[QUOTE=heirloomtomaguy;615720]Trust me they made a good decision[/QUOTE]

I just tacked a dollar worth of that closeout white cherry on my order the other day....oh well, we'll see.

Quote:
Originally Posted by [B]AlittleSalt[/B] [URL="http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?p=609664#post609664"][IMG]http://www.tomatoville.com/images/buttons/viewpost.gif[/IMG][/URL]
[I]I haven't tried a lot of hybrids, but these taste good to us:

Early Girl
Sungold
Big Beef
Sweet 100
Supersweet Cherry 100
Momotaro
Celebrity[/I]


[B]Have you tried the other gold / yellow cherry tomato that Tomato Growers sells??? Im asking because it is supposed to be crack resistant. [/B]

I missed seeing this one. Which other gold / yellow cherry tomato that Tomato Growers sells are you talking about? But probably not.

Early Girl F1 tastes pretty different in different soils (not just with more or less water). It also tastes a lot different depending on how ripe you let it get. People tend to be on both ends of the spectrum for how much they like the taste.

I think it tastes better in clay-type soils, harvested when still kind of orange.

I've grown less than a dozen hybrids so far, but the best-tasting one was Burpee's Black Truffle, hands-down; I think seeds are available only by mail-order, which is a shame, because the flavor is really good. The fruit look a lot like Japanese Black Trifele, but Burpee's claims it's an "improvement" on the "Siberian heirloom Black Pear."

Hey guys, I came across this today when I was looking for some seeds, there are a few I have not tried.

[url]http://extension.psu.edu/plants/vegetable-fruit/research-reports/report-high-tunnel-fresh-market-slicer-tomato-variety-trial-2011[/url]

Mark, I was at a talk last month put on by the guy who ran the trials in your link. He now works for a fert company that has some interesting stuff. Lots of biologicals and chelated stuff like chelated mag. He says chelated mag sulfate is superior to regular mag sulfate and can't believe hydro-gardens doesn't mention this.
They are really big on the silicon too.
The have a product the basically combines rootshield, actinovate, and companion into one product. Also has humic acid, kelp, sugars, and amino acids. They really remind me of the stuff that Aptus was doing in the info you sent last year.
I just got their recent newsletter that had trial results from 2016. Brandy Boy was the champ with 44 lbs per plant. That is in a high tunnel. All the other plants were 20's to low 40's too. All treated the same, just different varieties.
I'll see if I can post it somehow.

Attachment fail...

I think it must be because their products can give out perfect leaf samples when they are analyzed, so maybe they don't feel there is a need. I will ask Mike the next time I talk to him. I have not seen much on the Silica front these days, guess I will have to go ask some pot growers whats going on, they will know. LOL

I did have good luck with BB, but I like Crnkovic better, so it's my pink beefsteak go too.

[QUOTE=AlittleSalt;620913]Quote:
Originally Posted by [B]AlittleSalt[/B] [URL="http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?p=609664#post609664"][IMG]http://www.tomatoville.com/images/buttons/viewpost.gif[/IMG][/URL]
[I]I haven't tried a lot of hybrids, but these taste good to us:

Early Girl
Sungold
Big Beef
Sweet 100
Supersweet Cherry 100
Momotaro
Celebrity[/I]


[B]Have you tried the other gold / yellow cherry tomato that Tomato Growers sells??? Im asking because it is supposed to be crack resistant. [/B]

I missed seeing this one. Which other gold / yellow cherry tomato that Tomato Growers sells are you talking about? But probably not.[/QUOTE]

I grew Sunsugar last year and will again :Dthis year. Great production and flavor and cracking was not a problem. Pretty big plants.

Mark, have you done your own custom F1's? I know you have stabilized a number of crosses, how were the F1's of your own crosses?

I only have done a few crosses myself but the F1's were all actually pretty great on their own. I just didn't pay them much mind because I had something else in mind and paid all my attention to the F2 selections. Just wondering, you could make an exclusive custom one and save lots of seeds pretty easily in your controlled environment.
KarenO

Karen, great question. I do sell plants, and eventually would like the bulk of my plant sales to be my own stuff, and varieties from friends too. I also sell the classic heirlooms and hybrids also. I have Mat-Su, and Ak Sunrise and Sunset F6 F7, and a couple semi stable, and a bunch of crosses, F1 -F3. Sherry has several in the F6- F7 range, and many semi stable too. You will really like the stuff she is doing, all are very early and have good tastes, and they are so different from each other.

Anyway, to answer your question the best I can with limited experience. I cannot quite capture the earliness, and perfect shaped fruit of Brandywine x Bloody Butcher F1, and they are tasty too. The later generations look more like a typical heirloom with a little irregular shapes, are bigger, are also almost a week later to ripen, but they do taste a bit better to me.
On another note, for me the F1 negates BB. Maybe for a super early good tomato, that's as early, has a perfect shape, tastes better, and is bigger than BB, the F1 may be hard to beat. So I think it is up to the grower, you may choose a different one than I would. If we are dealing with good tomatoes, most offspring is pretty good too, in many combinations also.
A couple other semi stable ones are, PL Black Krim x PL Early Girl. The F1 is much earlier than the F4's, but I like the taste of three different versions that have been segregated better than the F1. Since EG is a hybrid, I had a few variations to select from, everything from small red tomatoes to purple beefsteaks, a very fun cross to tinker with. The F1 is more consistent, even though a hybrid was used, but I really like the semi stable ones.

BB X Dester follows the same pattern..

I am not sure if a pattern is clear though, but capturing that exact F1 has been tough for me. Personally I like stabilizing them, and think there are many opportunities in growing out crosses to get something that is good, and different.
Sherry may have an opinion on this, she has a few lines she has stabilized.

[QUOTE=Black Krim;616228]BVV, Wow, interesting observations. Not always a better flavor results with the dry method.

I have a greater appreciation for the controlled climate growing conditions that provide a marketable fruit producers can count on.[/QUOTE]

Well it certainly intensifies flavor, so I guess if the flavor is good to begin with it would usually be "better" but for SDV it was so intense it was almost bitter. I don't like red tomatoes though so there is that.

I want to try dry farming a few grafted Sweet Ozark Orange this year. They have a very good flavor that I feel could possibly be on the "best tomato ever!" level if I can succeed in intensifying them.

[QUOTE=creeker;621199]I grew Sunsugar last year and will again :Dthis year. Great production and flavor and cracking was not a problem. Pretty big plants.[/QUOTE]

I'm growing Sunsugar and Suncherry Extra Sweet for the first time this year .

I agree with the others who've mentioned Big Beef. It's pretty good and produces well.

We also liked Jet Star for a medium sized red, and the current favorite is Ramapo. It's a proprietary variety from Rutgers university. It has medium to large red fruits and tastes very good. We only grow a half dozen plants, and Ramapo makes the cut every year.

On another forum Big Beef, with 25 reviews, rates an average 3.8/5 for taste. With 12 reviews, original Goliath rates 4.4/5 for taste. They both rated 4.1/5 for yield, and they have similar tolerances. Goliath is about a week earlier. I know that Big Beef has a very large following here, and I haven't grown it, but Goliath is on my grow list for the first time this year.

Steve