Tomato evaluations

[torquill]

I have enough familiarity with the varieties I'm growing this year to really take some detailed notes. If there are any characteristics you'd like to hear about beyond what I've listed here, please let me know.

Abraham Lincoln: This is the standard one, not the resurrected USDA strain (despite what the seed pack said). One was the usual semi-determinate bush covered in small, round, red fruit, the other was indeterminate; the flavor was unexceptional, but it is early and makes decent canned tomatoes. Still, I'd rather grow Woman's Name Starting With A for an early determinate, or Rutgers/Diener/Santa Clara Canner for canning tomatoes.
Mite susceptibility: Average
BER susceptibility: Average
Foliage cover: Thick
Yield: High
Keeping quality: High

Brandywine, OTV: Very large beefsteaks with a bright red color. Lots of deep ribbing, stitching, and catfacing, not a smooth fruit to be found. Flavor is quite acceptable, though not outstanding, on the tart side. The plant is not as vigorous as I expected, and yield is low. That might be remedied by growing a second-generation plant, but it hasn't impressed me particularly.
Mites: Average
BER: Low
Foliage: Thin
Yield: Low
Keeping quality: Average

Brandywine, Sudduth strain: This one has done consistently well for me over the years. It starts late and the first fruits are smallish and wildly catfaced, but by midseason it's cranking out a great number of large (4" or better) deep reddish beefsteaks with smooth shoulders. (They are actually pink, but such a dark color it looks red in most light.) Occasional green patches on the shoulders, radial cracking, stitching, or belly buttons, but most are unblemished. Flavor is broad, with tart and sweet notes and a rich finish which is the hallmark of pink Brandywine. The flesh is quite juicy but not mushy at all, with lots of little seed locules.
Mites: Low
BER: Average
Foliage: Thick
Yield: High
Keeping quality: Average

Dr. Carolyn cherry: As vigorous as most cherry tomatoes, it ramps up to produce lots of 1" oval, pale to lemon yellow cherries on short trusses. It rarely cracks or drops fruit, and they stay on the vine for a while. Like the variety's namesake, it tends to stay on the tart side, but with a depth and lingering sweetness that takes the edge off the acidity. The vines are always brittle, resisting small actions like tucking them into cages or lines, preferring to break; work with them in the early afternoon to reduce the risk.
Mites: Low
BER: Never
Foliage: Moderate
Yield: High
Keeping quality: Excellent

Dorothy's Green: This one puts out a moderate number of 3-3.5" beefsteaks which turn a green-amber color when ripe. Some stitching, occasional extra lobes, but otherwise unblemished; the flesh is on the soft and juicy side, and the skin is thick. The flavor is sweet and full, but not a knockout. I get the occasional overtone of grass from these, which sometimes happens with green varieties, especially on the skin. They lack anything but mild tomato flavor, really -- I think I'll go back to Aunt Ruby's German Green next time, which has the famed slightly spicy overtones.
Mites: Average
BER: Low
Foliage: Moderate
Yield: Moderate
Keeping quality: Poor

Earl's Faux: It's had a bad time with BER this year, for whatever reason. I don't remember it struggling this much in previous years. Still, the unblemished ones are large reddish-pink beefsteaks with the occasional belly button and smooth shoulders. Flavor is very good, a deep full tomato flavor with good acid/sweet balance which should appeal to most people. It's hefty, too, juicy but not having a lot of seed locules -- the whole center of the fruit is one big chunk of pure flesh without any seeds at all. A great sandwich tomato, and capable of yields rivaling Sudduth Brandywine here, quite high once it gets going.
Mites: Low
BER: Average (in most years)
Foliage: Thick
Yield: High
Keeping quality: Average

Jaune Negib: The first tomato I got this year, as the cherries were put in late. It's surprised me with a consistently heavy yield from a smallish plant, giving me armloads every week since it started at the beginning of July. The fruits are about 3" flattened globes with gently ribbed shoulders, lemon-yellow with occasional spots of green, and few blemishes of any kind (occasional stitching is the worst of it). They're soft and juicy, and keep getting softer after harvest, so they don't keep or can especially well. The flavor isn't a knockout punch, but it's hardly bland, just a pleasant sweet tomato flavor that makes an excellent mild salsa. Given that the earliest fruits didn't suffer from mealiness or blandness, it makes a very good early-season yellow that keeps up all through the season.
Mites: Low
BER: Very low
Foliage: Thick
Yield: High
Keeping quality: Poor

