What is your most productive tomato?

[NYTomatoNewbie]

Unfortunately after sampling about 50 early varieties and another 50 mid/late varieties I can’t really taste the difference that make an heirloom a unique variety. I taste either acidic (that bite/punch) or the lack there of. I have yet to taste a tomato that makes me want to grow that specific variety year after year. I use tomatoes to eat by themselves, on a sandwich, stewed or in soup. I don’t make sauce.

With that said, I think next year I will grow fewer varieties and lean towards more productive slicer/beefsteak varieties. If a plant produces about 20 tomatoes a plant I will be happy. I have trouble with leaf spot and need to better space the
Out for airflow.

Which varieties have been productive for you?

[Paulf]

Holy smokes have you left yourself wide open on that one. As an anal records keeper I will come back later with my top producers of the best tasting varieties. What you will get is my list for my area of the 200-300 varieties that I have decided we would enjoy. Production numbers and taste being so subjective what works for us may end up being the ones you would never grow again. Our favorites tend to be…all over the spectrum, so don’t limit your horizons to slicer/beefsteaks or reds or …well, you get my drift. Watch for an edit,
EDIT
Went through 25 years of journals and this is what I came up with: Production: KBX, Kellogg's Breakfast, Fish Lake Oxheart, Hungarian Heart, Canadian Heart, Joe's Pink Oxheart, Rebel Yell, Marrianna's Peace, Kolb, Zeke Dishman, Korol London, Pink Bulgarian, Nicky Crain, Cherokee Purple, Cherokee Chocolate, Brandywine Sudduth Stump of the World.

Then match up to the best tasting varieties: Joe's Pink Oxheart, Canadian Heart, Clear Lake Oxheart, Cherokee Black, Rebel Yell, Heatherington Pink, Cowlick's Brandywine, Italian Sweet, Kolb, Stump of the World, Marrianna's Peace, Lee's Sweet, German Pink, Carbon, Neve's Azorean.

Remember this is a twenty-five year amalgamation so that each year had differing producers and tasters. Moral of the story...try little of everything to find your favorites.

[karstopography]

I don’t have a long enough track record to tease out what tomatoes are most productive year after year. I do believe, at least in my limited experience, that most mid-sized slicers or beefsteaks can hit and exceed the 20 tomatoes per plant mark without too much special effort or extraordinary measures, barring weather calamities or disease/vermin issues.

I do hope to have the tomatoes I grow not come all at once and with that in mind I try to have some that come earlier than others. Pruden’s Purple is 8-12 or about like that ounce pink beefsteak that will come earlier than many other comparable pink beefsteaks. Pruden’s Purple has 20 tomato per plant potential, this year I got 23 tomatoes inside the house averaging about 10 ounces each in a season somewhat shortened by a hurricane. I don’t think any tomato has a better texture than Pruden’s Purple. Pruden’s Purple is a lean Potato leaf and has relatively sparse foliage allowing for good airflow.

[Tormato]

Supersonic F1, and nothing else comes close.

[Labradors]

Pale Perfect Purple is very productive here.

[tyrupp]

As for a hybrid big beef or jet star, jet star has a large core. They perform about equally side by side .I have no disease problems in my garden. As far as an heirloom goes prudens purple is un rivaled and bet a lot of tomatoes sold as Brandywine at farmers markets are prudens. I don’t know if Kosovo is a heirloom but it is a very good producer and every garden should have an oxheart in it. Hope this helps cause it took several seasons to figure out that these work very well in my central Kansas garden. You should also have stump of the world because no garden is complete with out it. Wishing you good luck with your future endeavors !!!

[habitat-gardener]

Benevento F1 has consistently been the most productive for several years. It's one of my favorite tomato-sandwich tomatoes. This year, I've harvested 28 tomatoes from 2 plants so far.

Bush Early Girl produces an astounding amount for such a small plant: 26 medium-size red tomatoes so far, of acceptable but not outstanding taste. I grow it because it's nematode resistant and because it's easy to share round red tomatoes.

New this year:
Kellogg's Breakfast has produced 13 large sweet tomatoes.

Cowboy, 21 small to medium tomatoes with excellent taste.

Raspberry Lyanna, 34 tasty small tomatoes (most a little bigger than a golf ball), very consistent producer.
(In my climate, far superior to Big Beef F1, which has produced 11 tomatoes about the same size which are not tasty at all.)

We had about 20 days over 100F in July and a few more in August, so conditions for setting fruit were not optimum. Over 20 of my plants have produced nothing yet.

[Tormato]

For heirlooms, Kellogg's Breakfast is the only tomato, in my garden, that has topped the 40/40 club multiple times (40+ tomatoes/ 40+ pounds). An average "good" harvest, here is 15/15.

[Tormato]

Unfortunately after sampling about 50 early varieties and another 50 mid/late varieties I can’t really taste the difference that make an heirloom a unique variety. I taste either acidic (that bite/punch) or the lack there of. I have yet to taste a tomato that makes me want to grow that specific variety year after year. I use tomatoes to eat by themselves, on a sandwich, stewed or in soup. I don’t make sauce.

With that said, I think next year I will grow fewer varieties and lean towards more productive slicer/beefsteak varieties. If a plant produces about 20 tomatoes a plant I will be happy. I have trouble with leaf spot and need to better space the
Out for airflow.

Which varieties have been productive for you?

Stump of The World, balanced in flavor, for hopefully tasting something way beyond an early variety. Fish Lake Oxheart for a fairly early sweet tomato.

