Earliest tomatoes

[reed]

My first ripe tomatoes are various volunteers. All small cherry types or a little larger and likely current or current crosses. Various shapes and colors mostly reds and orange and one sightly larger yellow. The first bigger ones ripe are Bush Early Girl hybrid, I like them pretty good flavor wise but skins are rather tough.

Several others look like they should be ripening this week but they are an un-tracked mix my own and of landraces from a couple people here on the forum so can't really say what they are except nice sized mostly reds and lots of Ox Heart types. Cherokee Purple and Pineapple are the only named varieties I can think of that may be included.

[swamper]

Bloody Butcher ripened first. Sweet Treats f1 is the best tasting of the first few ripe.

[RpR]

Well it is too late for early tomatoes in the U.S. and I did not have anything near early.
Mine started to ripen about two weeks ago and now they are coming in cluster with no new ones showing up.
I treated my plants with Sonata often but disease is to the point that I will just let the sick ones go as they have no new tomato blooms and our weather has gone from above to below average.
Ones I have are nice, German, Black Russian and some type of Italian type that was labeled Green Zebra.
I may give the some of the green ones another shot of Sonata but the days of nursing them into mid-October are in the past.

I used a lot of tomatillos to make chile yesterday along with garden tomatoes and chiles; I do not think they altered the taste from what it usually is.

[RpR]

``double post delete

[steev]

I think Green Zebra is a Dar Williams product; I could be wrong. I've always enjoyed it; both pretty and tasty.

[RpR]

I found it pretty tasty.
I have found with cracks in my fingers from eczema, just how spicy various tomatoes are by the amount of burn I get when cutting them up.
Black Russian have a lot more zip than whats her face old German do.
The what ever they are Italian type that were supposed to be Green Zebra barely tickle my fingers.
I can only grimace at what Green Zebra would have done.

The zing test also worked for chiles.

[paquebot]

Sept 5, 2017 23:52:10 GMT -5 steev said:

I think Green Zebra is a Dar Williams product; I could be wrong. I've always enjoyed it; both pretty and tasty.

Green Zebra is from Tom Wagner.

Martin

[paquebot]

John Baer is early but not 30 days. Ripened the same time as everything else used to make Wisconsin 55. There have been some cherry types which ripened in June but earliest regular was Fourth of July with first ripe on 2 July. That's also about when a lot of the Siberian determinates begin ripening.

Martin

[Al]

Just thought I'd post a link to the Nicky Kyle 2017 Tomato Report. This Lady grows in Ireland so has good advice for those in cool, damp places. The report is long winded but mentions some interesting varieties including John Baer, I have not grown it myself but have grown some of her other recommended tomatoes. Rosada is lovely but no longer available in the E.U., Pantano Romanesco is an excellent beefsteak type, & Maskotka is a good early tumbling / bush with smallish almost cherry sized fruit.
www.nickykylegardening.com/index.php/blog/548-tomato-report-2017

[alongshore]

Ida Gold is always my earliest Tomato and it doesn’t disappoint in flavor.

[diane]

Mar 15, 2018 10:11:11 GMT -5 Al said:

Just thought I'd post a link to the Nicky Kyle 2017 Tomato Report. This Lady grows in Ireland so has good advice for those in cool, damp places.
www.nickykylegardening.com/index.php/blog/548-tomato-report-2017

Thanks for that link. I've just spent a couple of hours reading a bit of her blog - not just about tomatoes, but growing greens in winter, pruning grapes, planting the best primocane raspberries, vegetarian recipes ..........etc. And NO ads! A good resource, which I have bookmarked.

[prairiegardens]

Interesting that nobody mentioned Shasta's Altai, which this year was so superior to ManitobaI threw most of the Manitoba plants out...they were admittedly bought as transplants as I was extremely late getting going and wanted to be sure I got some tomatoes, so they may not have actually been Manitoba, but they were a huge disappointment. I found the Manitoba to be very thirsty plants, wilting at any excuse, lots of flowers but almost no fruit set.possibly because I had a hard time keeping them sufficiently watered. Otoh Shasta's Altai started from seed and somewhat abused...they didn't get transplanted until they started to flower...have a terrific fruit set and are showing no sign of slowing down, the first tomatoes are starting to ripen while the best of the Manitoba seedlings....bought as transplants at the same time as I planted S A seed, have barely marble sized fruit. Abe Lincoln is also ripening, bought one seedling and no idea what to expect but the abundant fruit is ripening and the plant is healthy and vigorously flowering.I don't know how early it was started. Paul Robeson is behind but it's not supposed to be early anyway...that was mostly intended to see if the seed was still viable anyway but it's as far along as the best of the Manitobas. I 'm wondering if the weather had something to do with the Manitoba's poor performance, we had some unusually hot weather and the usual strong winds and they were very unhappy plants much of the year. S A didn't seem to notice either the temps or the wind.

I am looking forward to tasting Shasta's Altai, if it's got decent flavour, which I expect, then I'm going to suggest my niece consider it for early tomatoes for her CSA, as it's been such an undemanding, productive , and speedy plant. Mine this year much less bushy than the other varieties. Just waiting on flavour, fingers crossed

[DarJones]

Sasha's Altai, not Shasta. Sasha was a man in the USSR. He was beaten nearly to death about a year after passing along seed of the tomato that carries his name.

[steev]

Somebody has an issue with seed-sharing? Kinky.

[DarJones]

He was beaten for unrelated reasons.