Have you checked out the many other tomato review and evaluation sites like tatianas tomatobase, dave garden, T-ville, and Mother Earth News to name just a few?

The problem with some of them is the heavily skewed regional results (like the MEN one) but many of them are exceptional when it comes to objectivity.

Dave

PS: there are also several regional "taste test" competitions and some of their results are discussed here.

Hi digdirt:

The sites you mentioned above provide basic descriptive data on tomato varieties (determinate/indeterminate, days to maturity, fruit size etc.) They do not provide consumer reviews on taste, appearance, yield etc. That's why I decided to create this resource. If you're amenable to it, please contribute a few ratings. I know you and others on this forum grow many, many varieties so your opinion is valuable. Thanks.

DG does have customer reviews, and I've seen a couple posters here commenting and giving info on not only tomatoes, but lots of other kinds of veggies there as well, but I like your survey idea.

Hi spaghetina. Nice speaking with you again!

The ratings at Dave's are very rudimentary - Tomatoes can only be rated as either "Positive," "Negative," or "Neutral". I don't think this is really enough information.

The rating system I put together is much more specific; I'm asking people to rate tomatoes on several key attributes including: taste, appearance, yield, tolerance to weather conditions, disease/pest resistance and then provide an overall rating. I also provide a space for additional comments.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tomato Reviews

This is a great idea. Thanks for taking the time to do this.

Hi,

Well, of course things like taste are rather subjective and vary widely amongst individuals.

Still, I think this is a great idea! A centralized repository of participants' experiences and reviews is a good idea.

If you were really ambitious, you could keep a permanent database of the details, allow users to add and/or update notes.

For example: "I grew variety X last year and it really sucked. I gave it a bad review. It was a year of bad weather conditions, so I grew it this year and really found it to be delightful. It's a weather diva but, when it gets its own way, it's a great tomato."

Yeah, stuff like that. Don't you love it when people try to make a lot more work for you? :-)

Hi Lionheart:

Thanks for your suggestion. I'll do my best. The biggest challenge is that none of the online survey tools were designed for so many potential choices (there are thousands of known tomato varieties). As a result, I can't just report the data using the survey providers online reports. I need to export it into Excel, manually adjust the data to align it into a single column, and then export it to a data base program where it can then be sorted by variety. I'll also need to make some manual adjustments as folks will rate a tomato and call it "Green Zebra" and others will rate the same tomato but call it "Zebra Green". I'll need to do this each time I update the data to include new respondents. It's going to be a pain in the neck and that's why I'm only promising periodic updates and not instantaneous reporting.

Once we get to 100 completed surveys, I'll do the first report. On day one we had 17 completed and some folks that looked but did not complete it.

Please encourage folks to take a few minutes to take the survey as I think this will really be a valuable resource.

-Mark

Mark,
Not to dismiss your site since it is for tomatoes only, and what you want to do is quite ambitious, but I wanted to point out there is a good rating site from Cornell for vegetables.
Remy

Here is a link that might be useful: Cornell Rating Vegetables Site

Mark,

I would suggest you add some regional data gathering to your survey. What does well in desert Arizona, or wet-cool Pacific NorthWest, won't necessarily like my sultry Georgia humitity.

Just a thought.

Hi Susancol:

When you enter your review, there is a space provided to enter your hometown and zip code. If folks enter this information, then I might be able to link it to zone hardiness maps or just report the data regionally. If you've heard that the variety you are growing does well in a particular area of the country, you can enter that information into the comments section.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tomato Reviews