My New Favorite Tomato

6 years ago

My new favorite tomato, which I planted for the first time this year, is Jet Star. It is an oblate (wider than tall which is good for sandwich slices) productive large tomato that is bright red from the surface to the core with no green shoulders, and delicious (definitely not a shipping tomato) with very few of the tomatoes developing blemishes. In contrast, most of the tomatoes from my other large/extra-large tomato varieties, such as Brandy Boy, Big Beef and several of the Mountain series developed multiple cracks in our hot, humid southwest Missouri climate (avg. high is 89 degrees in July and August).

I had not planted Jet Star before because it is an older hybrid and I figured the newer hybrids would be better. I decided to try it because a well known produce farm on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Lancaster County, PA, where I used to live, has grown it as their primary farm market tomato for decades.

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Comments (5)

Mokinu
6 years ago
I've heard it's a good one. On average, I have better success with OP tomatoes than commercial F1 hybrids, though. Kind of the opposite of the stereotype! But there are some really good comercial F1 hybrids I've found.
General
Original Author
6 years ago
Unfortunately, I have tried a number of open pollinated tomatoes, but have not found any that do well here. The cracking and other diseases are so bad that I lose almost all the tomatoes to rot from cracking, BER and diseases before they ripen enough to pick. .
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Mokinu
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
Don't worry. I'm not making a recommendation. I'm just sharing/musing (not trying to persuade). I realize that different things perform differently in different conditions, and I'm not anti-hybrid.

Have you tried Atkinson or Walter? I think they're probably the most disease-resistant OP varieties I know about; not sure how they perform in practice in hot, humid areas (but some people in such areas like Atkinson, at least; Walter isn't as well known).

Disease isn't the issue we have here much, though, and we probably have different strains than you anyway (I've never noticed a correlation between disease resistance and which tomato plants get diseased in our garden; it seems pretty random). The real problem here is stunting from plant stress from the growing conditions. For some unknown reason, a surprisingly high percent of the commercial F1 hybrids get stunted (same for determinate tomatoes, but I don't usually grow many determinates anyway). I'm still trying to figure out why, but it's not the mere crossing of two varieties that does it: Accidental crosses tend to do really well by comparison. The stunting could be coincidence. Such happens, but it would be a pretty big coincidence.

Hybrids that have done well here include these: Early Girl, Lemon Boy, Husky Cherry Red, Husky Red, Tidy Rose, Early Treat, Big Boy, Valley Girl (sans the early BER), and Celebrity. (So, they don't all get stunted.)
Mokinu
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
Have you tried a foliar spray of calcium nitrate? (Be sure to where goggles and a mask.) It's supposed to help against BER and be useful for other reasons.
sautesmom Sacramento
5 years ago
Jetsetter is one of my top 5, and I think it's tastier than Jet Star. The only downside to it being an "older hybrid" is they get harder and harder to find.
Carla in Sac