Which Brandywine strains, and your experiences with them?

[KathyDC]

I've never grown Brandywine, and I'm considering growing it and some of its offshoots in my garden next year, side-to-side.

Checking my seed stash, I have Brandywine, along with Sudduth, Cowlicks and Landis Valley strains.

Are there any others that I should grow alongside? Or any of those that aren't worth including? I would have room for probably 6 plants of this type.

Appreciate any experiences with these!

[Sue_CT]

I prefer Sudduth but a lot of people like OTV

[Shule]

I've heard great things about Brandywine (Sudduth's Strain), Brandywine OTV, and Cowlick's Brandywine. The first for taste, and the latter two, for other great qualities (whether or not taste is a hallmark quality).

I heard a rumor once that Johnny's Selected Seeds carries a particularly pure version of Brandywine (Sudduth's Strain), although they call it Quisenberry Strain. I don't know if the rumor is true; it might be the same as every other Sudduth's Strain (Sudduth's Strain is often considered the purest of the strains).

If you're also looking for similar types and/or related tomatoes that aren't exactly strains of Brandywine, you might check out Yellow Brandywine, Caspian Pink, Rose, and Brandy Boy F1.

Some complain of Brandy Boy F1 being too tart, though (and it is more tart than many tomatoes, in my experience; I like tart tomatoes; I only grew the F1 once and late, but I have some related tomatoes that I'm breeding).

I don't have much experience to offer with Brandywine strains, yet, but I've read a lot of other people's experience.

[Paulf]

Lots has been written about the Brandywine tomato and all the different strains. Having grown several over the years here are some thoughts of some:

Platfoot/Yellow: a pretty good yellow/orange. Not particularly outstanding but very good.

Black: Not the Jere Gettle variety. Mine was an excellent cross between a Brandywine and an unknown black; seeds from Neil Lockhart. Very productive and tasty.

Cowlick's: Excellent flavor and very good production. Don't skip this one.

Joyce's strain: After a conversation with the late Chuck Wyatt in 1999, he suggested I try Sudduth's and Joyce's side-by-side. To the untrained taster and new to heirloom tomato growing, the tasted the same to me...the best tomato I had ever eaten up to then. Since 1999 and 300 or so varieties later there have been lots, but the first time eating one like that sticks in the mind.

Red: Received seeds from Carolyn Male a long time ago and waited for some reason until about five years ago to grow them out. Excellent flavor for a red, very productive with large tomatoes. No reason to have waited...just one notch below my favorite Brandywine...

Sudduth's: This is the other Brandywine grown from seeds sent to me from Chuck Wyatt. This is the one he told me was called Sudduth (the story is well know) and Quisenberry (after the famous Ben because of his tomato growing expertise). The packet Chuck sent was labelled Sudduth/Quisenberry. Sudduth sometimes is slow to ripen and production is low, but well with the wait. Few other varieties come close to the flavor.

As always, these are my opinions from tomato gardens early on in central Iowa and then southeast Nebraska. And the opinions on flavor are my own with assistance from my wife to keep me straight.

[slugworth]

Brandy Man
Genuwine
Brandywine red was supposed to be RL but the bought plant was PL like the pink.
It acted like a determinate plant with 1 load of tomatoes all at once then nothing.
Genuwine is a cross between brandywine and costoluto genovese.
Nobody sold Brandy Big this year,so I started some from saved seeds,but late.

[edweather]

Sudduth's went well for me when I was in a northern zone 5 climate. I've heard they don't like humidity.

[jmsieglaff]

I started with Sudduth's. I've grown it for 4 years in a row now. The flavor matches the hype. In my garden production isn't bad, it's not great, but for such a delicious tomato, I don't need great production. Last year I was going to grow Cowlick's as a comparison, but it broke in the wind and didn't happen. Cowlick's is growing next to Sudduth's this year, so I will get to compare them.

Far less known, but another big pink beefsteak I grew last year was Hoy. It was delicious, maybe not quite as good as Sudduth's BW, but quite delicious and a bit more productive.

[KathyDC]

This is great info! Well, I'm definitely in a humid climate so Sudduth may not like my back yard very much, but with all this talk about it now I'm curious. It seems like all the varieties I have in hand are worth growing, though I haven't heard much talk about the Landis Valley Strain.

I think I will also add the OTV, which I'll source and buy from somewhere. I just gave some business to Secret Seed Cartel, if anybody has a vendor they like with the OTV strain I'll buy a few things from them too. Trying to support quality seed businesses in this tough economic climate. Southern Exposure is the only one that comes up on a Google search that I recognize.

Oh, I just unearthed another Brandywine variety in my seed stash: Brandywine Pink Cherry. (Can you tell I am currently trying to catalog them?!) Anybody tried this one? I already typically grow a lot of cherries so unless it's spectacular I'm not sure I will include it in this particular experiment.

[Nico]

I prefer Sudduth

[Sue_CT]

I had never heard of a cherry Brandywine before. You might be interested in this: http://www.webgrower.com/information/cr ... ywine.html

[KathyDC]

I had never heard of a cherry Brandywine before. You might be interested in this: http://www.webgrower.com/information/cr ... ywine.html

Very interesting!! I love historical sleuthing with tomato varieties. [mention]Shule[/mention] it looks like your comment above about the Johnny's Sudduth being the most pure is correct! [mention]Sue_CT[/mention] thanks so much for sharing this link.

I'm not too sure of the provenance of the "Brandywine Pink Cherry" seed because I believe it came via a swap. I'll have to look and see if it has a person's name attached or not!

[Shule]

I had never heard of a cherry Brandywine before. You might be interested in this: http://www.webgrower.com/information/cr ... ywine.html

@Shule it looks like your comment above about the Johnny's Sudduth being the most pure is correct! @Sue_CT thanks so much for sharing this link.

[mention]Sue_CT[/mention]
Thanks for verifying that! Very helpful. It was so long ago that I saw it that I was starting to wonder.

[mention]KathyDC[/mention]
Thanks for pointing it out to ensure I saw it!

[Shule]

Huh. I didn't realize/remember this, but Brandywine OTV is a cross between Yellow Brandywine and an unknown red parent, according to Tatiana's TomatoBASE.

Cowlick's appears to be a strain of Brandywine.

[Sue_CT]

Without Carolyn here to 'splain all the off-shoots of Brandywine, Craig is the most reliable living source that I know of.

[KathyDC]

Without Carolyn here to 'splain all the off-shoots of Brandywine, Craig is the most reliable living source that I know of.

Ahhh, what a shame! I do miss her and her encyclopedic knowledge.

[indysun]

What is OTV ?

[MsCowpea]

http://www.webgrower.com/information/cr ... ywine.html


“The strain carried by Johnny’s Selected Seeds came from a seed donation by me .” CL

[slugworth]

The brandywine hybrids I had last year were RL.
Saved seeds, about 90% are PL and 10% Rl.
Bought plants of genuwine are RL,so I may just grow the RL plants from saved seed.
The same for Big Brandy.
They are the heirloom marriage series of plants.

[wildcat62]

We have Brandywine Yellow & Red this year. Looking good so far.

[MissS]

What is OTV ?

Off the Vine. This is a variety introduced by the late Carolyn Male and Craig LeHoullier. It was named after a publication that the two of them published. This is not a true Brandywine at all and Carolyn came to regret the name but it was already done. This is a cross between Yellow Brandywine and a red tomato.