It’s almost time to start those tomato seeds!
If you are new to gardening, choosing a variety of tomato you want to grow can be a wee bit overwhelming–but no worries, Mavis is here to help. {I’m using the term “help” loosely.}
First, decide what you will mostly be using your tomatoes for {i.e. for canning or fresh in your salads, etc.}. Second, knowing the difference between a determinate and indeterminate varieties helps you decide how much space you’ll need to grow the tomatoes and whether they’ll serve your purpose.
Determinate tomatoes tend to ripen all at once, over a period of 1-2 weeks, bearing one large crop. They are smaller, at about 3′-4′ {they are sometimes referred to as a bush tomato}. If you are growing your tomatoes in a container, determinate tomatoes are probably your best bet. Romas, most paste tomatoes, Better Bush, Ace and Silvery Fir are all examples of determinate tomatoes.
Indeterminate tomatoes bear fruit throughout the season. They typically have longer vines {they get 6′-12′ tall}, so they require a bit more space. They also need quite a bit of support {plus staking them to keep the fruit off the ground will prevent all sorts of rot problems}. Cherry tomatoes, Red & Yellow Pear, Brandywine, Beefstake, Sun Gold, and most Heirloom varieties are indeterminate.
When you are ordering your seeds, you can typically find DET or INDET on the packet somewhere, letting you know what variety you are dealing with.
These are the tomatoes I will be growing in my garden this year:
- Cherry Rainbow Blend {perfect for salads}
- Italian Roma {for eating fresh and sauce}
- Ace {for canning}
- Cherokee Purple { the best tomato on the PLANET!}
- Better Bush { for eating fresh}
- Principe Borghese {for roasting and dehydrating}
- Green Zebra {LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this one}
- Sun Gold {My daughters favorite}
- Red and Yellow Pear {great for snacking and on salads}
- Speckled Roman {A new variety I’m trying this in 2013}
- Black Krim {The HH’s favorite}
Hope this helps, and let me know what variety YOU will be choosing this year.
~Mavis
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I will be growing:
Ace – I grow Ace in a large pot. It is determinate, but mine produce all summer and are the best tasting fresh tomatoes I have ever had!
Yellow Brandywine – More tomatoes than I have ever seen on one plant! It keep going and going and going… Huge fruit. My seeds are mixed yellow and red (but color coded) so I may try a red Brandywine this year.
Mortgage Lifter – for canning. I have never tried it before. That “it” could go for Mortgage Lifter or canning tomatoes!
Sungold – a yellow/orange cherry. I grow it in a large container. My plants are usually sparsely leaved, but it has loads of one-bite fruit.
Yellow Pear – only because I got the seeds on clearance!
Super Sweet 100 – red cherry grown in a container.
Something black or purple, I haven’t found just the thing yet. I didn’t like Black Trifele last year. It had amazing production, but I just thought the flavor was so-so.
We have a large annual Master Gardeners fair at our fair grounds each May. I will find some new varieties there. Also, a woman sells tomatoes in the parking lot of a mini-market nearby. She will have some nice healthy ones if I can’t get seeds to do well.
I grew mortgage lifters last year, the plants can get very tall (as in 8′) if left untrimmed (I only found out this winter that it’s ok to trim tomato plants so they are bushier and not so tall). The plants produce a great deal and the fruit is very large (some of mine were softball sized) – and a bit prone to splitting if you have a dry spell followed by really heavy rains. They have a great, well-balanced flavor and I’d imagine they would be good for canning whole. I did find them a bit too watery for sauce, they took a very long time to cook down and I ended up “cheating” and adding canned tomato paste to get them to thicken up.
You have to try Chocolate Cherry! OMG, yum!!!
I need to set up my grow lights in the garage, I think… or maybe somewhere in the house, as the wind destroyed the plastic sheeting on my greenhouse & hubby needs to put up new.
Failed miserably at starting my own last year. They just never took off. I have no idea why!
Yes, my vote is Chocolate Cherry as well.
I accidentally grew four plants 2 years ago and was picking 2 gallons a week! Luckily my friends at work would fight over them!
Our season just about to end, but i have snuck in a few late tomatoes. Varieties this year were Tommy Toe ( a cherry type – heirloom), Granny’s Throwing Tomato ( just cos I liked the name. And I saved sone seed from a supermarket grape tomato called perroni. My uncle had great success with these so i am giving it a go it. Otherwise we tried a few grafted ones ( wouldn’t waste the extra money again) and few “suprise” tomatoes that come up from the compost.
I love the surprise tomatoes. They are always so much fun.
I love Tommy Toe tomatoes, when everything else is dying due to drought or disease my Tommy Toes keep going strong producing all season and they taste good too, though the skins are a little thicker than some cherry toms.
What is your favorite way to support tomato plants? Stakes? Cages? Some alternative or combination of both?
Both. I think I like the giant tomato cages best though.
I agree. I have large square ones that I’ve had for years. They flatten out for storage. Now they make round ones that also flatten for storage.
I keep my tomatoes to a manageable by nipping out the central leader when they get to about my height. I also take off all the lower leaves and many around the fruit.
Its summer here and I am waiting for my fruit to ripen. I grow heirloom tomatoes only nd have about 16 varieties trialing this year. From memory Cherokee purple and pink, Armish, Moneymaker, beefsteak, orange and red roma, white giant, black from Tula, reisenstraub, green sausage, black cherry, gold nugget cherry, white cherry, and bi colour cherry. All have fruit on them but have not yet ripened. Is the first year I have grown tomatoes outdoors but my greenhouse blew away.
