' depending on where I plant them in the GH. We have not experienced a problem with BER Ted, but I would not recommend Better Boy if you are growing for large tomatoes (depending on your definition of large). They have good taste and my wife likes to use them in canning. We don't like them as well as Brandy and Jersey for a slicing tomato though.

In this photo the Better Boys are on the left, then Brandy Boy in the Center and Jersey Boys on the right. We have good outcome with the "Boys" and will continue to plant all three of them with Brandy Boy getting center stage.

Alright , decision time:

I am determined to grow Better Boy in 2016 along with Big Beef that I grew this past season and I liked it. I have read numerous positive reviews on Better Boy and now Hudson and PC's reviews has reinforced my conviction.

So actually Better Boy will be one of two varieties in 2016. The other one will be New Big Dwarf, another recommended by Hudson, proven by results.

Sey

OK. My take from this thread has gotten down to decide to grow:

BIG BEEF, BETTER BOY and NEW BIG DWARF.

Time will tell, how they will do in my garden, side by side.

Those and SILETZ are going to me my only RED beefsteak type in 2016. So i will plant 2 of each. The rest of them will be black/brown/purple, yellow , orange, and saladette.

Sey

Sey...I think you will like your Big Beef...I sure do. I tried the Brandy Boy this season, and it just did not produce well. I was very disappointed. I wanted to like it. Most of us have grown Better Boy in the past....even if we don't remember. haha. I toy with the idea of trying it again, but there are bigger fish to fry in 2016.

Ed,..I grew one Big Beef (F1 ) this past season. I liked it.Not a work horse but was fairly good producer.

Sure , there are so many choices out there. But I want to grow Better Boy, after doing so much search and reading on it. I think I grew one in 2008, back in Atlanta.

I had the same experience with Brandy Boy. Out of 3 plants I got what I had expected to get from one. The problem I had with them was that they flowered a lot but did not grow tomatoes. I got these nubs that stayed like a lentil size. Then they seemed to be doing better latter. But it was too late.

Sey

Ive now received three notices about this thread andnormally Inolongerrespond, but I thought Iwouldthis time.

My answer to someof you who have asked questions here and now were answered here in March of 2009 but I suppose I can try to go through it again, for those of you who didn't read the earlier posts in this thread and repeated questions.

Big Boy F1 was bred by OvedShirfriss when he was at Burpee, one parent was Teddy Jones, an heirloom from the midwest that Burpee scouts if you will, discovered and paid the farmer $24 for exclusive rights for it and that was sometime back in the early 40's since I think Big Boy F1 was introduced in about 1946 without checking that out. italloedthatfarmertobuild a smallgreenhousesohe washappy. And just think how much money Burpee has made on the $24,

At the timeJohn Peto was also at burpee and he left, taking seeds with him for Teddy Jones and formed PEtoseed in CA and bred Better Boy F1, a cross between TJ and I don't know the other parent although I do know both Parents of Big Boy F1 b'c Dr. Schifriss told me what they were and said he trusted me to never say what the other parent was and I never have. I knew him quite well and at one time was trying to dehybridize Big Boy to see if I could get out TJ, just to see what it was like. I didn't have to do that, I had abandoned that project b'c I then got an e-mail from someone who worked at Burpee telling me what Teddy Jones was like.

I also got to know Dr.Shifriss even better when he went to Rutgers and was breeding some excellent squash varieties and spent one summer with Glenn Drowns at Sandhill preservation in IA advising Glenn, a close friend of mine still now, Oved was lonely out there and used to call me a lot, he still spoke with a heavy German accent and at times it was hard to understand him on squash genetics.At the time Glenn was the curator for Cucurbits for SSE, but he left SSE as I did last year as a listed member.

I don't know why the interest here so much on Big Boy and Better Boy, both are still very popular varieties but I liked even better some of the same era F1's such as Ramapo F1 and the two Harris bred ones Supersonic F1 and Jet Star F1.

Yes PEtoseed bred Brandy Boy for Burpee as they did many other varieties, They were told by Burpee what Burpee wanted , bred them and then Burpee gave them names.

