A Hybrid That Is Better Than Big Beef

[Tormahto]

Hybrids are like mechanical sharks, while heirlooms are like real sharks. I wouldn't want to eat a piece of machinery.

Quint

[JRinPA]

da na da na da na
Best line of the movie!
Jaws 8: A Sharks Life. Quint Jr tries to come to terms with his late father's hatred of sharks, stops fishing, grows tomatoes for self therapy, but hasn't completely shaken his late father's imprinted anger! Only through the help of his new robotic Lamniformes can he hope to....

[Tormahto]

... grow Great White.

[Donnyboy]

I went down the open pollinated route when I decided Better Boy Hybrid is only slightly better than grocery store tomatoes. I found some interesting Open Pollinated tomatoes over the years, but they either died when it got hot, were attractive to every tomato hating bug on earth; or tasted worse than grocery store tomatoes. Then I found Big Beef. I tossed all my OP seeds, saved for many years; in the trash and bought a lot of Big Beef Seed. I was planning on growing Big Beef only in the future. One day I was in a farm and garden store and I noticed some tomato seedlings on the floor. I asked why the seedlings were laying all over the floor. I was told the season was over for selling seedlings and the plants would soon be in the trash. The lady said I could have all I wanted so I picked out the plants that looked like they could survive having had no water for ten days. They were all labeled "Heat Master". The weather was hot and dry and my Big Beef plants were soon to die in the heat after a productive season. I nursed the Heat Masters back to health and planted them in the holes created by dead Big Beef plants. The Heat Master plants thrived and produced in the heat until fall. They taste great and have now replaced Big Beef in my garden. I do have an unopened pack of Big Beef seed to use in an emergency but I plan on growing forty or fifty Heat Master plants this year.

[greenthumbomaha]

I mentioned in another thread growing MR this past summer, and I would grow it again along with any of the Mountain series. The plants were extras from my Master Gardener volunteer donation garden, grown by another member. Taste is good but nothing like an heirloom ( same with Big Beef imho) but better than other hybrids out there for sure .

The one caveat is that all the hybrids I grew had one heck of a time ripening in the relentless extreme heat we had this summer. That was not a good situation for a donation garden for food insecure individuals where 5 of the 6 grown varieties of 23 plants each were hybrids (not sure why they grow san marzano) . In my backyard the heirlooms were pumping out very ripe tomatoes, but the Mountains were not getting the memo. On the plus side, they were sooo late I had tomatoes I picked before the first frost last up until yesterday !!!

- Lisa

[Tormahto]

After a couple of years, is anyone working on dehybridizing Mountain Rouge?

And, has anyone, here, requested seeds of NC 161L from NC State?

[Donnyboy]

I have an area in my garden where I have ten, twenty five gallon containers with tomato plants. For a few years, I have planted only big beef tomato plants I germinated in my shop. The Big Beef plants produce abundantly, with great tasting, large tomatoes. My only complaint was the big beef plants produced before the extreme high heat of a Texas summer arrived. They simply could not take the high heat of summer and died as rapidly as they grew earlier in the season. I started looking around for a good tomato which seemed to regard summer heat as much as blond girls enjoy Florida beaches in the summer heat during spring break. I tried a few heat resistant varieties and found Heat Master performed very well in the heat while also producing great production of early, delicious tomatoes. I started pulling the first ten Big Beef plants as they died and replacing them with Heat Master seedlings. The Heat-masters grew, bloomed, and produced well in the heat.

I read recently Big Beef Plus seeds are now available with improved heat and disease resistance while also exhibiting improved taste and production. I will grow some next spring.

[Yak54]

"A Hybrid That Is Better Than Big Beef". Well two that come to mind are Odoriko and Momotaro !

[slugworth]

Phoenix was good but i haven't seen it locally since the covid hit.
They shipped heat master plants this away years ago by mistake.
I haven't seen it since.Email pleas were rejected.
Not hybrid but german johnson does well in heat and drought.
2015 here was a drought year and they went weeks without watering.
ordered seeds and they are due tomorrow.
The better RL variety.

[Cole_Robbie]

I never did that well with the mountain varieties I tried. Big beef and jet star both taste very good, maybe not heirloom excellent, but still very good. The weather has a lot to do with the flavor of red tomatoes, at least in my climate. I have had better boy that was as tasty as any heirloom, but just one year where the weather was perfect. Reds like no rain at all near picking time, at least in my clay.

[mama_lor]

Not sure about Mountain Rouge, but Crimson Crush is certainly better than Big Beef in taste. There is some common lineage with the blight resistant line of the mountain series. I can confirm the late blight resistance as being good to very good. The vigor of the plant is not as high as Big Beef, especially after it starts setting fruit, but taste is definitely more consistently good.

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

@Cole_Robbie; "I never did that well with the mountain varieties I tried."

Mountain Magic (a PROLIFIC producer that'll grow to 8 feet/2.44 meters + when properly staked/supported) has won the Jardín del Gotch Taste Test Challenge the last four (4) seasons running.

And I'm starting to panic that I won't get Mountain Merits (another perennial selection) this season; one nursery requested some that are supposed to be delivered there today...Fingers Crossed!

