Hi smithmal... good timing for a new thread.

I will come back later with my "Never ...Again " picks.

Sey

Full disclosure... I was busy erecting a duck coop with surrounding duck yard and moving my existing garden during the spring and early summer so I got my plants in late (by about 4 weeks). Because of this I'm not as sure as I've been in the past regarding the accuracy of my results. But that being said...

Cherry Tomatoes

ZAPPED: Big Sun Select

Will Grow again: Ambrosia, Sunsugar, Sun Gold, Dr. Carolyn's, Gardener's Delight

Garden Slicer Tomatoes

ZAPPED: Kumato, Arkansas Traveler, Beaver Lodge 6808, Jet Star, Japense Black Trifle, Chef's Choice Orange

Will Grow again: Earl's Faux, Celebrity

Beefsteak Tomatoes

ZAPPED: Homer Fike's Yellow Oxheart,

Will Grow again: Rose, Indian Stripe, Marianna's Peace, Cowlick's Brandywine, Shuntukski Velikan, Neves Azorean

So container growing in mostly 5 gal max the keepers are:...

Black Krim! Amazingly resilient, deals well with temp snaps, and a delicious tomato. Beat out the Sun Gold and Sun Sugar for me in taste. Loves my brooklyn weather. The mother plant is alive and thriving under a 600W LED(planted in april, indoors at end of Nov.. Probably harvested about 35 tomatoes from one plant 6-16 oz. I have cloned the sucklings and have two huge healthy plants in addition to their mother. Not as productive indoors but still getting a few nice tomatoes a week.

Next: Sun Gold and Sun Sugar. Both super resilient and productive. By far the best cherries in my opinion. Will always have a place in whatever garden I have.

German Johnson: Great tasting tomatoes, crappy producer. My GF grew this on her north facing fire escape. So the results are likely from location rather than strain. Growing a cutting right now.

Might grow again:

Hefty Cherry: Home Depot purchase. Grew ok, was great because it was small; bad because it get diseases like crazy. Spread Septoria on my fire escape, yet tasted very good. So I might try again. Does not clone easily though. I suspect it's semi-determinate.

Hahms Gelbe. The only mini tomato that did well. These guys seem to die after setting fruit which sucks. Could be my strained environment. The ripe yellow fruit were quite good in salads

Busters/throw outs/zapped

Micro tom: Plant essentially died after setting fruit. The ones that ripened weren't great.

Tiny Tim: Same deal. Slightly better tasting than Micro tom, but not worth the effort.

Indigo rose: Biggest disappointment. Beautiful plant and fruit. But they take weeks to ripen, and don't taste great once they do. Some fruits never ripened.

Rosella Purple: really wanted this to work. Didn't get taller than 6 in before it dropped leaves and died

Yellow pear: Taste was horrible. Tried at all different times was still spit out quality. Too bad because plant was a heavy producer.

Bush early girl: Not enough production, mediocre taste

Containers choice: Decent but shitty production

Trying next season:

Pineapple(farmers maker seed save)

Cassadys Folley(farmers maker seed save)

Cherokee Purple( bought seeds before realizing how finicky the strain is reported to be)

And an unidentified large green beefsteak with bold black stripes(not the typical stain like streaks, actual black stripes top to bottom). Have never seen another, nor been able to find them on the internet. (farmers maker seed save)

Black cherry to complement my Sun golds

Past season I grew about 25 varieties, new + repeat. So I had quite a few Zaps. Some were real disappointment like , KB, Rutgers, Rio Grande, Big Rainbow, Bears Claw, Arbuznyi , Bush Goliath and couple of other that I cannot remember right now. This happened despite the fact that we have a very warm tomato weather starting June til October. I had high hopes for KB, big Rainbow and Rutgers but did not happen.

So now you know which ones I won't grow again. There are so many varieties that I want to grow. Every year I discover a handful of them that do well in my garden.

Sey

I'll never plant Sun Gold again. Grew huge and covered with tiny fruit that fell all over the place and the taste was meh. To be fair, I'm not a fan of any of the small cherry toms, I find them too sweet tasting and I don't have the time to pick little tomatoes every day. Cherokee Purple/ Green Zebra are both off my list forever. I've been gardening for just a few years so I hesitate saying no to any tomato that was a past failure... I might try CP again.

