Your suggestions

[Alan]

Now, I may have done a good deal of tomato research ths year and narrowed down the field for good, marketable, alternative type tomatoes and even bred a standard or two for my market farm there is still one thing I seek......


A great tasting, 7-8 ounce, uniform, heavy producing, red, slicing type, open pollinated tomato.....

Any help would be appreciated.

A few things I can mark off the list.

Super Marmande
Rutgeurs
Mounatain series (any of them)
Marglobe
Wisconsin 55

-Alan

[bluelacedredhead]

Ball's Beefsteak is a new one for me. But it is producing good sized, uniform canning type tomatoes in what I consider the worst part of the garden. I was given the plants at the end of the garden centre's season, so I just planted them without any real expectations.
I changed my mind about them last week when I realized how well they were producing under adverse conditions. I'll be saving seed and working with them in 2008.

[Alan]

Keep me up to date on those and any other nice, productive red slicers you come accross. It seems like the real rarity in the tomato world is the one thing that people associate with tomato when they think of tomtoes....round, red, tasty, and productive.

[downinmyback]

My Mr Bruno almost fits the bill but it is to heavily ribbed to be a good market seller as most people want a round tomato. Mr Bruno taste good and is a reddish orange color and a heavy producer. Like i said it almost is what you are looking for. I forgot it shows great drought resistance and none of my plants had any disease not even early blight which is a southern nightmare.

[johno]

Tres Cantos (Three Songs) is a reliable heavy producer of smallish round, red tomatoes. I don't know if it quite makes 7 oz., but close (I didn't weigh any.) The taste isn't powerful, but it beats the heck out of any of the Mountain series - lol! Mild, but good. It got some blighted areas, but never died and always grew new vines to replace foliage lost. I grew 4 and all were the same.

I think it might make a good market tomato for you. You can plant them and walk away - there'll be decent tomatoes when you come back to harvest, guaranteed.

I think it would be perhaps better if bred with something bigger and more strongly flavored.

I have 50 seeds left if you would consider taking them in partial payment for your fall sampler packet, Alan.

[Earl]

maybe a hint of why you crossed off the list...Marmande, etc.?

I will offer Farmer Reds for SASE Alan....

[Alan]

Most of the ones I marked off of the list were marked off due to low productivity or small size/craking issues. I'd be glad to send you an SASE for Farmer Reds to give it a good trial. PM me your address and I'll get the SASE and some seed from my breeding projects out to you in the mail tomarrow.

Thanks so much,
Alan

[PapaVic]

If the sole purpose is growing uniform, productive tomatoes for market, why rule out hybrids?

[Alan]

I'm not completly ruling out hybrids, i'll still grow Celebrity, Bush Celebrity, Better Boy and Big Boy, but when your buying the amount of seed it takes to start plants for both the farms and supply our greenhouse customers as well as the local hardware store it gets expensive, so mostly it's in the name of a self-sustainable red tomato. Mozark has done well, though not nearly as productive as I had hoped, it will be grown again year after year thanks to your seed donation!

[PapaVic]

Okay, Alan ... you have several issues there. Let's sort them out.

Mozark: Did very well for me ... like 40 usable, medium sized, red canner/slicers per plant. Plant size was 4 foot maximum height and very determinate with a concentrated set. Required only one stake and would've done equally well in a short cage. If you intend to let them sprawl, I imagine Mozark would do fairly well if mulched to prevent fruit rot. However, Mozark is not going to have "name recognition" for Mozark, so it probably would only be of value to you as marketable green tomatoes or ripe tomatoes ... and then only if you're able to grow it successfully to it's full potential.

Another question that occurs to me is why your Cambell 1327 and your grandmother's Rutgers aren't fulfilling this niche for an open pollinated, medium sized, red tomato for both bedding sales and fresh tomato sales.

Now as to recognizable cultivars that will sell as bedding plants as well as producing suitable red, medium sized tomatoes for market, there should be some good hybrids available in quantity at prices reasonable enough to turn a handy profit ... that is if you can't find open pollinated varieties to fill those niches.

Beefmaster transplants sell very well over here in Evansville at farm supply and big box stores. Willhite Seeds has them at 100 seeds for 4.25, 300 seeds for 9.65, 500 seeds for 12.25 and 1000 seeds for 18.00.

Big Boy, another very popular old hybrid, are a few pennies cheaper.

Better Boy, a very popular hybrid here and apparently in New Pekin area as well, are only a few pennies higher in each count category. Same with Big Beef. Willhite Seeds has Celebrity seeds to although a bit higher than Big Boy, Better Boy, Beefmaster and Big Beef.

BTW, Big Beef does very well over here at a Jim Reimer's 25-acre truck farm and he grows about a thousand to 1200 tomato plants under black plastic mulch with drip tapes and 4 - 5 foot cages. Unbelievable yeilds even in last summer's heat and drought.

But for what you're looking for in a market tomato ... and if we have the kind of heat and drought we had last summer ... I would go determinate, short stake, and something like Amelia that does real well in Texas and California. Willhite has those seeds too, but they are higher than giraffe twat!

www.willhiteseed.com/products.php?cat=77

bill

[Alan]

Bill,
Rutgers and Campbell's do pretty decently well along with Mozark, the only real problem is in size, they just aren't quite large enough to usually compete with some of the hybrids at market. I know hybrid seeds aren't all that expensive, it's just a matter of becoming even more self sustainable and not having to buy seed every year or two, just part of my obsession I suppose and even if I find something chances are Big Boy, Better Boy, and bush Celebrity will still be grown every year, just on a smaller scale than currently.

Don't get me wrong, I can turn an easy profit on any of the hybrids mentioned above and usually do, I would just like to find the equivalent of said hybrids in an open pollinated tomato, as you said, more than likely and preferably a determinate so I can save seed.

That being said, Mozark, Campbell's, Rutgers, super Marmande and others make terrific bulk/bushel tomatoes and I'll continue to grow them for that reason.

Rutgeurs does sell respectably as a bedding plant, Campbell's not so well, mostly due to, believe it or not, a complaint that goes something like this "it tastes just like Campbell's soup and I don't like their soup."

[Jim]

admin said:

Campbell's not so well, mostly due to, believe it or not, a complaint that goes something like this "it tastes just like Campbell's soup and I don't like their soup."

That is so awesome...

[Alan]

Yeah, some people go for it just for the fact that it tastes like campbells tomato soup, but for the most part a lot of folks don't like it, that is in the summer time anyhow. If I grow it in the winter greenhouses then people buy it like crazy, but if it's summer there is a big group of folks who avoid it like the plague.

-alan

[flowerpower]

I am going to grow out the Campbells next yr. Mostly b/c I figured it would produce lots of fruit being a commercial variety. So is my Heinz1439 going to taste like ketchup? Catsup is a completely different product IMO

[bluelacedredhead]

"Campbell's not so well, mostly due to, believe it or not, a complaint that goes something like this "it tastes just like Campbell's soup and I don't like their soup."

Well I don't care for Campbell's tomato soup either, but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't use the tomato in my own soup recipe with lots of herbs and hotsauce