Uh, you know the answer to that is the last home grown tomato I tasted, right?

Do you want hybrids or open pollinated? Big beefsteak or salad sized? Red or pink or purple or black? Indeterminate? determinate?

From my "easy to grow" list would be Arkansas Traveler (Open pollinated pink, indet). Red tomato would be Sioux (OP, indet.) or Super Sioux (OP, indet) supposed to set fruit in heat, dark tomato would be Gary 'O Sena (OP, indet.) Salad sized would be Large Red Cherry. See, I can't do just two.

Just from tasting Amy's last summer, Sungold and Cherokee Purple. But haven't tasted Big Beef or Mortgage Lifter. :)

I'm not going to be too picky about color this year. SunGold will be my little tomato and Early Girl is super productive, but the fruit is small to medium usually. Maybe a BIG tomato and something else. Maybe 2 BIG tomatoes.

Amy and Nancy, what is your favorite tomatillo?

JD's Special C-Tex and Mortgage Lifter if I was growing only 2. Please note, I have so many favorites that I could answer this question 100 different ways and never repeat varieties, but today, these are the two I'd pick. JD's is very early for such large fruit and Mortgage Lifter produces late, so these two would give a person a long season.

Oh, I forgot the tomatillo. I have no real favorite. To me, a tomatillo is a tomatillo is a tomatillo as far as taste goes, but I do like the big ones like Cisneros Grande more than the smaller fruited ones because it is easier to slice up and process a few big ones instead of a ton of little ones.

I've not grown them before, HJ--I'm planting the Cisineros Grande this year, but there are others in the group who grow them--can't remember, Jack maybe? Dawn, do you? I love tomatillos; hope they do well.

Nancy - I've only grow 2 different tomatillos. Tomayo R and Toma Verde. Like Dawn I preferred the large Tomayo R. Rio Grande is also supposed to be one of the larger varieties.

I just realized that I don't have any tomatillos in my 2018 plan. I'll have to figure out somewhere to stick a couple.

It's fixin' to get organized.

Love it. Keep me posted

I know, Kim. I love it too. I was able to easily fill out the vision area. I was sure it would be hard, but once I started writing, it just all poured out.

However, I'm not sure why I posted the pic on this thread. It was an accident. I was posting from my phone and that's often a disaster. Oh well.

And thanks everyone for the tomato suggestions. I will need to make a decision soon so the seed can be ordered. Maybe this weekend.

The Dr. Wyche's made very tasty salsa, but they were tiny. I have leftover seed, so I'll probably plant them and order a larger variety too. Everyone really enjoyed the tomatillo salsa--it went so fast.

So...how about Mortgage Lifter VFN? I'm not far enough along to know the difference between the different Mortgage Lifters. Any thoughts on it?

So, looking at the tomato grow list thread, I noticed that no one listed Eva Purple Ball. Does anyone have experience with that one?

Soon I'll post my own list on the other thread. lol. All four varieties.

The VFN stands for the 3 tomato diseases/pests that it has some resistance against .

V - Verticulum wilt

F - Fusarium

N - Nematodes

I've only tried to grow Mortgage Lifter once and that was the year that all of my plants were taken out by an unexpected late frost and I had to replace everything with store bought transplants.

So, Jack, does that make this particular Mortgage Lifter different? Because it's resistant to those things? (and are those diseases/issues common in our area?) Or are all Mortgage Lifters resistant?

Did that make sense? :D

HJ--read the description of it on SESE.

HJ - Yes, it is different than a 'regular' Mortgage Lifter. Normal Mortgage lifter is a heirloom open pollinated tomato which by definition would not have any additional disease resistance bred into it like most hybrid tomatoes do.

Regular ML has pink-red fruit and ML VFN is red. VFN is supposed to be a better producer with more uniform 10-14 oz fruits. It's not listed as an F1 hybrid so it has been stablized over several generations which means you can save seed from it and it will grow true to type.