Funny how some folks zap your favorites! haha. My definite zap is Black Prince. It tastes great...and is a diseased mess every year. My highly touted Lucky Cross is a question mark...after one fairly dismal year. Box Car Willie and Marianna's Peace are on shaky ground...not bad or good last year. I just don't know. My stars were: Brandy Cowlick's, Big Beef, and Black Cherry.

Yeah, Ed. We get different results with the same variety, sometimes. It can be due to climate or what we might be doing wrong or right (growing conditions).

Sey

@Malcolm Smith, I was considering adding Japanese Black Trifele this year so I would love hearing your reasons for zapping it.

Right now:

ZAPPED: Black Plum Paste, Cosmonaut Volkov Red (came up fluted… not the strain I wanted), Tiren (BER, didn't produce well), San Marzano (BER, didn't produce well).

On the bubble: Azoychka, Anna Russian, Caspian Pink

Will grow again: grandero, black krim, Jaune flamme, blue streak (aka purple perfection), cosmonaut volkov (the rounded strain), cherokee purple

I grew JBT past two seasons. I like the taste and color. But it is not a good producer. So I am trying few other blacks in 2016.

Sey

Forgot I even grew it, but here's another vote to zap San Marzano. BER here too, Pulled it mid July. I've heard this is common in paste tomatoes, so I'm hesitant to grow any. They're pretty cheap at the store, and make great sauces when combined with any heirlooms I grow.

JBT did not produce well for me at all. That being said, I got transplanted late so it was probably stressed to begin with. I've found that some tomatoes are definitely more resilient than others. I've pretty much struck out so far with midseason blacks. I was hoping to find a productive and tasty 8-10oz black, but from the ones I've grown I've not been impressed. This included:

- Black Krim/Noire de Crimee

- JBT

- Paul Robeson

- Nyagous

- Kumato

Still on my list to try are:

- Carbon

- Spudatula

- Black from Tula

Are there any others that people have found to be good midseason black producers that are not mentioned above?

Cherokee Purple or (even better for production) Indian Stripe - excellent.

Black Early - really good

Dwarf Rosella Purple - excellent

Linda

Helpful to know about Tiren & BER problems. I'm growing it this year, I'll make sure I dump extra witches brew around the plants. Should resolve it.

smithmal,

Black From Tula did pretty good in my garden last season. It was fairly productive and probably MID season.

I am going to try couple of more so-called blacks such as Indian Stripe and Black Sea Man in 2016.

I will plant Kumato F3 , just for curiosity. Last year (in a 5 gallon pot) it had about 15 tomatoes on a compact indet.

Sey

Tomatoes I will never plant again... granted I haven't grown a lot of varieties, but there are definitely a couple that just haven't worked, although, I must admit, mostly due to my poor judgement on choosing a variety to match my location.

Number one on the list would be Arkansas Traveler. A fine choice for many I'm sure, but not at all designed to be grown on the high plains, just a few miles from the Rocky Mountains. I should have been tipped off by the name right? Live and learn!

Number two would have to be Nebraska Wedding (and what a pity it is, they are fantastic eating). Once again 90 day tomatoes are designed for somewhere that 90 days isn't likely to be the end of the season. Also, they are the only in ground tomatoes I have ever grown that were plagued by BER so badly. Other tomatoes grown that same year, side by side had no issues.

Seysonn, I grew Black Sea Man this past summer, I loved it. I only had one plant, but it was surprisingly productive and the fruits were large, meaty, and tasty. It seemed to not be nearly as afflicted by flea beetles as the others, possibly because it is a PL? I dunno, regardless, it was a winner for me.

Another "winner" was Orange Blossom, a Johnny's hybrid. Not as fine tasting as the Nebraska Wedding, but not terrible, and great production. Nineveh, an OP variety I have been growing for a few years now and have come to rely on as my "workhorse" red tomato wasn't nearly as ahead of the pack as usual, but we had crummy weather this year, too. And Better Boy, the only indeterminate I grew this year, certainly came in last. It may have been a case of the gardener needing to control his expectations, and it wasn't bad enough to say I will never grow again. But since I am very limited on space for indet's, I will be trying something else next year.

