Quote:
Originally Posted by ContainerTed
Mark, at more than $1.00 per seed, Johnny's and Syngenta can keep them. But, the pictures I saw in my search gave me the impression that it was another version of the "hot house" tomatoes with the vine attached that all the grocery stores serve up this time of year.
Note the green sepals at the stem end. They are small and sharply tipped. Pretty tomato, but very commercial. If the ones in the stores are Bigdena or Big Dena, then the taste is not worth talking about. They still pick them green and gas 'em til they're red.
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That's not true for greenhouse tomatoes. There is a stigma about greenhouse tomatoes that isn't warranted. Really field grown tomatoes in commercial production are much more likely to be tasteless and mealy and poor quality than a greenhouse tomato. I can't speak to what a giant greenhouse grower does (although from things I've read and videos I've seen they appear to let them at least turn orange before picking), but almost every greenhouse grower I know picks their tomatoes with color on them. No one that I know gases their tomatoes to ripen them. I know that is the standard practice for field production, but the advantage to greenhouse grown is being able to allow the fruit to stay on the vine longer.
In general greenhouse tomatoes are far superior to field grown tomatoes when you are discussing the standard red beefsteak. Of course a heirloom will have better flavor, but a locally grown greenhouse tomato is going to be head and shoulders above your local field grown hybrid.
As for Big Dena, it is a beefsteak tomato, not the truss type you see in stores still on the vine, they all won't ripen at the same time on the vine so they are picked individually. I would compare it to Geronimo as far as habit and size and shape, although it has better flavor. I generally prune down to 3, sometimes 4 fruit per cluster and keep them on a single vine in the greenhouse and have fruits 8-10 ounces on average. I have only grown Big Dena once, but plan on planting them again next season.