Do you taste sweetness at all in those varieties that you've tried?

And, I'd rather have 5 great tasting tomatoes on a plant, than 20 mediocre tasting ones. In your conditions, 10 beefsteaks on a plant may be what you will have to settle for.

[AKgardener]

Matina, sweet n neet scarlet , little Napoli.. only got to try the first 2 still waiting for the 3rd to ripen

[MissS]

Marizol Bratka produced 20+ tomatoes for me in a season. Another very productive one is Daniel Burson. Elbonian Puddle Duck was the most productive plant in my garden in 2022.

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

Greenbush Italian and newcomer Big Bubba have cranked out the most fruits, so far.

EDIT: Big Lou, and Big Zac and Yaqui (Det) Hybrids have cranked out more than their fair share.

The Gotch

[karstopography]

In my experience, the tiniest amount of salt sprinkled on a sliced tomato will bring out the tasty tomato flavors, if salt isn’t something restricted in one’s diet. Taste buds get blunted, bludgeoned and fatigued by everything we throw at them, same for the olfactory senses. I can’t always taste the great flavors in a tomato depending on what I ate or drank that day, Never taste anything right after brushing one’s teeth as most toothpastes completely obliterate the sense of taste. Same for any artificial sweeteners. Those destroy the sense of taste in my experience. Tobacco, hot peppers, hot drinks, hot food, smoky food, lots of stuff can blunt the sense of taste and smell.

I see these videos of tomato tastings where one slice of tomato is sampled in rapid succession one after another, no salt, hardly a break or sip of water between each slice. If I evaluated tomatoes that way, then I’d have a real tough time making any meaningful sense about which tomato tastes best. My taste buds aren’t all that sensitive so I have to take my time and have a sprinkle of salt as a crutch to tease out the depth of flavors in a tomato.

I have to sit down with a tomato at room temperature, the room and the tomato, slice the tomato, sprinkle a wee bit of fine non-iodized sea salt on the slice, enjoy the aroma of the tomato and then take a bite without any skin on the tomato. The bite get slowly enjoyed and chewed. I might have several bites and see if something new flavorwise pops up with each bite. The first bite or two wakes up the senses. The next bite or two digs in deeper to what all is in the tomato as far as flavor goes. Some tomatoes have little depth of flavor, there’s not much to tease out flavorwise. The initial bite or two reveals pretty much all that particular tomato has going on. A really superb tomato gets better with each bite. Each new bite reveals some other harmonious flavor. I want more rather than less.

[NYTomatoNewbie]

@karstopography I agree with everything you have said. I have been trying the tomatoes at room temperature. The first half I try without salt. The second half I eat with a little bit of salt. I do like it better with salt, but I am still not tasting anything unique. I try to taste test when I have eat for a few hours. I haven’t been paying attention to the difference between picking in morning vs evening or tasting ripe off the vine vs ripening on the counter. I have been losing a battle with a groundhog that has been getting the majority of my rule on the nine tomatoes, so maybe the issue is I am forced to pick them too early?

[NYTomatoNewbie]

@Tormato maybe I need to re-examine my perception of what sweetness in a tomato should be. The tomatoes that are profiled as sweet, for me, I am just tasting as an absence of the acid. They have all been mild. I haven’t come across an intense sweetness. The closest I have gotten to sweet was a Big Rainbow.

[karstopography]

@karstopography I agree with everything you have said. I have been trying the tomatoes at room temperature. The first half I try without salt. The second half I eat with a little bit of salt. I do like it better with salt, but I am still not tasting anything unique. I try to taste test when I have eat for a few hours. I haven’t been paying attention to the difference between picking in morning vs evening or tasting ripe off the vine vs ripening on the counter. I have been losing a battle with a groundhog that has been getting the majority of my rule on the nine tomatoes, so maybe the issue is I am forced to pick them too early?

None of the ones in my garden, excluding cherry tomatoes, ever get picked completely and fully ripe unless I somehow miss seeing it. I pick them sometime between color break and mostly ripe. I don’t see the flavor suffering. I see videos and photos of folks leaving tomatoes on the vine where the tomato is obviously past peak ripeness and well on its way to rotting. I think some of the leaving the tomatoes on the vine until completely ripe crowd can take that idea a little too far at times. I actually think most large fruited tomatoes picked sometime after color break finish ripening better in a more moderate temperature indoor environment than out well above 90° in the garden, if there is that choice available. Lycopene doesn’t form or degrades at higher garden temperatures.

https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postde ... tnum=43149

Ever wondered how to encourage sweeter tomatoes? Here temperature and sun are your friends, to a point. Ninety degrees and lots of sun will give you a sweeter tomato. At 100 degrees, fruits develop color on the outside, but stay green on the inside: not tasty. So when temperatures soar, pick tomatoes that have begun to color and allow them to ripen indoors. Remember: never refrigerate a tomato.

[bboomer]

Supersonic F1, and nothing else comes close.

Thanks!

[Yak54]

In 2019 my Momotaro plant produced 111 tomatoes and in 2020 my Odoriko plant produced 102 tomatoes and in 2021 my Dester plant produced 81 tomatoes. These varieties have been my most productive tomatoes.

[TomatoNut95]

Probably the most productive that I've had would be cherry varieties, Garden Peach (small, yellow fuzzy type) and San Marzano (yuck).

[Whwoz]

In terms of numbers, Thai Pink Egg produced over 1000 fruit for me one season. Malachite Boxtends to be a good producer as well