AKgardener wrote: ↑Wed Sep 27, 2023 4:34 pm Does anyone have there 2024 list ready yet!! I do

Let's hear it @Akgardener.

Still working on mine.

AKgardener wrote: ↑Wed Sep 27, 2023 4:34 pm Does anyone have there 2024 list ready yet!! I do

Mostly.

AKgardener wrote: ↑Wed Sep 27, 2023 4:34 pm Does anyone have there 2024 list ready yet!! I do

Mostly!!!!!

my list for next year drumm roll please haha,Im going for cold tolerant tomatoes early to mid season. I have done alot of reading and hopefully will find what will work for my area..I think I have a shot this time..

Anna Russian
Sasha Altia
Moskvich
Sleeping Lady dwarf
Mystic lady dwarf
Artic Rose dwarf
Yukon Quest Dwarf
Mano


smaller dwarf

tiny tiger
Puck
Japanese dwarf
Maskotka

AKgardener wrote: ↑Wed Sep 27, 2023 4:34 pm Does anyone have there 2024 list ready yet!! I do

I have my 2024 "definitely growing list" and "if I can squeeze them in list." I'll save the details for a separate thread on that topic.

I'm pleased with the performance of Bush Early Girl this summer, but it also has some faults. It is such a compact plant that it is difficult to get to quite a few of the tomatoes without damaging the plant. OTOH, it had virtually no sunscald, no cracking, and pretty much flawless fruits. But it also produced quite a few very small cherry-like tomatoes along with mostly 4-6 oz fruit.

Can anyone suggest an early variety with medium-sized tomatoes and a little more open structure? I'm OK with either OP or hybrids, but I'm definitely not looking for a big Indeterminate plant. I'm thinking about Jet Star, but it's not as early as I'd like.

I'd like to add another winner for this season -- Tami G (hybrid) grape tomato. It was a Bonnie plant that I bought toward the end of June. Really nice, sweet, 1 oz. tomatoes from it. They are pretty expensive, but I only bought one plant. And I got back probably $20 worth of tomatoes, so it was a good purchase IMO.

This year, I liked the following tomatoes the most (when considering traits overall):

1. Cilantrovaya_B (second favorite for flavor; consisitent heavy production; earliest variety; very sweet, both the flesh and the skin; everyone really liked it)
2. Brandywine Pink (Productive; decent taste; it did have lots of cracking, though; it was easy to start from seed with my method, and worked well with my new fertilization method)
3. Cherokee Purple (I liked this because it got lots of big fruit; very juicy; cracking here, too)
4. Amana Orange (third favorite for taste, at least; large good quality fruits; no cracking; if it produced more, I would have ranked it higher than Brandywine Pink and Cherokee Purple)
5. Roma VF (just one of the plants; the others had issues, like they either didn't produce, or most of the fruit had BER or something, but the one plant did great and produced well; the plant did get a virus, but not severely, and it wasn't noticeable on all the fruits)
6. Carolina Yellow (favorite for flavor, which is why it's on the list, but several fruits had BER and/or were undersized; I didn't have those issues last year, but more fruits were ealier this year, and the taste was significantly improved, even though it was already great last year)
7. Galapagos Island (it's a great variety on all accounts; so, I don't mean to snub it by ranking it at number seven, FYI; it did just fine; these grew on their own as volunteers)

Canning lots of tomatoes is generally our goal; so, that goal does affect the rankings. Galapagos Island is great and prolific for canning, but it takes a while to harvest, since the fruits are small, and sometimes the new growth gets in the way of the fruit (it didn't used to do that until the last couple years). There are always ripe tomatoes on it, though.

There's still time in the season for me to potentially rank Carolina Yellow higher. Plus, I haven't harvested nor evaluated this year's storage tomatoes as of yet.

With regard to disease-resistance, the standouts there (against Verticillium, some foliar disease, and viruses) seem to be Galapagos Island, Amana Orange, Early Cascade, Cal Ace VF, and I think Carolina Yellow. Cherokee Purple was a standout against viruses and foliar diseases.

Verticillium actually didn't obviously kill anything this year, but I think that's because the tomatoes had plenty of fertilizer from the pre-fertilization, and I was diligent about watering everything until the heat subsided. If I neglected watering during the heat, I noticed increased disease symptoms pretty quickly (that was true for the cucumbers as well as the tomatoes). The plant to suffer most from Verticillium was one of our cucumbers (I didn't water it on time one day and yeah, it suffered, but did survive).

I grew 13 varieties of tomatoes this year: Amish paste, amethyst jewel, karma purple, green zebra, Miss Scarlett in the Kitchen with a Knife, lava flow, red Siberian, jaune flamme, gothic, firebird sweet, glovel, black strawberry, and Japenese black trifele.

