[QUOTE=stormymater;259194]Rio Grande - all day long. They look like ridiculous Christmas trees covered in Easter Eggs at first flush & continue with subsequent sets. Very drought & disease resistant for me here. I use Franchi seed.
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Thanks Stormy, Rio Grande should fill her needs - it does look like a "standard roma tomato". Franchi has an amazing seed count/package!

Granadero bar none. They are tall plants, but **extremely** productive. Had 38kg per square meter planted on double row system. They also were the best bar none in terms of culinary attributes.

Just seeing this thread now, and roma is defined as a shape and size and many of you are suggesting varieties that are not that shape and size.

Yes, I introduced Opalka and Sarnowski Polish Plum and Heidi and Tadesse and Wuhib and quite a few others that one can use for sauces, although I and many others would add some good hearts or dense fleshed beefsteaks b'c as a type, many so called paste tomatoes don't taste that good and are also prone to BER and Early Blight.

Steve, my list of very good roma shape/size, would include:

Mama Leone
Heidi
Martino's Roma
Wuhib

...... to name a few.

And if you look at our Tadesse project in the Wanted subforum you'll see that soon we'll have the variety Tadesse back in circulation. Both Tadesse and Wuhib were brought back to me from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia by a former student, Tadesse Wuhib. And Heidi was brought back to me from Cameroon by another student named Heidi Iyok.

For sure there are a lot of paste tomatoes but not that many are truly roma shape and size other than the standard generically named Roma, which, well, you get my drift.;)

Ja, Opalka and Sarnowski Polish Plum are paste tomatoes, but not roma shaped.

Why the only roma shaped request? it seems to me that that's not in the best interest of the customers, although I've named a few that I think will work fine. And I have no idea if this market gardener is going to label the "romas" that would be sold, and I wonder if foreign sounding names might be a problem. Hopefully not, but I don't know anything about the area/customers, but it being CA, I guess anything goes.:lol:

Carolyn-evert time you bring up Addis ababa I think of the book Cutting For Stone, about a young doctor from there. Have you read it?

gourmetgardener and Carolyn,

Thank you for the suggestions, I'll make sure to pass them along.

Carolyn, I was under the impression that the produce manager of the co-op wanted something 'safe' (recognizable) to sell, so they requested "standard roma types". It is a start-up co-op so I imagine the selection will grow with experience and time.

Steve