Little Lucky: I'm not at all convinced that this is the proper variety, despite the pack I got saying it had been bagged for purity; it has a lot of instability in fruit shape even on the same plant, ranging from globes to plums to hearts. The color is correct, an orange-yellow with reddish streaks in the flesh, but their size and shape don't match Little Lucky well at all. The flavor is tart and otherwise mild, a change from the pleasant unremarkable sweetness of most bicolors; the flesh itself is unusually creamy and delicate in texture. Letting them hang on the vine increases the amount of red in the flesh, but doesn't seem to change the flavor at all. The yield ramped up until I was drowning in them by late-season. One quirk is that the ripe fruits tend to let go of the calyx and drop with very little provocation. They also split post-harvest at the drop of a hat. Over all, not something I'll grow again.
Mites: Low
BER: Very low
Foliage: Thick
Yield: Moderate
Keeping quality: Poor

Mortgage Lifter, Estler strain: I tried this in contrast to Radiator Charlie, my usual Mortgage Lifter. So far, it hasn't been particularly different in fruit characteristics or yield; the only thing I've noticed is that the plant is a little less vigorous than I'm used to (that may be an acclimation thing). The yield started out low, but it's ramped up to the usual steady stream of deep pink 4" beefsteaks. The lack of vigor has resulted in some sunburn, though, which is not the usual state of affairs. I may try growing a second-generation plant later on to see whether it grows better, but I doubt it will distinguish itself from Radiator Charlie much.
Mites: Average
BER: Average
Foliage: Thin
Yield: Moderate to high
Keeping quality: Average to high

Mortgage Lifter, Radiator Charlie strain: One of my workhorses, and a personal favorite. 3-4" deep pink beefsteaks with smooth shoulders and occasional stitching and belly buttons. The inside is juicy but not soft, a great sandwich tomato if blotted on a paper towel; flavor is full-bodied and sweet with just enough tartness to set off the sugar. When conditions are good, yield is very high and consistent all season. I fell in love with this one the first year I grew tomatoes, and it's never fallen in my estimation. Feed it well and it stays as healthy as any regular-leaf plant has ever done here.
Mites: Average
BER: Average
Foliage: Thick
Yield: High
Keeping quality: Average to high

Noir de Crimee: I changed my mind on this one. I had been told it was close to Black Krim (the name means the same thing), so I expected a big beefy black and got little round ones instead. They're saladette size, 2-4 ounces, which I normally don't grow because we have a limited number of ways to use them. The plants were miserable from about week three onward, drooping as soon as the soil was less than saturated, growing listlessly, curling leaves all over the place. Predictably, they were the first to get mites. I ripped out one because I didn't want to nurse two potential mite-centers through the summer, and figured that I wouldn't grow it again. Then I tasted one. It is absolutely the sweetest tomato I've ever had, with the possible exception of Sungold on a good day -- these are sugar-sweet, rich, and wonderful, with unusually creamy flesh. No trace of the licorice or smoky overtones that some other blacks have, though the flesh underneath the muddy-red skin is quite dark. They have dark-green shoulders, typical of many blacks. I'll try this one again in the best mite-battling spot I have, and see how well it does there.
Mites: Very high
BER: Low
Foliage: Thin
Yield: Moderate
Keeping quality: High

Red Brandywine: The real thing, not imitations. Round 3" reds, slightly flattened, with smooth shoulders, almost no core, and no blemishes of any kind. The flesh is smooth and juicy, tending toward firm. Favor is zingy with sweetness to back it up, but not a huge amount of tomato flavor -- it's very far from bland, just without that classic combo of flavors that say "tomato". It's been a good performer in most respects, but the yield hasn't been as high as I expected. A good solid choice for market-quality round red slicers.
Mites: Average to low
BER: Average
Foliage: Moderate
Yield: Moderate
Keeping quality: Average

Sara's Galapagos: It struggled to get started this year, but it's come through now. Tiny (1/4-1/2") fruit which are either spheres or wide ovals, a brilliant deep red that stands out in the sun like jewels. Thick-skinned and resistant to cracking, not prone to dropping either. Seedy and juicy in the mouth, with a taste that seems like it should come from a large beefsteak rather than a tiny currant cross: tart, sweet, and full of tomato flavor. I like putting them in pasta salad because they nestle into the folds of the pasta, and they dry well into little sun-dried tomato morsels. Yields are high once it gets going. There's good reason this one has become so popular. The plant has a different growth habit, a legacy of its L. pimpinellifolium parentage: small, rounded leaflets, pale green, with weedy-looking stems that grow quickly into a lacy thicket. The smell of the leaves is different too, almost like citrus. I miss it in the years I don't grow it.
Mites: Low
BER: Never
Foliage: Moderate
Yield: High
Keeping quality: Excellent

Stump of the World: Another one that I changed my mind on. It was slow to get started, much like Sudduth Brandywine, putting out a few catfaced fruits on vines that looked kind of thin. By midseason, though, it's also keeping pace with Brandywine, producing clusters of light pink 3-4" fruit with smooth shoulders and only the occasional belly button. The vines are thicker than I thought, having grown into its neighbor (Vorlon), and the later fruit aren't exposed enough to have sunburn. The tomatoes are firm, juicy, and meaty, with an acidic zing and lots of tomato character. Not quite sweet enough for me, but a winner for a "classic" tomato lover.
Mites: Low
BER: Average to low
Foliage: Moderate
Yield: Moderate
Keeping quality: Average