Best producers for canning: Amish paste, Japanese black trifele, firebird sweet, jaune flamme, Gothic (the dwarf, not the black), and red Siberian
Best cherry: black strawberry
Worst producers: Miss Scarlett, amethyst jewel, lava flow, green zebra, and glovel

The only problem I had with disease was BER on the gothic. I had those planted both in containers and in ground, and both spaces had BER problems. Tomatoes planted right next to them and in similar container medium didn't have the problem. A bit of Stop Rot and a calcium-rich fertilizer applied liberally helped but did not stop the problem.

The karma purple produced well but I wasn't nuts about the taste. The black strawberry produced and tasted well, and the fruits were huge for a cherry tomato! I'm talking 1" in diameter easily. While I'm not nuts about the taste of the black trifeles, they did make a great sauce base and were very prolific. The red Siberian produced well but was determinant. I did get my first tomatoes for sauce & paste from them though. The firebird sweets produced well and tasted yummy, plus they're cool to look at. I did have problems with cracking but that didn't stop me from saucing them. The glovel produced nice sized fruits but it took forever. Maybe it simply didn't like the container. Another problem likely affecting production was spacing. I had planned on 4 plants in an 8 foot space and ended up with 6. Free plants are difficult to refuse and I had to put them somewhere! I also need to rotate crops, easier to do now that I have a community gardens plot in addition to my yard. Rotating in 6 raised beds is a bit more challenging!

To grow next year: Amish paste, black strawberry, firebird sweets, and perhaps the jaune flamme. At least until I get my package from the MMMM swap and see something cool that I just have to try! I'm sure all of you can relate.

I don’t know if it’s my favorite from this year or not, but I’ve been eating a whole one of my last KBX every other day or so and I am loving them

We had a disappointing season as it turned out. Hot weather with rain every other day. What could go wrong? Well, taste really suffered. Even my favourites, Little Lucky and Blush, tasted blah .
Strangely, Rose, Orange Strawberry, EM Champion and PBTD, grown in the same garden, all tasted fantastic .
Fortunately, I had 4 pots of Maglia Rosa and 2 of Taste Patio, growing on the deck, protected by an awning when it rained. They tasted fabulous, and produced from mid-June. They will probably keep going until the end of October .

Linda

Our season was horrible... first it was cold and even snow covered really late, and no sunshine so plants grew really tall but didn't set much, and then it switched to extreme humidity and heat, several more weeks of non setting weather, then sunny and humid and just the worst year ever for Alternaria blight, and bad timing for those late set fruits. A lot of fruits affected by sunscald. Overall Rodney did the best in producing sweet and normal quality fruit, and some of the F2's from my cross with Amish Yellowish Orange Oxheart were more resistant to the blight, but I'll be looking to grow some resistant varieties in 2024 for the hot/humid disease that is becoming a regular.

Just found my EM Champion seed @Labradors which had somehow went missing at planting time. So that is on my list, I think it is Alternaria resistant, but your report of good tasting in the bad season is another plus!

This was, all things considered, an amazing year. We moved to a new home last fall. It appeared on the surface to be an excellent gardening opportunity, which was one of the reasons for our purchase. Little did we know that our fenced in yard was visited daily by hungry deer and that the “ground” was hauled in years earlier from various construction sites and was rock hard and contained lots of rocks and broken concrete. While the home was located only a few miles from our previous one, it seemed like a whole hardiness zone difference.

Hubby built a raised bed enclosed garden, which is wonderful, except the earwigs thought so, too. They ruined many many beautiful fruit, and I need to figure that out for next season. Weather was exceptionally warm and dry early, but then lots of rain for the rest of the summer.

In addition, I rented a plot at a new community garden. Our old site didn’t have great sun exposure and the theft (2 and 4 legged) became unbearable. The new spot just amazed us with full sun and no theft we were aware of. We will be back next season.

As far tomato production and flavor, I now grow mostly tried and true varieties. For oranges, Kellogg’s Breakfast and Cero Blackburn were just unbelievably productive. I love the sweet tangy flavor and appearance of both. Kellogg’s Breakfast, which is said to not be productive enough for some folks, was developed in a neighboring community, so this might be its niche.

GGWT and Virginia Sweets were amazing in the bicolor category. I can’t even hazard a guess as to how many fruit Virginia Sweets produced, but it was a clear favorite of the earwigs. They don’t have much shelf life, but that wasn’t a problem as they were.consumed quickly.

I grow a trio of tomatoes with “Italian” in their names. Geo. Detsikas’ Italian Red, Palmiras Northern Italian, and Mrs Maxwell’s Big Italian tomato. George outdid himself this year. What a great tomato. Big, beautiful, meaty, fantastic flavor. Uber productive, too.
I always think I might eliminate Mrs Maxwell until she begin to produce huge perfect tomatoes a bit later in the season. She always earns a repeat performance.