When I grew Mortgage Lifter VFN, it just didn't seem like it was anything really special, if you know what I mean. It was a really good tomato, flavor-wise, but not any better to my taste buds than Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter or Halladay's Mortgage Lifter, etc. In my garden, I almost never have problems with V, F or N, so for me, the VFN tolerance is not important. And, for the record, I think the pink MLs are so much superior in taste to the red MLs, if flavor matters, but then flavor is subjective so your taste buds might not like the same varieties my taste buds like---that's why you have to experiment---to find the ones you like the best.

Different tomato varieties have different degrees of tolerance for different diseases and pests, and even open-pollinated/heirloom types may have some tolerances (I'd say most do, but it just isn't proven by testing) but you just don't know. Why? They are free, open-source, etc. and no one has a patent on them and no one is making a ton of money off of them, so no one is willing to spend the bucks to prove disease tolerance. Most of the diseases that tomato catalogs and garden writers talk about are not something I ever see, or I'll see one of them once in a blue moon, so disease tolerance is the last thing I worry about and has virtually nothing to do with which varieties I choose to grow. Now, if someone has a recurring issue with any of those diseases or with a pest like nematodes, I think they absolutely should choose varieties bred to resist whatever disease or pest (nematodes are a pest) they routinely encounter.

For most of us, the worst diseases we'll see in an average year here are the common bacterial and fungal diseases that most varieties have no tolerance of. Even the plants bred to have tolerance of Early Blight still seem to catch EB in my garden in the years when it is bad, and some of the O-P varieties either never get it or rarely get it or outgrow it if they do get it. So, take all the VFFFNTSA etc. designations with a grain of salt. One of the diseases that I think we Okies have to watch for is Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus, and if it appears in your garden, then for the foreseeable future you probably do need to grow varieties bred to tolerate it. TSWV will ruin a tomato crop, 100% of it, so quickly that your head will spin. I've only had it on one single plant one single time that I can remember. Maybe on two plants but, regardless, I yanked them right out and bagged them and disposed of them as soon as I realized there was a problem and never have had a problem with it since then. There's also many other more obscure tomato diseases that a lot of us will only see occasionally, if at all, and they can be hard to diagnose if you've never seen them before, and may never see them again. Another thing I've seen once, and only once, is Tomato Rust Mites, which literally turn your tomatoes into the tomato version of bronzed baby shoes. Let's hope they never become a widespread issue here.

Dawn

Eva Purple Ball? Anyone?

IDK H/J, after reading SESE's description, Eva Purple Ball sounds good.

If I had to eat a raw tomatoe it would have to be Black Krim Cherokee purple or my porter that I have grown for 4 years separately.
At market Black cherry and snow white had the best return customers raving.

Y'all! I'm craving a fresh tomato so badly right now. lol

My personal opinion is: if you're not growing that many plants, you want to avoid the large German types, like Mortgage Lifter, Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, etc. Production with these large beefsteaks is not that high in our Oklahoma extreme conditions. Sioux and its sibling (or near clone) Super Sioux, will produce more and still have a nice acid tomato flavor. I grow Baker Family Heirloom for the same reason, and it has some pretty large fruit, too.

Last summer was kind of mild. It was also the first time I grew "Black" from Sandhill Preservation Center. That was a wildly indeterminate, very prolific black beefsteak. Its flavor was more on the sweet side, which is not my preference. However, its vigor, production and beauty endeared it to me and my family. I may grow it again this year. It needs more trialing before one can dub it an Oklahoma standby.

George

Kim, Those are some of my favorites too. I don't know if I've ever had a black or purple tomato I didn't like, though there are some that are better than others. Snow White and Super Snow White, along with the smaller but similar Dr. Carolyn, are long-time favorites of ours. I simply haven't grown them lately because I cut back so much on how many small tomatoes we grow.

Jennifer, Cravings for fresh tomatoes in January are normal. We still have several gallons of whole, frozen tomatoes in the big chest freezer out in the garage. While eating a frozen and then thawed tomato is not the same as eating a fresh one, you still get a decent flavor and aroma---but, of course, not the same texture at all. I don't care---at least the flavor is more or less right.

