It just depends on the variety as each individual variety has different tolerances of disease, extreme heat, etc.

In my garden, Cherokee Purple has about average tolerance of diseases and heat, but Purple Russian is a disease magnet and doesn't set fruit very well once we get hot. (Although, it depends on the heat....hot temperatures plus high humidity reduce fruit set while the same high temperatures plus low humidity do not seem to affect it much).

I grow a lot of the black/purple heirloom types and they tend to perform very well here and tolerate our typical diseases and typical weather conditions very well. I have noticed that certain black and purple varieties have more trouble with gray mold than other non-black and non-purple varieties do, but that is just with a few specific varieties, not the entire group of purple and black tomatoes as a whole.

I liked Purple Russian when I first started growing it, but noticed over several years that it had a lot more issues than other purples I was growing, so I stopped growing it.

Purples and blacks (their color is very similar) that produce better for me with less trouble include Pruden's Purple, Cherokee Purple, Indian Stripe, Chocolate Stripes (not really a black as it is truly green and red stiped), True Black Brandywine, Vorlon (very early, very heavy producer and very disease tolerant), Black Cherry, Carbon, Black From Tula, Black Krim and Black Sea Man.

One variety I'm growing that is new to me this year is called Cherokee Carbon and is a commercially-produced Purple Cherokee x Carbon cross. It is doing really well and I like it so far.

One dark-colored tomato variety that is pathetic in my garden is Paul Robeson. I tried it again this year thinking, as always, that maybe this year it would perform better than in the past. Nope. It is a disease-ridden mess, as always, and I've already removed half of one plant due to ongoing wilt issues (which did not test out to be Bacterial Wilt though) and about a third of the other. They looked better for a few days but look awful today. I'm just letting them limp along until the fruit on them can ripen, unless they die before the fruit get that far. I'm not one to yank out a tomato plant unless it is hopelessly pathetic or obviously has a contagious disease, but every time I look at the two Paul Robeson plants, I have to fight the urge to jerk them out of the ground and throw them on the compost pile. Southern Night is a black tomato that is prone to Southern Blight (which seems almost pre-ordained, doesn't it, based on their names?) in my garden, so I don't grow it often either....and, when I do, it eventually gets Southern Blight even though none of the other tomato varieties I grow, of any color, ever have gotten Southern Blight.

With the herbicide carryover, with each individual plant it just depends no how much herbicide the plant has absorbed. It is rare for tomato plants to outlive/outproduce herbicide carryover in the first year, but in later years, sometimes they get such a small concentration that they can overcome it, survive and produce fairly well. By the third or fourth year after the carryover first manifested itself, the garden usually is back to normal. If the amount of herbicide carryover was small, it even can happen the second year after.

Dawn

Thanks Dawn. I wondered about Cherokee Carbon when I saw it in the seed catalogs. May have to look at that one, but there is only so much room.. especially now. I had already decided to try Black Sea Man and Heidi after reading all the comments about them. My son would never give up his Cherokee Purple and loves Sun Sugar, but I want him to try the Sun Gold that everyone is talking about. Does it crack as bad as so many of the cherry types? So far the healthiest tomatoes we have are Wyche's Yellow and Arkansas Traveler. I'm surprised that any are hanging in there based on the poor old potato plants ... not to mention the legumes. It's hard to give one a fair trial when there is only room for maybe 6 plants. We are not trying to grow more than we can use through the season... I don't have the ability to stand long enough to do more than freeze a bit of salsa or tomato juice. My part of this gardening project is the growing of plants... that I can still do and have better plants than we can buy... even IF we could fine the ones we want. Thanks again!

I will be watching for the woman who seemed to like Purple Russian and ask again. She may live with a sprayer in her hands for all I know. I believe she did say something about some "Chefs" wanting heirlooms or "exotics". LOL

Millie

Millie,

You're welcome.

Yes, Sun Gold cracks badly following rainfall or irigation. If you're growing Sun Sugar, you essentially already are growing Sun Gold because they are incredibly similar. When I grow them side by side I find it virtually impossible to tell them apart, except that if one plant has cracking fruit and the other one doesn't, then you know the one with the cracking fruit is Sun Gold.

Both Paul Robeson plants went into another quick decline this week and I decided I'd had enough of them and pulled them both. I harvested all the fruit at the breaker stage before putting the plants on the compost pile, so we'll get to see how they taste anyhow. I doubt I'll waste my time on them again.

Cherokee Purple was one of the first dark-colored tomatoes I ever grew. The other was Black Krim. Both of them still are two of my favorites. Indian Stripe is incredibly similar to Cherokee Purple and originated from the same region of the US so may be related or may be a striped variation. Tastewise I cannot tell them apart, and the Indian Stripe is less prone to cracking and produces many more fruit per plant than Cherokee Purple. JD's Special C-Tex is also very similar to Cherokee Purple and I grow it about every other year. JD's is from a cross of Early Girl x Black Krim, and it produces smaller fruit than Black Krim or Cherokee Purple, but they are early and they are tasty. I have so many favorite pinks, purples and blacks that I could grow 100 varieties a year and have nothing but pinks, purples and blacks.