. They are a lot later ripening outdoors too.
I also found some seeds of a variety called ‘Sub Arctic’ which it is said will grow on into winter in a greenhouse. I have four growing to try. They will be planted in the garden this week and be given a plastic greenhouse in about a month as the days get cooler. It will be interesting to see if it lives up to its name. Will let you know if its ok with Mavis. .
When it comes to tomatoes I go crazy. This year I will grow:
Beaverlodge Slicer – early
Beefsteak – this one is always good
Tiffin Mennonite
Rutgers – this is the one that they took the seed to outer space
Brandywine
Pineapple – a nice large yellow with splashes of orange
Fantastic
Tangerine
Green Zebra
Speckled Roman – new for me this year too
Japanese Trifele Black – new this year. I hope it’s good
Five Cherry Tomatoes
Gardener’s Delight
Sn Gold – my favorite cherry too
Cherry Buzz
Orange Paruche
Chocolate
Sounds like a lot but I love tomatoes and I usually have over 20 plants in my garden. This year I’ve purchased some of those big bags (30 gallon) to try and plant some determinate tomatoes in that I can set in sunny spaces in my yard to give me more growing space. Hope it works.
SunGold. Can’t live without it. Tried it on a whim a few years ago and loved it more than anything. Will try starting it on my own this year. I may still have some old ones hanging out in the cold storage… I wonder if I could start seeds from those instead of purchasing seeds? I”ll have to investigate it more.
Super Sweet 100s
Yellow pear probably… for salads… kids don’t eat these as well as they eat the others.
Roma for sauce/freezing
Juliettes or something similar… fresh eating/salads
Something for slicing… considering Brandywine
Just when our plants are about to produce, we hit temps too high to set fruit. It really sets back production. My goal is to somehow get started a bit earlier so I can get some fruit set before we hit the heat. So I want a high producer. I’ll take slicer recommendations. I plan on using milk jug cloches to help out the start.
We’ve been growing Sun Gold ever since trying them from a roadside stand. So tasty!
Penelope, where do you live? We live in Central FL (Deland) and that seems to happen to us too (the early temps setting back production). We’re trying raised beds this year since the soil is so sandy – bringing in GOOD dirt. We’ve only been in the area 3 years, so we’d be happy for any advice!
We live in the intermountain west at 4500 ft. We can be consistently over 90 as the high in late June (too hot to set fruit), but are told that Mother’s day is the earliest to plant tomatoes. Doesn’t leave much time for the plants to adapt to transplant.
I’m hoping to form raised beds after tilling the garden and then use seeds I start outside in mini greenhouses. They will experience a wider range of temperatures so I hope the transplant shock and time to adapt will shorten. I’ll also use the milk jugs as cloches. Hopefully something will help. Otherwise I’ll have to buy plants again and cross my fingers.
I feel like no matter how much I learn about gardening, I still don’t know enough.
Boy, ain’t THAT the truth! The education never ends – I guess that’s part of the fun.
Supper sweet 100′s! My husband doesn’t like tomatoes so I grow the smaller fruited varieties so I can enjoy the tomatoes as a snack rather than “contaminating” dinner
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If you’ve never tried Bloody Butcher it’s not only fun to say (no, really, give it a shot. See? It’s fun! Try it with a pirate accent and it’s even better.) but the most fabulous tomato we’ve ever grown. We get them from a local supplier, who suggested them to us because we live along the northern edge of the Monterey Bay in California and these grow well here, but they’d do well where you live too and they are the most tomato tasting tomato I’ve ever had. This past summer I spent days picking them and making tomato sandwiches with nothing on the bread but a touch of mayo and tomatoes with a bit of salt and freshly ground pepper. OMG, they were amazing. Now I’m longing for summer again…
I’m still pondering on a couple of varieties, but two of the “must-have” slicing tomatoes for our garden are Kellogg’s Breakfast, a big, golden-yellow heirloom, and Old German, another heirloom that produces HUGE red-and-yellow striped, flavorful monsters. Last year our first harvested Old German was 2 pounds 9 ounces!
I’m a big fan of Brandywine for flavor, even though it’s doesn’t produce huge yields (try a grafted Brandywine for super yields), and any of the San Marzano/Super Marzano Roma varieties for sauce, roasted tomatoes, etc.
I may try a Sun Gold cherry in a pot on the deck this year, since garden space is limited. If I had more room, I’d probably plant 20 varieties.
Can’t wait to get my order in for the starts!
Isn’t Green Zebra the BEST? I had only one plant last summer and got about 9 pounds of tomatoes from it! I want more next summer, so I can give some away and let people discover the amazing taste. As for red tomatoes, I guess I’ll go with brandywine, my go-to because of the unsurpassable taste quality. The fruits are huge and perfect for sandwiches (although, in August, we use Brandywines in everything, there’s not much they can’t do). I’m still undecided as to the cherry tomatoes… We’ll see!
Happy seed starting to all!
Can anyone…and everyone…lol…recommend who they buy their heirloom seeds from? I am totally going heirloom this year….
Thanks guys!
I buy most of my seeds and starts from Territorial Seed in Cottage Grove, Oregon – great selection and service (plus, for this Portlander, they’re more or less “local”).