I grow the Mortgage Lifter and eliminated Kellogg's Breakfast this year after many years of growing it. I've never grown or eaten Bonny Best or Hillbilly so I guess I would have to pick Mortgage lifter. Most years ML is the first to ripen of the 7 or 8 heirloom varieties that I grow. A great tasty medium sized tomato.

That’s helpful. Maybe I can eliminate Kellogg’s Breakfast. I’ll wait to hear others’ opinions.

Martha

My choice would depend on how I planned to use the tomatoes. I'm in North/West Michigan, about 120 or so miles north of you and I've grown all of those varieties successfully.

Mortage Lifter is my favorite slicing tomato, although I've regularly tried others, I always come back to Mortgage Lifter. It grows well here. Hillbilly is pretty good, also a big slicer, but was not very productive for me. The few fruit I got was good, but I only got a few before frost hit. I've never been very happy with Kellogg's Breakfast, I have begun to grow Golden Jubilee in its place.

Bonny Best is one of my "go to" canning tomatoes, along with Rutgers. I don't think it has the best flavor but it produces lots of nicely sized red tomatoes.

I can all the tomatoes I grow, of course, but if I want a canner full of red tomatoes, I go with the Bonny Best or Rutgers

Annie

Thank you, Annie. I can most of my tomatoes, as salsa, marinara, or plain. My sister dehydrates hers into leathers, which she tosses into any recipe that needs tomatoes. Her method requires much less storage space. I’m not sure how the flavors differ between the methods of preservation. It probably doesn’t make a huge difference when they are used for chile or goulash, etc.

Well, I giess I’ll have to find a way to start seedling of them all. Taste and production really os dependent on soil, weather, and each person’s individual taste. In my opinion, it it’s better to plant too many rather than not enough.

I've grown both Kellogg's Breakfast and KBX. To me, Kellogg's Breakfast is a much better tomato by far.

For your purposes, you should probably grow one of the two red tomatoes.

I've grown Hillbilly tomatoes and they were delicious - huge, bicolored and silky smooth texture.

I've grown Mortgage lifter every year for a over a decade and really don't know why. Not very productive for such a big vegetative vine but the few I do get are tasty. The flowers always have a problem setting fruit, and of the fruits which do set they take forever to ripen and seem to go from ripe to rotten very fast. I gave away my seed pack I bought last year and officially ended the cultivar.

I grew Kelloggs in the orange year. It was pretty good (Jubilee and Juane Flame won that year) I've eaten Mortgage Lifter, and it is also pretty darn good.

I'm trying something new this year, so since you only have one space, maybe experimeny with it too. Twinning. If you have a structure that can handle it, grow 2 different kinds together in one spot and treat as one large plant. What else has your sister already started? If there's already a lot of slicers, I'd do a pair of the Bonnie Best. If there is already a nice variety of what you want toms for, then go for visual impact and plant two colors together :)

I've settled into my processing tomatoes I grow- 4 plants. A pair of Italian hearts, and a pair of German meats. So two twins this year. I do some canning, but different than I used to. I can some finished tomato products like salsa, sauces, and smoked tomato juice. I tend to freeze a few bags for later. And I dehydrate a lot more than I can or freeze. Mostly fresh slices, and also the stuff left over from other processing. Like the solids from tomato juice or skinning frozen tomatoes often gets dehydrated and turned into powder. In a final trick. I will take my canned salsa or sauce and later dehydrate it to powder down to add into other. Kick up that guac with a dry spoonfull instead of a wet one, or the extra in beans or enchilada soup.

Brandy Boy!

So far, I’ve found space under the lights for Bonnie Best, Mortgage Lifter, and Kellogg Breakfast. My sore back is the current limiting factor. I think I will find a way to plant at least one cell of Hillbilly. Gardening does get to be an obsession in so many ways. Thank you all for your input. I’ll try to remember to report back.

Martha