# Favorite Tomato varieties



## Micah915 (Feb 26, 2012)

I was interested to see everyone's favorite heirloom or even hybrid tomato varieties. I like heirlooms myself. I'm going to try to graft some of my old heirloom favorites this year to get a heavier production and improved disease resistance. I like brandywine, oxeheart, Cherokee purple, German Johnson, mortgage lifter. I'm going to try a lot of new varieties this year. What is the best tasting, heaviest producer, and most disease resistant tomatoes?


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## PamsPride (Dec 21, 2010)

I like Amish paste.


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## Micah915 (Feb 26, 2012)

Yeah I have grown Amish paste, San marzano, Roma. They are great paste tomatoes!


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## AlabamaGal (Dec 27, 2011)

Amish paste doesn't do well here. The pant grows fine, but the fruit are rather bitter and unproductive. I haven't found a good paste tomato for here, but generally speaking heirloom vegetables from Germany do well. My guess is the similar soil we have to Germany trumps the extra heat.

German striped, cherokee purple and brandywine are my favorites, but none are terribly productive. They are worth the space for the taste alone, but they are hardy and disease resistant. German striped does stop setting fruit in the humidity a little faster than cherokee purple and brandywine.

Beam's yellow pear is the perfect kid's grape tomato. The fruit is adorable and massively prolific and you are heard pressed to kill the pant with a chainsaw. Unfortunately they don't taste like much, which might be why you can get kids to eat them.

Where are you, Micah? A general location might help with peoples' recommendations.


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## Micah915 (Feb 26, 2012)

I'm from Virginia. This is my first thread and just signed up today. I've gardened for 5 years now an just got into prepping the past two years due to podcasts like the survival podcast by Jack Spirko. So hello everyone. Anyone else from VA or the east coast? And what tomatoes do well in your states?


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## *Andi (Nov 8, 2009)

:welcome:

I plant two tomatoes (most years ... ) My son works for a feed store and last year he brought home "trash" tomatoes ... Plants that were heading to the trash bin and they were of any kind and many. 

I love my Amish Paste and Brandywine. The Amish paste for my canning and the bradywine for eat then any extras go to canning.


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## CulexPipiens (Nov 17, 2010)

Mortgage Lifter, any type of plum or paste style tomato (Amish usually) and the cherry and grape ones do quite well by us too. (Midwest, zone 5)


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## timmie (Jan 14, 2012)

we really like atkinson and roma .i also plant cherry tomatoes [red] and some yellow pear tomato,because they make a pretty salad. but this year along with these i am trying some yellow jubilee.


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## JustCliff (May 21, 2011)

My wife likes the Marglobefor sandwiches, cherry tomato for salads and I do Roma for canning. Tried the Polish paste last year and it didn't do well for me.


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## Emerald (Jun 14, 2010)

This is a bit of a toughy! I have so many favorites!!!

in the paste types
my absolute favorite is Opalka.. long cowhorn type paste tomato with few seeds and quite dry so that it takes less time to cook down. The flavor(at least here) is fantastic.
Second runner up for paste tomatoes is Purple Russian.. a purple/red roma shaped tomato from Russia.

an honorable mention goes out to Striped Roman.. the plant would still be growing if we had not have had snow come in! that puppy is indestructible.. didn't even get any of the late blight that comes round here. The fruit is very pretty and a somewhat okay flavor.. cooks down nicely.

In the big sandwich slicer types
Brandywine and black Brandywine are my hands down winners but they do not fruit heavy here.. sure I get quite a few for eating but not as much as we would like.

Old fashioned canners-all around tomato..
Rutgers a very nice tomato that is okay for fresh eating but tends to ripen up all at once so is great for canning.

Cherry types
Yellow submarine- a bright yellow pear shaped cherry with much better flavor than just plain old yellow pear.. the kids in the neighborhood all love it.
Black cherry- it is a dark red/purple blush cherry that has all the rich flavor of a black/purple tomato.

Green tomatoes
hands down Green Zebra.. takes some doing to tell when it is ripe that first year you grow it but flavor wise is very fresh and tangy

Black tomato/purple tomatoes
Black Brandywine
purple russian 
and Black Krim
The black Krim is sure an ugly tomato with cat-facing and green shoulders but the flavor is outstanding.

Orange tomatoes
I only found the Kellog tomato to really be good.
Yellow tomatoes..
Not a big fan of any I've tried other than the yellow submarine
White tomatoes
White beauty is okay.. my Aunt loves it tho.

I've tried many more than this but these tend to be the ones I like the best.
I try new ones every year tho.


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## DJgang (Apr 10, 2011)

I tend to stick with romas because of what we like. We are not big slice up a tomato with a meal type of folks. So I plant more of those because they do work well in salads and make a good sauce.

I might try something new this year, I planted my Roma seeds this weekend.


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## kappydell (Nov 27, 2011)

Peron Sprayless is a med size salad type, very bug resistant. It worked for me far better than any hybrid with an alphabet soup of resistance factors....It is determinate though, so if you want a pick all season long tomato, not so hot; for canning though it it great. Super Sioux is another older variety my mother grew for canning for the same reasons (easy care, canning), plus drought resistant. 

Another type of 'trash tomato' is sometimes sold by the water purifying plant folks - tomato seeds survive through the elimination tract and I am told that some sewage plants have little tomato plants come up along the sides of the settling tanks like crazy.....which a few cities sell for a minor fund-raiser. Kinda like 'sewage surprise' brand....


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## Davarm (Oct 22, 2011)

kappydell said:


> Another type of 'trash tomato' is sometimes sold by the water purifying plant folks - tomato seeds survive through the elimination tract and I am told that some sewage plants have little tomato plants come up along the sides of the settling tanks like crazy.....which a few cities sell for a minor fund-raiser. Kinda like 'sewage surprise' brand....


About 20 years ago I worked in Corpus Christi, Texas and sometimes in the summer, they would have water rationing and to water gardens and yards the sewage treatment plants would sell "Treated Water" from tank trucks.

Well.....it wasn't hard to see who had "bought a tank of water", just look for the tomato plants growing in their front yards. They had a local talk show host, "Bernie Seel-Seal??" always making jokes about it, got kinda old after a while but it was kinda funny.

As far as my favorite tomatoes go, I grow some heirlooms that no one remembers the names of anymore but for my canning I grow "Celebrity", they were developed to tolerate the hot dry summers of Texas. I tried to replant some of the seeds, got some sturdy plants but they didn't even put on a single tomato.


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## derek78 (Feb 25, 2012)

The basic cherry 100's seem to be the favorite around here


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