Dawn

Thanks again, Dawn. The Indian Stripe sounds interesting... I'll look into that one and made a note to remind me of the other two for future reference. I don't remember running into either one in a seed catalog, but maybe I have reached the state of mind that only allows me to see certain things... kind of like taking a list to the grocery store and actually sticking to it. ;-)

You're welcome.

It does me little good to make a list. When I even both to make a list, I tend to forget to take it with me.

Speaking of lists. My husband, when he was really old, sick, and had been the one in charge of lists ever since he retired, sort of began to take short cuts. I kept noticing that we had way too much of certain things and ran out of something else. I finally ask him if he had taken the list, and if so why did we end up with too much or none. The answer was that he had been just reusing the same list. LOL After that I had to stick right with him when shopping. In the past we each had a list and would just meet up and put all in one basket. After retirement, he discovered he enjoyed doing the shopping--- go figure, I didn't think it was a guy thing. Somehow he had decided that he could do a better job.... all of this after leaving me in charge of everything every time he was deployed overseas to areas where families were not authorized to go.

That's funny, Millie! My DH LOVES to grocery shop. He must go up and down every aisle. I hate grocery stores. We solved the list issue, when the kids were young and money was tight, one made the list and the other did the shopping. When he started varying too much from the list, I would have him make it and I would shop. We now have a list we print from the computer and high light what we need. He STILL always brings home many things not on the list.

Millie, That is too funny! After my father in law retired (while my mother in law was still working) he discovered he liked rearranging and reorganizing their home, starting with the kitchen. His efforts were not appreciated. My mother in law made it clear to him that if he didn't return her kitchen to the way she had it organized to begin with, he could take over all the cooking chores. He put that kitchen back to normal immediately and thereafter confined his reorganizing to the garage and workshop.

Amy, Tim used to be like that---up and down each aisle whether we needed anything on that aisle or not. Know what broke him of that? Shopping at Sam's Club and CostCo. After going up and down each aisle in each store a few times, he was worn out and changed his ways. He is much easier to shop with now. Since it is a long drive to anywhere, he often drops me at one store to get what we need there while he goes to another nearby store. While I'm at Walmart, he can go to the feed store, the gas station and Home Depot. When he comes into Walmart and finds me, I can see his eyes scanning the basket trying to make sure I didn't forget anything that he thinks is important. I'm pretty good about remembering what we need if I know we need it. Sometimes on the way home we'll have one of those conversations where he'll ask me if I got Bush's Baked Beans (or whatever) and I'll say I didn't know we needed them. I cannot get things that weren't on the list if I don't know that we need them. Try explaining that to a man who thinks you ought to be able to read his mind.

At least in spring through fall it is fairly easy because we can pretty much skip the whole produce section. If I did a good job of preserving the excess harvest, we can skip most of it in winter as well. That is a satisfying moment. Sometimes when we are in Central Market, whose produce section is the Disney World of produce sections, I'll stop and point things out to him like "Look there, habanero peppers for only $6.98 a pound" or "heirloom tomatoes for $4.98 a pound, and they won't even taste like our heirloom tomatoes". I enjoy pointing out to him how much money we are not spending on produce (though surely we spent an equivalent amount on seeds, supplies and watering).

Dawn

Is it kosher to hijack your own post? LOL I can see this would make a whole new thread, but not exactly gardening oriented. This makes for some good memories/chuckles for me, though.

I remember a friend thinking it was "sooooo romantic" to see us holding hands as we entered a big department type store. I had to straighten out that misconception. It was his way to either get me to where he wanted to go or to keep me away from where he didn't want me going. My son's explanation of that, after he was older and wiser was, "mom only let him push her as far as she let him". It probably worked both ways since we were both very strong willed people. My son said mom would have henpecked any other man and his dad would have intimidated any other woman. Millie

Love these stories. I have gotten in the habit of stirring up my mom's stories so I don't forget them

Sorry Amy, I failed to respond to your post. I guess that issue was settled for us by Uncle Sam. We didn't have to swap shopping lists because of the life style. DH was very seldom available for that duty until after military retirement and then he went back to school. While he was in service he was always gone even if we were in the same Country... you can not believe the training exercises unless you have been there. I remember once he was off in the field when I got word that we could leave temporary quarters ( government speak for "apartment") and move into permanent quarters. Our household goods had not arrived in Germany yet, so not much to work with. You may have heard of "clearing quarters".... read inspection. Our son was about 8, so I applied paste wax to the hardwood floors and we donned heavy boot socks and ice skated on those floors for awhile and then I had him sit on a bath towel and spun him round and round and let him go to fly across the room. LOL Great fun for a kid. And so it went. Millie