I'm guessing those are Clackamas Blueberry. How did they taste?

I've grown Jackie, Indigo Apple, Black Beauty, Red Beauty, and Blue Beauty. Of those, I like Red Beauty and Black Beauty best. Jackie can taste pretty great sometimes (sweet and fruity), though, but it hasn't been prolific for me (it would possibly produce more in a more humid area).

In my experience,

Red Beauty tastes like a good soup tomato. It grows tall (not all over the place). Black Beauty vines normally and is prolific with sizeable, firm fruit, although Red Beauty is much earlier.

We've grown some of those as well as Persuasion, Dark Galaxy, Ozark Sunset, Painted Pink and Thunder Mountain. I would recommend all of them. All are interesting, productive and taste OK but most have ended up in the sauce pot. We sell a few anthos but customers remain hesitant to buy them. Overall, I'd give the nod to Ozark Sunset. Small to medium sized globes with well above average taste and productivity in our garden.

Shell 6A

That reminds me that I grew Dark Galaxy and Amethyst Jewel, too, in 2017. ;) I forgot about those. They had a tough spot to grow in, though, and were transplanted too late; so, they didn't get a fair trial compared to the others.

I have only grown Indigo Rose and Indigo Sun. The Indigo Sun was very productive and they are a beatiful tomato, but the taste was just average..

I've grown Indigo Rose, the original P20 OSU Blue, and tried Dark Galaxy last year. Indigo Rose and P20 are not very tasty to me so i have not grown them again. Dark Galaxy grew very slow so i never got to really try it, poor growth genetics in my climate like most tomatoes. Working on finding my own.

I grew LA1996 this year though, a precursor line the the blue tomatoes containing the Aft gene. Thee fruits were not really blue, but more like blue speckled. They did fantastic in my garden though and were large and productive. A line i am keeping. Sorry for the poor photos.

Does anyone have seeds for the other blue precursor lines? LA0797 or LA3736? Do they have large tasty fruit?

keen101 You might like to try Red Beauty. It's one of the earliest and largest blue tomatoes I've tried. Black Beauty was larger and more productive per pound in my garden, with a more uniform shape, but definitely later. Red Beauty didn't have bad production, though.

Dark Galaxy didn't do well for me, either. I'm not sure that it got any ripe fruit. I think its issue is that it wasn't heat-tolerant. Amethyst Jewel didn't do much better, but it did do better. Both might have done better with an earlier transplant, and better soil, but I did quite notice the lack of fruit set in the heat for Dark Galaxy. Maybe it was the drought it didn't like, though; it didn't set much fruit after the heat, either.

Where did you get those tomatoes with those code-like names?

Dark Galaxy performed well for me in 2017. I had one plant, raised bed and got 40+ fruit. Better than average taste. Absolutely beautiful fruits. The summer of 2017 was not overly hot for us. Monthly (from June-September) daily highs averaging mid-high 80s. It was a wet summer as well. I am located on the 6A/6B border, 35 miles directly south of Kansas City. My seed source was a private individual. I have been offering my seeds for trade. Dark Galaxy will be invited back.

Shell 6A

Good to know. Our summer was mostly in the 90s and 100s (for the daily highs) with almost no rain. I think we got a very small amount of rain one to three times. Interestingly, though, most of the tomatoes I grew this year were able to set fruit in the heat and drought, whether or not they set a lot. 2015 was another story—only a few set fruit in the heat then (i.e. Black Plum, Galapagos Island, Pruden's Purple, probably Early Girl F2, and very few fruits from among a few others; I should note that my Husky Cherry Red F2s probably would have set fruit in the heat in 2015 had they not sprouted later in the season in time to bypass the heat; the F1 reseeded, and I pulled up the F2s that sprouted earlier; the F1, F3s and F4s didn't seem bothered by the heat).

I got the P20 OSU blue from a seed trade a very long time ago on another gardening forum. P20 eventually was bred into Indigo Rose at Oregon State University and was leaked seed before they were done with that project. P20 is the main source for many of the early unofficial bred blue tomatoes before Indigo Rose made it's appearance.

LA1996 i requested this last summer from the TGRC. The TGRC is not a seed company nor should it be treated as a place where everyone can just go get free tomato seeds. But it is a very useful tomato genetics resource center, hence the name, and it's sort of like an active seedbank. They maintain certain old tomato varieties that are standard in research and many other wild tomato species, and mutant tomato stock. LA1996 i am basically calling 'Aft'. It is one of the precursor lines for OSU blue / Indigo Rose and contains the Aft gene or blue fruit gene, but not the other blue genes like blue foliage.

I think i tried planting some of the others like Black Beauty but they failed to thrive in my harsh dry garden climate. Very few tomatoes do without major pampering. But it's okay, i'm making progress on my own search. Slowly but surely. I think Dark Galaxy was just too slow growing for me. I remember one fruit i was watching before the fall snow, but sadly a deer ate it.

Black Beauty doesn't produce well for me. I had better luck with Cosmic Eclipse with okay production. Also it has good crack resistant which is really important for these tomatoes that take so long to ripen properly.

keen101, Thanks for all the information! :)

What are your temperatures, humidity levels, elevation, and wind levels like? What's your soil type? Ground or containers?

I know it's not blue, but have you tried Sasha's Altai?

Black Beauty didn't come close to cracking for me, I believe. It was one of my best storage tomatoes, actually. Pink Berkeley Tie Dye (one of Black Beauty's parents), however, I wouldn't call a storage tomato. Maybe that has to do with when both varieties ripened, though.