So a month or two ago I acquired a few tomato varieties that I have been searching for for quite some time now. The varieties are Earlirouge, Quinte, and Moira, all open-pollinated varieties developed by Jack Metcalf in the 60's and 70's. Earlirouge and Moira are supposedly semi-determinate, producing large flushes of tomatoes as a determinate variety would. However, after producing the first flush, they will produce yet another, and yet another, etc., until the first frost. This, I will add, is absolutely ideal as to what I have been looking for in a variety, but continuing....Quinte is an exception, an indeterminate tomato producing as other indeterminate tomato varieties would. Quinte is said by the man who sent me these varieties (whose blog I will link below) to not be quite as prolific as the other two. He states that Moira is his favorite for flavor (a relative term, I know), but it has a fairly low disease resistance. Although he states that he grows it anyways just for the flavor. Now, Earlirouge is stated to taste nearly as good as Moira with a more compact growth habit with a surprisingly even higher production rate, and it is said to have a very good level of disease resistance. I personally have found that the said disease resistance of a particular variety does not seem to make much of a difference when it comes to the diseases I deal with in my garden, primarily early blight and septoria leaf spot. The only effective manner I have found in which to get a successful tomato harvest is to give the plants full morning sun to dry morning dew and a fungicide (Don't hurt me!!!) if possible. I am interested to trial more varieties with a supposed disease resistance against those without said disease resistance this summer. The Earlirouge tomato variety is said to have a 65 DTM, give or take a few days. That being said, does anybody on this forum have any experience with these varieties?

On a side note, I was also sent a bell pepper entitled "Earliest Sweet Red," supposedly developed by the same man who developed the tomatoes, also open-pollinated. This pepper has a proposed DTM of 65, give or take depending on the given conditions. Any experience with this variety?

I plan to start these (as well as a dozen or so other various varieties) sometime around mid-late March for setting out around the 10th of May, give or take a few days (or even a week) depending on the weather. Fruit set complications arising from severe heat can be a problem here at times in the summer, but it seems that we get cool spells for them to continue setting throughout the summer. I learned this last year shortly before almost ripping out 2 dozen tomato plants because they quit setting fruit. I thought they were done! They weren't, and they set on much fruit in late July for a flux of harvests August-October until our first frost. I'm interested to see how a semi-determinate as mentioned above will perform with these conditions. These are Canadian varieties, and I have been told by a few people that those bred to withstand cold often are the best at withstanding heat, being more able to cope with extreme conditions. I am not sure as to whether this is true or not.

Thanks,

Jacob