And that b'c Burpee went into bankrutpcy, as I'm sure some of you know, they did some wrong things, they had no breeders left so custom contracted out varieties to PEtoseed for this and that/

Yes, those of you in the South, whether Fl or AL or whatever are going to have more leaf mold and not just with the ones being discussed here and that's b'c of thehigh humidity, and yes, yields can be lower for the simple reason that Humidity can also lead to clumped pollen which is not all that effective, and if just high continued temps, denaturation of pollen even in the absence of high humidity.

I was referred here by someone who grew mainly heirloom varieties and Craig LeHoullier was not. Not true at all. For many years I worked closely with the Cornell Coop Extensionion and did did grow both hybrids and OP's b/c they wanted me to do a largeproject on foliage diseases, etc.

The operative word for foliage diseases world wide is tolerance, not resistance and the tomato industry adopted the word tolerance when several large scale growers of hybrids said that theirplants came down with diseases, both soil borne and foliage that they were not supposed to do and law suits followed.

With repect to Brandy Boy F1 it is presumed that one parent is Brandywine, no one knows which strain/Version and most have assumed the other parent was either Big Boy or Better Boy. Brandywine is pink, the other two are red, red is dominant to pink, so selections could have been made and BB is PL and the only way that could happen is if both parents were also PL since PL is recessive to RL. And both boys are RL, so another issue to think about. And twofolks havec,imed that hey have fronplants that had red fruitsfrom F2 seeds saved from BranyBoy F1

Starting maybe three years ago or so burpee now has hired some breeders and are back breeding some of their own varieties in PA. I was shocked, I tell you, when I received an invitation to the opening of their new facilities.

Personally I have never bought seeds from Burpee after I bought plants for a variety I wanted as well as seeds for the same variety for them, they changed the NAME of that variety several times, I grew theplants, the seeds and compared with my own seeds and they were no different. I just rememnered that it was the first time that a well known heirloom OP had been converted to an F1, and I found their F1 plants and seeds to be no different from my own OP seeds for the same variety.

They also named several of their varieties about the same as Brad Gates ones which ired a LOT of folks and there was a write in to Burpee complaining about that.

OK, I've typed enough and if there are questions I haven't answered and I if I get another notice perhaps I can answer those questions,maybe not, it all depends on the questions. Seysonn has suggested that if I don't want the notices I can opt out but quite frankly I'm not going to do that since if wrong stuff is posted perhaps I can help.but I am NOTgoing to go back to Houzz on a regular basis since I'm a Global Moderator at two different message sites, am still involved in seed offers , Ihave seedproducersnowsinebeinginthiswalkerI cannolongergrowmyowntomatoes asIused to formany decades and have also had several medical issues and am facing two more right now

I just remembered that I think it was Hudson who said he doesn't care how many varieties one has grown, my figure on that is 4,000 plus, and how many years one has grown tomatoes, I started helping out on our farm whenI was about 5 and I'm 76 now and said he doesn't care about any of that unless someone posts pictures. I don't for several reasons and if that makes me not to be believed, know well that I don't Tweet, no pinterest, no instagram,no facebook , none of that, and yet I exist and particpitate at 5 different message sites and all is well. <G>

All for now,

Carolyn

I have never doubted your words Carolyn - you have an impressive resume! There are not many if any that contribute to this forum that speak with your experience and knowledge!! How I wish I could see your experience in photo form though - that would be a feast !!

The point I was trying to make is that any forum contributor can say and claim anything they want but photos help bring those claims to reality. If you or anyone else doesn't agree with that - that's fine - we all have our opinions.

I have been very conscious of backing up what I say with photos. Partly because I appreciate other contributors that post photos and partly because my own experience is in real time. My only resume are my photos and the reader can decide !! I don't suppose either of us will change and how can I expect you to take photos when you are having health issues and not actively growing? I am sorry if I offended you - I didn't intend to! I love your posts and will continue to learn from what you say! Thank You and I hope you will continue to share your vast experience and knowledge for many years to come !

Hudson

btw - it takes a lot of time, effort and know-how to post photos - I am willing to bet that is the biggest reason why some folks don't post photos. And - I don't post photos for myself - I do it to help others !!!

H...nicely stated!

I love growing the better boy tomatoes also but the last couple of years they don't seem to be productive an they had in the past.So I started experimenting with other brands an I've have had great success in growing big boys can anybody give me any info I live in North Alabama really close to the Tennessee line .