Which Varieties Exceeded Your Expectations?

[Yak54]

WOW Shule-impressive post!
While not as organized, here are some that have been exceptional over several seasons for both taste and production.

Orange Russian 117
Brad's Black Heart
Lavender Lake
Lithium Sunset
Lucid Gem
Mocha Splash
Chocolate Stripes
Girl Girl's Weird Thing
Indian Stripe PL
Medovaya Kaplya
Iva's Red Berry
Chang Li
Japanese Pink Cherry
KARMA Pink
Cuostralee
Rosovyi Krupnyi

Plus 1 for Rosovyi Krupnyi !!!

Dan

[Yak54]

Maglia Rosa
First time growing it though I grow several of Fred’s others.
Beautiful, productive and flavorful plus good counter life.

Polish
A real monster and wildly prolific. As a workhorse red tomato with excellent flavor it beat all others hands down.

Plus 1 for Polish !!! . and yeah it's a pink.

[MissS]

Marizol Bratka, Polish Elllis, Berg, Sakharnyi Pudovichok and Nahuelbuta Pink. All were very productive with great flavor too.

[Ella NJ]

From the dwarf family: Sweet Sue (it is about 4 feet). SS has really sweet fruity complex flavor. Very light yellow color. Good size tomatoes. I grow it in containers and in ground.

Carbon. I grew it years ago, than tried many other varieties and went back to Carbon. The tester and production is great. And they are great looking tomatoes.

GGWT is in my garden every year. Just have to have it. I am picking them untill the first frost.

Orange jazz. Love the taste, texture, look, super large size. One thing I do not like is strings inside tomato, but it is due to the super large size. They have tomatoes larger than 20 ounces.

Cherokee purple. For me it has good production. The taste is awesome. I got my latest seeds from Marsha. Thank you, Marsha.

Black cherry. My son's favorite. That plant grow taller than me and the vines continue grow and reach back to the ground. It has complex taste. To ovoid splitting after the rain, I started growing it in large containers. And before the first frost we pick all greens and let them ripen inside in cool room. They do ripen just fine within a month or two, we use them for salad. They are not too sweet if picked green but still have great taste. And having your own tomatoes in December here in NJ is priceless.

Matsu Express. Red, beautiful, complex taste. Excellent for salads or sandwiches. Super productive. Picked few last green tomatoes before the frost. They will ripen nicely. Thank you, AKMark, for creating this variety.

[rossomendblot]

GGWT and Mat-Su Express are two of my must grows every near now.

[Dee]

Update! Since my original post, here are a few varieties that pleasantly exceeded my expectations:

Indigo Pear Drop - (IND, antho - purple top and golden bottom, large pear-shaped cherries. Production and taste excellent.)
Favorie de Bretagne - (DET - or DWF? - GWR, sausage-shaped, very productive for me. Low to the ground, no staking required. Mild, sweet (average) flavour.)
Reinhard's Chocolate Heart - (IND, large heart, flavourful, fairly uniform shape.)
Doucet's Petitbec (also called, "Petitbec") - (DET, large/variable-sized cherry/saladette, red, PRODUCTIVE, compact, early. Decent flavour. Reliable.)

I have limited space, so am always torn between growing what I know I love and/or is reliable, or trying something new...growing tried-and-trues or growing something rare...and growing something that looks and sounds delicious but has a longer growing season than would be wise to attempt here.

Decisions, decisions!

[JosephineRose]

How was the texture on Reinhard's Chocolate Heart? I am growing it this year.

[Dee]

How was the texture on Reinhard's Chocolate Heart? I am growing it this year.

For me, it was right in the middle. In terms of firmness, it's not a storage tomato or one good to leave sitting for weeks on the counter, but not nearly as soft as I have found Black Krim to sometimes be. Though I used most of my Reinhard's Chocolate Heart tomatoes for sauce, I found them to be a wonderful sandwich tomato, too.