Most Productive O/P Mater

[PapaVic]

Which open pollinated tomatoes would I grow for flavor (and production)?

Yellow - Tom's Yellow Wonder
Red - Marianna's Conflict or Chapman
Pink - Novikov's Giant
Purple - Cherokee Purple PL (Spudakee) or Cherokee Purple PL
Black - Black Krim
Green - Cherokee Green
Gold - Spudayellow Strawberry
Red Cherry - Gardener's Delight/Sugar Lump
Gold Cherry - Chello
Grape - Francis
Paste - Romeo or Polish Linguisa
Saladette - Opalka

Bill

[bluelacedredhead]

Flowerpower, look, Opalka!!! Did you remember to ask about them yet??

[flowerpower]

No I was trying to think of which others I might want. Now I know who to hit up for seeds. The Opalka was "discovered" in Amsterdam NY, less than 30 mi from me. Kinda local. This is why I also wanted to get Shaker Village (TY Ron) as that is in Albany.

The supermarket here just started getting a new brand of pre-pack maters. I want to say they they are called Campari. It was a saladette sized red. Is this size becoming more popular?

[Jim]

I think I may have some opalka seed. If I do I'll send them with the pumpkin seeds.

[PapaVic]

I'm using the term "saladette" a little loosely when attached to Opalka. They certainly aren't shaped or sized like Campari, a greenhouse specialty saladette grown in Canada especially for the clamshell packaging market. It's just that I think Opalka is too tasty to be wasted as a paste tomato, so I use it as a saladette.

Bill

[flowerpower]

Jim, thanks.

[PapaVic]

Hey ... I'll trade lots of Opalka (or any other paste or whatever) for some of those Jerry German Giants ... the yellow ones ... hopefully you saved seeds from the yellow/bicolor ones separately, because that's the ones I'd really like.

Bill

[mrtomato]

pink brandywine sudduth's strain,indian stripe,mama&rose varano,omar's lebonese.the first 3 are tied for #1 omar #2. grew a 2lb pink brandywine sudduth's strain and alot of 1 1/2 lb mama&rose varano,omar's lebonese,a lot of 1lb indian stripe.

[sandbar]

Olpaka bore heavily for me. Great tomato.

I still grow Roma (very heavy production) and use it both fresh and sauced.

[Alan]

We grow a lot of Roma's for the farmers market, they still do produce great for us and sell really well, not to mention seed is extremly cheap in bulk, however it's now free for me since I've been saving it the past few years.

-Alan

[canadamike]

Lemon boy is incredibly good for me, as is big beef. Both are available de-hybridized. Roma, but I don't like its color when canned, not red enough. Nevertheless extremely productive for a determinate. Roma is very very very responsive to alfalfa meal and tea. Principe Borghese, a small plum is too. In my garden, it is a large semi-determinate ( 6 feet high ). I have always had luck with Pruden's purple, and the taste is marvelous. I had a great '' Kellog's Breakfeast'' year in 2007, but is was a first time. I probably have grown 60-70 other tomatoes in my life, and with a large number of plants, I tend to rely on my workhorses for production and canning and simply enjoy the others without mesuring and counting that much. I am a total infidel to cherry tomatoes, I never set my mind on any of them, I change every year and so far have always been satified with the ''load''. I will try to find a couple of girl friends I am gonna stay loyal to next year, as I am growing very found to crushed cherry tomatoes for sauce.

I mix them with Principe Borghese, a miniature plum, almost a cherry in itself, and it is almost as good as a good night of loving with my angel Vivi ( mind you we are getting at that age where we will be old companions soon...)

Since I live north of most of you, I will also get into Russian tomatoes with more passion next year, that's my New Years resolution, along with resuming foliar feeding much more actively than last year. But with the size of my garden, I will buy one of these ''back pack '' style pumps.

[Alan]

Lemon Boy is a great hybrid and our farm customers love them, not to mention the plants just flat out pump them out in droves which we gladly sell to our customers. I know that there is a OP version of it out there, it's just not quite up to par for my standards as far as production or size of tomatoes, so I will be hard at work playing with varioul Filial generations that people have been kind enough to send me for next year to see what I can "get out" of this tomato for future use.

[canadamike]

Has anybody tried Pruden's Purple, which originated from a cross with Brandywine? Up here in Ontario they produce wonderfully, being second only to Lemon Boy, the flat out champion producer I have seen in my own little life. The taste is right up there with Brandywine, my palate is not refined enough to see the difference, and please let me say that I am known in the restaurant trade in my area to be quite a finnicky guy. And I cook. And I can really brag about it. But sometimes, I feel we, gardeners, are too partial to varietie. This Brandywine thing has gone too far.

In fact, tomatoes rely on the treatment we give them. I agree that some are tasteless, I personnaly will , after trying them for 22 years, stay away from all tomatoes described in catalogs as '' good taste for an early tomato''. But the bulk of them are wonderful. There is something amazing taste wise with the blacks and the purples.