The Gotch

[JRinPA]

As I recall, Big Beef was not allowed to be defended in this thread! Only allowed to talk about Mountain Rouge!?

edit: Yep I remembered correctly, lol

This thread is being hijacked by the Big Beef tomato. It's really supposed to be about Mountain Rouge Tomatoes so I am starting a thread where we can all review Big Beef in it's own spot.

Of course, at this point, I realize Big Beef needs no defending! It just needs to stay on top of the pile and whack a pretender, once in a while.

[Doffer]

Not sure about Mountain Rouge, but Crimson Crush is certainly better than Big Beef in taste. There is some common lineage with the blight resistant line of the mountain series. I can confirm the late blight resistance as being good to very good.

Can u tell more about the lineage of Crimson Crush?

[Shule]

Do any tomatoes in the Chef's Choice series rival Big Beef F1 in flavor? What about Cherokee Carbon F1?

[Donnyboy]

Having tried most all the Mountain series (but not Rouge) and Big Beef ( it must not have been the real BB), all rate about a 4/10 for flavor, 2/10 for size, 4/10 for healthiness of plants, 5/10 for production and 8/10 for looks. More of the round, red grocery store hybrids that look great but fall way short of what I like in a home grown tomato.

I will try Rouge and look for the real Big Beef and see what happens.

When Big Beef starts producing pretty early compared to other varieties, I am so tired of grocery store, card board tomatoes; I'm thinking of eating one of those red golf balls I sometimes find. Big Beef rates a 10 out of 10 for me. My only problem with Big Beef is they die back in the early heat of summer. It doesn't matter because it allows me to plant some heat resistant varieties which produce until the first frost arrives. I would love for the replacements to be BIG Beef Plus if they are available.

[Donnyboy]

I've tried a few of the mountain varieties over the years. It's been a few years so my memory is not so great. Normally if a tomato is either great or horrible, I remember it forever. I have no memory of any mountain variety tomato so they must have ranked between spitters and great.

[seanm]

Just want to chime in to add my thumbs-up for Mountain Rogue. I've been growing it for a few years now, and it is a very vigorous, healthy plant producing nice brandywine-type beefsteaks. Very good taste, small core (opposite my experience with BrandyBoy, which is I think a better comparison variety than Big Beef), and moderately good production. I've started planting one each year, as 'insurance' for my Earl's Faux, which is the best growing heirloom brandywine-type in my garden, but which still has years where it struggles. A good Earl's Faux beats anything in my garden, but I can count on the Mountain Rogue to produce a quality beefsteak even in challenging conditions.

[Cranraspberry]

I have been SO impressed with Mountain Rouge this year. I have very difficult growing conditions in our community garden (including fusarium), so Brandywine, Brandy Boy and SOTW all fizzled out very quickly in previous seasons. Big Beef barely produced and was hit hard by fusarium last year (also didn’t do much for me in the flavor department, but that could have been related to disease issues). This year on top of the usual problems we also had a record breaking hot summer and fusarium came a month early, so out of 11 varieties I only have two plants that are still chugging along and looking healthy: Cherokee Purple and Mountain Rouge. MR is a BEAST of a plant, I have never seen anything get this enormous in my garden. It is crazy productive and continued setting fruit even in the worst of the heat wave. Best of all while I know that flavor is subjective, I have been so pleasantly surprised with how sweet and tasty it is - easily a 7.5/10 at the very least. So while the folks who can grow heirlooms with no issue probably don’t *need* Mountain Rouge, people who struggle like I do should absolutely give it a shot. The combination of flavor, vigor and disease resistance is unlike anything I’ve ever grown!

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[Ken4230]

I have been SO impressed with Mountain Rouge this year. I have very difficult growing conditions in our community garden (including fusarium), so Brandywine, Brandy Boy and SOTW all fizzled out very quickly in previous seasons. Big Beef barely produced and was hit hard by fusarium last year (also didn’t do much for me in the flavor department, but that could have been related to disease issues). This year on top of the usual problems we also had a record breaking hot summer and fusarium came a month early, so out of 11 varieties I only have two plants that are still chugging along and looking healthy: Cherokee Purple and Mountain Rouge. MR is a BEAST of a plant, I have never seen anything get this enormous in my garden. It is crazy productive and continued setting fruit even in the worst of the heat wave. Best of all while I know that flavor is subjective, I have been so pleasantly surprised with how sweet and tasty it is - easily a 7.5/10 at the very least. So while the folks who can grow heirlooms with no issue probably don’t *need* Mountain Rouge, people who struggle like I do should absolutely give it a shot. The combination of flavor, vigor and disease resistance is unlike anything I’ve ever grown!

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I am impressed with the pictures as much as anything. May have to try them next year. Brenda likes round red baseball sized tomatoes so i have grown Big Beef since they were introduced. Got tired of buying seeds all the time so I thought I would try to stabilize BB. I am at F5 now, size and taste has improved (buddy called me last week raving about a tomato he had just eaten). It was one of the BB I had given him. I hope the heat tolerance and disease resistance is still there. Time will tell, if I live that long.