Last year I planted around 20 varieties and none of them were bad, most were pretty great. The only one that didn't really impress me was Japanese Black Trifele. It isn't a bad tomato and it did produce pretty well but the taste was only okay. I tend to use more beefsteak and cherry tomatoes anyhow. I am sure there are plenty of people out there that would love it though.

Sey, Big Rainbow is one of my favorite tomatoes and it is usually a great producer for me but last year it was was slow to pump out fruit and production was way down for that particular variety in my garden. I still plan on growing it again since I am usually happy with it. Two varieties on your zap list that I am trying for the first time this year are Kellogg's Breakfast and Bear Claw, crossing my fingers they work out for me. :)

Smithmal,

Cherokee Purple is a good producer in my garden but my mom lives 10 miles away and it doesn't do well for her at all. It is really hard to know what will do well when there are so many variables to consider. I grew Black Bear last year and production was medium for me, maybe it would work out better for you though? It is a pretty decent tomato in my opinion.

Thanks Christa,

As you said there are many variables, weather, soil , fertilizers , ...

I have don a soil test recently and I am going fine tune my garden. The test indicates than there is Sulfur (S), Iron (Fe) and Sodium (Na) deficiency, to the point of not existing. Luckily pH is near perfect.

Maybe you should get a soil test done for your mom's garden. I believe every cause is in the soil. Weather mostly should not be a big factor unless it goes to extreme.

Sey

I'll start by saying I don't have definite zaps - yet - but there are a bunch on my 'watch list.' They may get a second chance either this year or next, but right now they are not my faves and if they don't shape up they will ship out!

A few important notes: 2015 was kind of a strange year of highs and lows with our tomatoes. It was my first year starting seed, which worked out really well. I had some lovely, lovely transplants. We started out with a very warm May, but June was a rainy mess - it literally rained 28 out of 30 days. And this wasn't the kind of rain where it sprinkles and then the sun comes out. We are talking constant wet weather, which brought on septoria (and I think also early blight) since I didn't know about preventative spraying (not that I really could have done it with all the constant rain). Finally, we had a new garden bed, which never is the best for production the first year.

That said, here are my comments:

The two positive standouts were Jersey Devil (indeterminate, red, paste-type) and Vorlon (indeterminate, PL, black beefsteak). These two plants were monsters. Vorlon pumped out a massive amount of massive tomatoes in July, and both - while affected by the septoria and early blight just kept going, and going and going. My biggest problems were keeping them supported (I finally gave up) and beating the birds/animals to my ripe tomatoes. The Vorlon had a few fruit with BER but not many and I think it was later in the season. These are definite keepers and are on my 2016 list.

I was also impressed with Isis Candy and Black Cherry (indeterminate cherries). They were a little rough in the beginning (rain, new bed, leaf diseases, etc) but really rallied in July and started putting out fruit. I can only imagine what they would have been without setbacks. Will definitely plant again, probably only one in 2016 but that is just a space issue.

Cherokee Purple and Persimmon (indeterminate, orange) get shout outs for really, really TRYING to produce even with the new bed and foliage issues. They both rallied once the rain stopped and I could spray with Daconil. I would regrow, and in fact Persimmon is on my list for 2016 because we really like the taste. Our first year we bought a plant and it made gorgeous big, tasty fruit even in a bad garden bed. Last year the fruit were much smaller, but still delicious and it gets points for trying.

Arbuznyi was pretty much a bust. Again, new bed + foliage issues. It tried to rally but unsuccessfully. It is close to zapping but will probably give it another chance, maybe next year.

My three worst ones were Pineapple, Sweet Adelaide, and Malachite Box. I had high hopes for Pineapple but it was SUPER SLOW to produce any flowers or fruit even when it was healthy. We literally got one fruit. Honestly, other plants worse affected by the septoria and early blight pumped out more fruit. Sad because we really liked the bi-color we grew the year before (Virginia Sweets) but I couldn't find seeds for it. I may give this one another chance this year.

I'm not bothering with the other two again - maybe in a few years when the memories fade. Sweet Adelaide is a dwarf, and it was pretty useless. I did grow in a container - but a big one. I think all the rain really killed it. Lots of trouble with BER. Both of my Malachite Box plants didn't do much, and I had to pull one because it had some crazy thing happening that I suspected was more than just septoria or early blight.

That's my list! Starting to plan for 2016 and really love reading everyone's feedback.