Tomato cravings have, at times, driven me to buy a grocery store tomato in January or February, which, of course, is a horrible mistake. If I feel I must buy a tomato in January, I buy the little bite sized ones---I like the ones that come in the little round plastic containers with lids. They aren't the same as fresh, home-grown tomatoes but I can toss a handful on a salad and feel like I am eating something that is close to being a real tomato. I always, however, regret buying a large, roundish-squareish (they are bred to fit 'just so' into those big shipping boxes), reddish-orangeish tomato imposter at the store. Not only is the texture wrong but the flavor is immensely lacking, if there is any flavor at all.

Central Market always has a huge variety of 'heirloom' or open-pollinated tomatoes in all colors in stock all winter long and one year I convinced myself that they looked so much like home-grown tomatoes that they might be worth buying. That was a mistake. They looked like tomatoes. They maybe had slightly better texture than normal grocery store tomatoes. The problem? The flavor was awful. They didn't taste like tomatoes, at least not like the tomatoes we grow in our gardens. Even worse, they had a vaguely chemical flavor, which led me to believe they likely were being grown hydroponically in greenhouses.....and I don't like tomatoes with that vague chemical flavor. So, can we poor, fresh tomato-starved gardeners trust a grocery store tomato in January? Sadly, no, we cannot......and the cravings become almost unbearable.

I cook a lot with our frozen or canned tomatoes in January through March, but it certainly isn't the same as having fresh ones. I probably cook with frozen or canned tomatoes from our garden weekly in winter, and at least the cooked tomatoes make the house smell yummy, and we enjoy eating them, but it still is not at all the same thing as having fresh tomatoes from the garden.

George, I agree with everything you said, but since I grow so many, I grow some of those big large ones anyway---I just know that must years those big ones will not be producing fruit for us in July and August, even though they'll produce well until that heat sets in. I have found that with early planting of the big varieties (and by early I mean in earliest March with the protection of frost blankets as needed), we can get a huge harvest from them from late May through early July and by the time the large-fruited varieties are giving out in the heat, the smaller-fruited varieties are going strong. If I were constrained by space, I'd grow the usual heat lovers here---Sioux, Super Sioux, Porter (not a favorite, but it does produce in the heat), Fantastic, Super Fantastic, Marion and Early Girl. Oh, and any of the Heinz varieties---though I use them mostly for canning, they still are okay for fresh eating and are very prolific even in the heat.

Y'all, one way to help with the fresh tomato cravings in winter is to slice and halfway dehydrate some of them in summer. Then, stack the slices, with parchment paper between them so they do not freeze into a big lump, and put them in the freezer. When you are craving a home-grown tomato in winter, take out your frozen slices, and use them to make BLT sandwiches. Only let them thaw out a little bit more than halfway so that they are still firm and not too mushy. Is it the same as a real BLT in-season with fresh tomatoes? Nope, nope, nope, but it isn't too bad, all things considered. They key is that you've already removed a lot of the water by partially dehydrating them before freezing them, and then you're eating them while they are still partially frozen so that their texture isn't hopelessly soft and watery. Sometimes we just have to settle for less (a lot less) than tomato perfection in winter time.

Dawn

WHY do avocados go on sale when there are no tomatoes. DH bought cardboard tomatoes to go in guacamole. I wonder if dried tomatoes would work in guac. I dried some, but I ended up tossing them for some reason.

I saw your photos of Baker Family George. Gorgeous!

Nancy, I received your e-mail about BFH seeds. But I can't get a return email to go to you. Will keep trying. I think Outlook is gumming things up.

Ha. . . . thanks, George. I'll wait patiently. :) My bandwidth has been really slow the last 3 days. I've had a heck of a time.

Her email does that to me when I try to reply to a message. I have to send a new message to get through.

Wow. Apparently I have a misbehaving email address. I've had it for 15 years or longer. Maybe it's going on strike or vacation.

Amy, I think the dried tomatoes would work. Just rehydrate them well or they'll be chewy.

Dawn