Yellow Brandywine: As prolific as advertised. The plants are compact, like Jaune Negib, and loaded with 3-4" beefsteaks with smooth shoulders and the occasional green patch. It differs from Jaune Negib in turning a deep golden color rather than bright yellow, and keeping its firmness for over a week even past harvest. They lack a good stem joint, so they need clippers if you don't want to simply pull the whole calyx off the fruit. These are never soft, though they are juicy, and the solidity makes a good sandwich tomato (like Earl's Faux, it often has a sizeable nearly seedless center). The flavor isn't Jaune Negib's pleasant mildness, but rather an assertive tomato flavor with good sweet-acid balance. This is the tomato for people who think yellow tomatoes are bland. If I closed my eyes I might be able to tell it's not red, but only by a lack of the minor compounds I associate with lycopene-rich fruits; it would take a practiced palate to tell the difference, and maybe not then. They keep better than anything bigger than a cherry, too, so they can stay on the counter waiting for that perfect sandwich opportunity. The only downside I've found is that the variety appears to be a mite magnet despite its potato-leaf foliage, but the one near the sprinkler is doing well, so it may just be a factor in plot placement rather than a moratorium.
Mites: High
BER: Moderate
Foliage: Thick
Yield: High
Keeping quality: Excellent

Vorlon: Another workhorse. I got this variety for the name, but with its parentage (a cross between Prudens Purple and Cherokee Purple) it was almost a guaranteed winner. In past years it's given me 3" beefsteaks in large clusters, and I'm still getting a few of those, but with more water and food it's sized up to 4-4.5" inch fruits, truly huge. They tend toward catfacing even later in the season, with lobes, bad stitching and blossom-end cracking, radial cracks, and belly buttons; that said, there are a substantial number of blemish-free fruits to compensate. The color is different, a deep purplish-pink with dark green shoulders, and the flesh is almost the color of raw meat. They are somewhere between firm and soft, and very juicy. They lack that odd flavor characteristic of Cherokee Purple (I dislike it), ending up quite sweet with enough acidity to cut it, good tomato character, and a characteristic depth which is similar, in its own way, to the one that sets Brandywine apart. I've heard high praise from people I give Vorlons to, over and above what they say about the other tomatoes I grow... as far as I'm concerned, it's a peer to the ever-popular Cherokee Purple.
Mites: Low
BER: Average to low
Foliage: Thick
Yield: High
Keeping quality: Average

Comments

[amanda-nye.livejournal.com]

how do you fight the mites?

[luna-torquill.livejournal.com]

It's a matter of degree, really, trying to keep them down to a dull roar that doesn't badly impact the plants. I've lost whole rows to them in years past, and ended up with entire plants covered in webs and clumps of mites. Pretty ugly. My strategy these days:

1) Choose more resistant varieties. Wispy/droopy or finely-cut foliage types are out, thin foliage cover ones are questionable, and potato-leaf or rugose types are best. Within those categories, some do better than others (witness Yellow Brandy's mite susceptibility this year).

2) Feed the plants heavily. My soil is poor anyway, so I feed them enough to keep them actively growing all the time. That lets them replace mite-damaged leaves and keep their immune systems up.

3) Avoid water stress. That's the biggest trigger in mite infestations. I tripled the water allocation this year.

4) Wash down the plants occasionally to get any dust off. Mites love hot, dusty, dry leaves.

5) Increase humidity on hot days. My best spots for mite-battling are the ones that get hit by the edge of the sprinkler for the winter garden plot, which keeps the leaves clean and increases humidity enormously. It's hard to put another sprinkler out there, but I've considered it.

6) Take out plants which are succumbing to mites, to spare the neighbors.

Ultimately, I've come to expect a low degree of mite infestation on every plant by this time of year... but I've done well enough so far this time that all of them are still bearing well, and only a couple are really suffering defoliation. It's hard in years with lots of high heat, but I think next time we get one of those I'll install misters in each row, see how much that helps. I'll just cope with the weeds, I guess.

[doktor-weasel.livejournal.com]

Are there any good mite eating insects you could cultivate? I've loved the elegance of biological pest control ever since you introduced me to concept.

On a different but related topic, I'm wondering if you ever got a chance to do your white-fly project.

[luna-torquill.livejournal.com]

The only really good control for mites is... other mites. Unfortunately, predatory mites have significant effect only in greenhouse situations, so I'm kind of on my own in open-air environments.

I never did get the chance to do the whitefly evaluation... it's still kind of in the back of my mind, though. I have a bottle of Pantene if I ever do get to it.