But get many tomatoes that are considered in the middle of the pack, not a legendary one like Brandywine, give them compost or manure, alfalfa meal, and do some foliar feeding with seaweed every week, the plants will be loaded with so many healthy and flavorful mineral and chemical compounds that you will hardly tell the difference between varieties, even when the colour is different. You will see a difference, but they will all be delicious.

And the guy across the street will come with his Brandywine, grown on chemicals, and you will say-PFFFFFT! after tasting them.

For most gardeners, very good NATURAL care will do the job wonderfully. But I understand that for a guy like Alan (and all the small farmers), since there is no time to babysit plants, what cannot be given to a plant has to be compensated by the natural hability of the plant to get it by itself.

Any seaweed and alfalfa meal lovers in the bunch? Anyone using SPRAY N GROW?

Michelh

[Alan]

Very true Michel, often times tomatoes are only and do only as good as the care you give them. For small gardeners that's relatively do-able, but for a guy like me without hiring a number of people which would make the profit margin unreachable-reachable, it is really impossible, so often I compromise difficult but great tasting varieties for those which can fend for themselves.

The problem I really have is that I always have too many that I just want to plant and don't really need to have for market, I really need to, in time, narrow down my scope to match my needs. A good paste, a good canner, 1 color each in slicing size, 1 color each in cherry tomatoes, as well as a good early type and late type and I should do OK. I get entirely too experimental and become overwhelmed but that has led me in some good directions in plant breeding Like La Mer (noir) and Mer De Noms tomatoes and their sister lines that I am still breeding and segregating which have done really well here and sale great at market while filling a niche for a nice color range of saladette types which people really love to buy with their mesclun mix and leaf lettuce.

I've made several advancements, I wasn't happy with most of the greens and whites I grew so I crossed my favorite greens and am now working with my Absinthe tomato, crossed my favorite whites and now I am working with Jack White Tomato, I'm pretty happy with Black Krim, Cherokee Purple, Brandywine, Jubilee and even Rutgers when it is to be used as a bulk/bushel tomato. My line of work with Lemon Boy should lead to a nice yellow slicing type and I've got a line on some really great red slicing types it looks like. The goal is to have all of what I want in an open pollinated state in time, in the meantime I don't mind growing hybrids, but as always I am taking steps to complete self-sustainable farming. Last year Bill (papa vic) sent me Mozark and that was a great step forward, if I don't find what I want exactly this year in a red then I will begin looking at crosses of Mozark and whatever other tomato catches my eye to create something unique that I am happy with and the market customers love. If San Marzano does well this year and is half as good as people rave about then I will have added my final red paste tomato to the mix to match the yellow and gold types we already grow for gourmet type sauces and processing needs. So, there has been some definite learning going on here on the farm the past couple of years and I have made some major advancements in terms of both methods of farming/harvest/growing/greenhouse crops as well as in selection of self-sustainable cultivars and that is a definite plus, it's only too bad that it will take me years to widdle down the list of want and must grow crops and breeding cultivars together to find new alternatives where before they existed none or else my work would be much easier, on the up-side of that argument, I love growing things, watching them flower, tasting them, admiring them, breeding them, making natural observations, segregating them and yes often even the messy part of saving seed from them, I hope in time to make this private work that I do for the betterment of my business even more of a public domain plant breeding and seed distribution project so that I can share with the world a little bit of what I do here on the farm and in time the HIP-Gnosis seed development project will grow and offer much, much, more to other adventurous and curious home gardeners and market farmers all in the name of the betterment of our food crops and self-sustainable, healthy, life giving food and the plants that grow them.

As anyone who reads here knows, I have a somewhat hard time with picking tomatoes and breeding them for flavor and looks at times because I don't eat tomatoes, so therefore my passion lies in breeding for market tomatoes as well as breeding other crops which I have a Devinne passion for like sweet corn, winter squash, summer squash, and most recently brassica crops and other cole crop types. In time I will also work with peppers hot and sweet.

So, having said that, I always greatly appreciate information about taste, texture, productivity, and popularity from those who LOVE tomatoes, because other than growing and selling them as well as making processed items from them, I don't like them as far as taste goes.

I often times do honestly believe that people only pick up Brandywine and Cherokee Purple because of the hype and not because of an informed decision and analysis on their own behalf, but only because of what they have heard, though at the same time they do evidently produce a good tasting tomato with moderately decent crops with very little care and which sell well at market and that makes them a mainstay for me. Easy, fun to grow, fend for themselves, are open pollinated for seed saving and make a profit, those are all things that should be in every market farmers list of focus notes on each variety he grows, oh yeah, and offer unique and beautiful colors to attract the curious connoisseur.

[giardiniere]

Arkansas Traveler (aka Traveler) was really productive for me. A few others that kept pumping them out were Green Zebra, Manyel, Sioux and Eva Purple Ball.