Big Beef Plus
 

[url]https://www.johnnyseeds.com/vegetables/tomatoes/beefsteak-tomatoes/big-beef-plus-f1-tomato-seed-4471.html#q=big%2Bbeef%2Bplus&lang=en_US&start=1[/url]

Anyone know anything about this tomato?

Improved Big Beef? New tomato taking advantage of a trusted name? Something or nothing?

I'll try it.

Johnny's has a reputation for offering excellent hybrid varieties. The "now with improved flavor" might be a stretch. Looking at the picture of the sliced tomato, it has more of a globe interior structure than a beefsteak, in my opinion. It seems to have a good disease resistance package, if that's what you're looking for.

They're also releasing Better Boy Plus, Celebrity Plus, and Lemon Boy Plus. I think as you suggested, this may just be a way to cash in on very valuable names.

The Seminis product sheet for Better Boy Plus says 80 days to maturity and average weight of 180-230 grams. Original Better Boy is 75 DTM and average weight of maybe 250-300 grams. It would take a lot of improved flavor and disease resistance to make up for later and smaller.

I agree with Tormato, that sliced Big Beef Plus on Johnny's website does not look like a beefsteak tomato. Hard to know what to make of that picture.

It is pretty tough to take one pic of a cut tomato and be representative of the breed. The cut one looks like an undersized big beef, to me. A good sized, well developed big beef will have 6 or more chambers, I count that one as 4 chambers.



I'll admit though, I'm growing tomatoes for a lot of years but still don't know what a "beefsteak" tomato is.


I can see the PLUS has only 30 seeds per packet, 2 extra resistances that I don't need, 2 more DTM, and not an AAS winner.

The original Big Beef has been the mainstay of my tomato patch for years. It's about the all around best tomato I've ever grown. I can't imagine any "plus" that would make much difference to me...

Last year and the year before Big Beef Plus must have been the tomato that was in the garden; it was small, round, red and average. It was disease free (but then all those year's tomatoes were healthy). Big Beef must do well other places than in my patch. Seed was from reputable sources, different each year. Just not impressed.

Plus, is probably code, for minus :)