But if anything was the most outstanding this season, it was the hearts. Curtis Cheek is so tasty and I am still harvesting huge tomatoes from the plant. I have 2 varieties I have saved called Mystery Heart 1 and 2 that were just unbelievably productive and so good and meaty. I canned an unbelievable 100 quarts of tomato juice and sauces from my garden this season. I can only hope next season will be nearly as great.

not a good season for me.

most of my plants succumbed early to foliage disease brought on by nights that were too cool, and a surprising amount
of rain in july, and august. night time temps were often in the 50s through out the entire summer. it was a very good wild
blue berry season, just not tomatoes.
other people growing plants that i gave them had some better luck. the church member with a small green house, had very
good production with his plants, all given to him from me.

there were no stand outs as far as production goes. the yellows did a bit better. butter apple gave me several tomatoes as did
rose beauty that produced some large beautiful yellow orbs, this one being a 90 day variety that i normally would not count on
to be a main cropper in these parts. taste of both was good for a yellow, mild but over all good.
of the others, beaver lodge slicer, and efemer deserve another look. they should do better with a warmer season.
the cherry tomatoes always do better. alstons everlasting, anjas thomate, and pearly pink hung in there to produce a decent
later crop. sun gold was rather subdued, as was lea von ann marie, and amber keyes. sweet aperitif did poorly.
ya win some, ya lose some.



keith

Not a good season for me either. We broke all historical records for rainfall in my part of New Hampshire. It was cool and wet all summer, diseases were more common, production was way down, and the tomatoes I did get just tasted like rainwater, especially the slicers. The cherry tomatoes still had some flavor, but not quite as good as in a drier year. Still, since they still tasted close to normal, my favorite tomatoes for 2023 were cherries: Sungold, Black Cherry, Sakura, and Citrine were still tasty, but my Sun Peach didn't have much flavor (but it got more shade than the others). This was my first year growing dwarf tomatoes, and they suffered blight, poor production, and watery flavor too, but I will try again next year.

2022 was watery tomatoes too, so earlier this month I finally ordered a small high tunnel from Farmer's Friend and it arrived a few days ago. I will put it up in the spring and hopefully enjoy tomatoes that actually taste like tomatoes next year.

After you's TJ enablers...um...recommended watching the Lucky Gardener YouTube videos, there are twelve (12) more varieties in an already dang crowded mix for next season.

One more thing.

Two (2) more Tomato Books ordered from amazon.

Sheesh! The Gotch never thought he'd put a price on friendship.....he's having second thoughts...

The Gotch

Cornelius_Gotchberg wrote: ↑Tue Oct 24, 2023 8:08 am After you's TJ enablers...um...recommended watching the Lucky Gardener YouTube videos, there are twelve (12) more varieties in an already dang crowded mix for next season.

One more thing.

Two (2) more Tomato Books ordered from amazon.

Sheesh! The Gotch never thought he'd put a price on friendship.....he's having second thoughts...

The Gotch

Pray tell what you hope to learn from these two tomato books on order that you might not already know or could know from the threads here on TJ?

you don't understand,

its the physical act of having the books, feeling the books in your hands, looking at the pictures
many many times, getting all those endorphin hits.

as the gotch would say, am i right? do i under whelmingly exaggerate?
let he/she who is guiltless of the same throw the first tomato.
eh.


keith

karstopography wrote: ↑Tue Oct 24, 2023 8:49 amPray tell what you hope to learn from these two tomato books on order that you might not already know or could know from the threads here on TJ?

I'll preface this with the fact that I've learned FAR MORE about Tomatoes/Gardening here in two (2) years than I've learned elsewhere in the other 66.

That said, I've never been one to presume one source (even an aggregate like TJ) would be the repository of all knowledge on a subject/subjects.

Learning? Heck, I don't even know most of the questions, let alone their answers.

And like my Yooper Pal @rxkeith says...there's just something about them there pictures!

DISCLOSURE: I had an Amazon credit burning a whole in my pocket, rendering the net cost to practically nil.

The Gotch

Oh my I just went and read through all of the post again. I’ve been sick for 2 weeks during that time all I could think about is how I’m going to change everything next season new bed new maters possibly a cover over the garden like a hut if the price is right but I started some inside already for winter trial . Bushsteak . Mystic lady,serindipty.but again each winter I’ll choose some small some big and play around with lights and dirt ambisious yes girls gotta dream
I will be growing patio again.

@AKgardener; perhaps the wrong thread, but yer giving Sweet Success Cuke another go, aren't you's?

Asking for a friend.....

Ten ()10) short weeks ago: A NEW RECORD Sweet Success Cuke-20"/50.8 cms! The Gotch