This year our emphases was one mostly paste/sauce tomatoes but we still grow a few slicers and salad tomatoes. The following list are ones that will find a place in our garden next year and hopefully many years to come. So far we have over ten containers full of sauce in the freezer which is even more than last year and we aren't done yet!
It should be noted that we had a difficult time with disease this year (some which started early on) but the plants are still hanging on with fruits that we hope will ripen soon.
~Sauce~
1) Rinaldo* (sweetness beyond belief for a paste--gives Opalka a run for it's money--drawback was more disease prone than Opalka)
2) Dagestanskiy* (perfect for sauce and the taste is incredible)
3) Opalka (you always wish you had planted more of these--seeds from two different sources of which we preferred Marianna's seeds)
Note 9/14/11 -- I mentioned seeds from two different sources and the reason we liked Marianna's seeds better was because they were solid whereas the other source (Tomato Growers) was hollow in parts of the tomato--taste/production seemed the same for both. I will still buy from Tomato Growers because of their excellent selection of OP/Heirloom tomatoes.
4) Spadaro* (Thank you, Carolyn, for saving these fantastic tasting tomatoes)
5) Justine Heart* (there's a reason Tania made a note at her website that these were a favorite, absolutely excellent flavor)
5) Mikes Italian Heart* (taste and good solid paste)
6) Reif's Italian Heart* (wow, holy cow a HUGE tomato--planting many more of these next year!)
7) Slankand's* (meaty and excellent taste)
8) Joe's Plum* (extraordinary delicious flavor--I am eating one right now as I type and the flavor lingers wonderfully on the tongue--I'd even use it as a slicer it's that good except hubby says the skin is too tough for that)
~Slicers~
9) Dr. Lyle (hubby says you can feed a family of twelve with one fruit, I disagree--I can eat the whole tomato all by myself
)
10) KBX (It looks like KBX will be our yellow slicer over Yellow Brandywine--I've tried growing Yellow Brandywine a couple of years now and they don't live up to the memories I had of them years ago--these have been mealy and tasteless. KBX has wonderful flavor and disease resist being the last to show any yellowing of leaves, a true, well-deserved winner!)
11) Cherokee Purple (Never, never disappoints--the king of the garden in taste!)
12) Mortgage Lifter (Another tomato that isn't quite living up to the memories I had of it in the past but still quite a good tomato--because of space issues we might be looking to replace it with something new next year--any suggestions would be appreciated
)
~Salad or Cherry~
13) Purple Haze (Another tomato that never disappoints--we will always have Purple Haze in our garden for taste!)
14) Galina (Reseeded itself from last year--hubby absolutely loves this tomato so it looks like Galina will be a keeper in our garden from deliberately saved seeds this time)
Added today 9/14/11 for the "Sauce" category:
15) Ernesto* - Huge, excellent taste and productive--a heavy tomato, slicing into it you'll find it's all meat, just wonderful.
* These tomatoes were grown from seed obtained from Tania's website "Tatiana's TOMATObase Seed Catalog"