A Hybrid That Is Better Than Big Beef

[friedgreen51]

I planted 3 Mountain Rouge Tomatoes this year. It is a hybrid release from Dr. Randy Gardner at North Carolina State University. ‘Mountain Rouge’, the F1 hybrid of NC 161L × ‘Pink Brandywine’, resulted from a tomato breeding effort initiated in 2005 to develop a superior heirloom-type, pink-fruited tomato hybrid with improved fruit quality and late blight resistance.
I have been so impressed with this tomato. It tastes great (in my opinion superior to Big Beef), is disease resistant and is still pumping out tomatoes and blooming here in early August in hot and humid North Carolina. I have only sprayed this tomato once. I used Daconil and it still looks great.

Here is what AAS says about this tomato:
2019 AAS Edible-Vegetable Winner
A beautiful new pink tomato in the “Mountain” series has excellent flavor and a very robust disease package of verticillium, fusarium, nematodes, and Late Blight. Gardeners will enjoy a generous harvest of large, beefsteak tomatoes weighing 12-14 oz. that have a great tomato taste with just the right balance of acid and sugar. Indeterminate plants produce heavily in just 73 days from transplant and they do especially well in cooler climates. This fleshy tomato has minimal seeds and slices very well for true summer dining enjoyment.

Mountain Rouge Tomato 8 4 2020.jpg

Mountain Rouge Plant 8 4 2020.jpg

[MissS]

I am glad to hear that this tomato has your approval. UW Wisconsin Madison did an interesting trial that included this tomato. Here is the summary: https://varietytrials.eorganic.info/sit ... ort%20.pdf

[pepperhead212]

That sounds great, [mention]friedgreen51[/mention]! Thanks for sharing the info.

[goodloe]

The title of this thread got my hackles up immediately. Big Beef is absolutely the best all around tomato that I have ever grown, so we'll see.... BUT...Mountain Rouge looks pretty impressive. I'll check it out!

[brownrexx]

There are not many varieties resistant to Late Blight so this got my interest.

I put it in my Gardening Notes to look into next year.

[Nan6b]

I'll second Goodloe & Brownrexx. Thanks for the info!

[Paulf]

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.

[MissS]

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.

I bought a few Big Beef plants years ago when they first came out. To my family they were the worst tomatoes in the garden and we threw them all away. Spitters. After years of great reviews, I started some seeds this year and put two plants in my garden to see what I think of them now. None have ripened yet.

[Sue_CT]

I agree, but that is why I grow mostly heirlooms. I grow for taste, not appearance or productivity, although those are secondary considerations. But some people will only eat grocery store looking tomatoes. Box Car Willie and Estler's Mortgage Lifter come closest to that for me but with much better taste. If you want a pretty bullet proof tomato with great taste, try Girl Girl's Weird Thing. Not an heirloom, since it appears to have been a spontaneous cross not sure it would be considered a hybrid, either. An open pollinated, stable hybrid, lol? Anyway, if you don't mind a darker red tomato with some stripes those are great.

[Shule]

What percent of the appeal of Big Beef F1 is its disease/pest resistance?

How does Big Beef F1 compare to Atkinson, in practice? They have similar resistances, I notice.

[JRinPA]

For me, Big Beef is good because it sets reliable flower trusses with largish tomatoes that form well, and fairly early for the most part. Disease resistance? They get the same leaf spots, and that's pretty much what we contend with here. I have seen grey mold/late blight just one time ever about 10 years back - the plants actually died from the top down - and it was all over SE PA and Jersey that year. That was also before I made CRW cages to keep the off the ground. There may have been some around since then, but not in my plots.

I have been using Big Beef mostly for reliable sauce production, but I consider it an adequate slicer for sandwiches. This year, I have yet to be impressed by any of the tomatoes, regarding taste. The Big Beef are well formed but aren't sweet enough. "Good for a hybrid" is starting to feel true. Paul Robeson, Black Krim have tasted good but the fruit formation is sparse and what did set has a lot of loss due to catfacing and cracks. The catfacing is from poor flower set/pollination. At least, that is my understanding of it. Thessaloniki, I've only eaten a few red, are okay but similarly rough looking. It was a late spring so I'll see how they play out in the next few weeks. Two of my better slices were somehow forgotten during in the initial seed start, and with the extremely dry/hot June and July, these catch-up plants are way behind. LOL, for slicing, not ketchup. Cherokee Purple and Cuostralee.

That Mountain Rouge looks very nice and I think will be #1 on seed board for me. Thanks for posting friedgreen51. I would love to be trying it right now, but hopefully next year.

[brownrexx]

JR, I had the problem with Late blight that year too and it wiped out my entire crop in a matter of days. I also use cages for my tomatoes but keeping the plants off of the ground does not help with Late Blight because it is airborne and it starts at the top.

Big Beef is my reliable producer and I always plant it. I have noticed that this year the heirlooms are only giving me a few tomatoes at a time while the Big Beef are loaded like they always are. I just prepared tomatoes for the freezer this morning and they were mostly Big Beef. Those are Ball BPA free freezer jars. I also blanched yesterday's picking of Lima beans.

20200809_110951 (2) by Brownrexx, on Flickr

[JRinPA]

I haven't hadn't eaten any tomatoes in a couple days and there were six nice looking big beef on the table. Well, now there are three left, and only because I ran out of bread. These were easily the best tomatoes so far this year. I picked them a few days back and they were a bit pale at that time but now they are a good shade and very tasty. My tomatoes were late and the season was late but this week looks like it be the first big pick. Some years I'm doing sauce already in the 4th week of July. This year, probably 3rd or 4th week of August.

Same here on the big beefs producing. There is something about their flowers that produce reliably, when so many similar sized tomatoes don't set fruit. I would love to have a similarly reliable pink brandywine type fruit.
The Remains of the Day.

36.JPG

[MissS]

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.

[JRinPA]

Well it is titled "a hybrid that is better than Big Beef". That's like throwing down the gauntlet! It would be great if they are as productive, though that Wisconsin study doesn't sound promising in that regard. But we can all hope.

[brownrexx]

I think that I may give them a try but I am not giving up on my old reliable Big Beef.

[Clkeiper]

I will still take the big beef. I like pink tomatoes but I can't hardly sell them. I can't give out samples this year so I am stuck with any "new or weird" tomatoes to be tried at their expense or give away a whole tomato and they still can't be caught with a first eexpression on their face while sampling it. people are sooo boring when it comes to off colored food items. I always tell them their tongue cant tell them what color it is... only how good it tastes.

[MsCowpea]

Friedgreen, is Mountain Rouge sweet? Sweeter than Big Beef? I tried Big Beef once maybe 15 or more years ago but I don’t remember it.
I don’t think people call Big Beef sweet, they say something like classic tomato flavor or old-timey flavor which means not sweet. And , of course, everyone mentions Big Beef’s reliable production. I am going to try Mountain Rouge
as I like another offering by Randy Gardner , Mountain Magic.

Just curious, where did you get your seeds? Not too many companies have it.

[friedgreen51]

Mountain Rouge does have a sweeter taste than Big Beef. I think that the Pink Brandywine in the lineage is contributing to that.

I got my seed from Totally Tomatoes.
https://www.totallytomato.com/product/T00498/147

[GardenGuy00]

Big Beef is quite good. However, two varieties from Burpee surpass it in my experience. Those varieties are Brandy Boy and Supersteak. The former is a Brandywine replica with that classic heirloom taste but unbelievable yields. The latter is a HUGE variety with a very satisfying sweet taste.