5 - beginning to end- but only five- new rules!

[amideutch]

Grew them all this year. Ami
KBX
Black from Tula PL
Cowlicks
Akers West Virginia PL
Burgandy Traveler

[b54red]

Big Beef
1st Prize
Cabernet
Marianna's Peace

The top three are hybrids in order of disease tolerance and all are decent tasting tomatoes.
My Marianna's Peace are still alive after several disease onslaughts killed off many others in the garden and the taste is wonderful. MP was a steady producer through the heat of summer and deep into the fall. The only tomato to live longer in the garden this year was Big Beef which was planted a month earlier and is still alive. If you want to try Marianna's Peace just PM me your address and I will send you some seed. Bill

[newgardener_tx]

My top five:
Cherokee Purple
Spudakee
Marianna's Peace
Big Beef
Celebrity (produce crazy in spring and fall, have 30+ on one plant now, may sacrifice to the snow today though)

[geoguy_TN]

I've had consistently good luck with:

1) Cherokee Purple
2) Eva Purple Ball

Those two are the only ones that I am sure to grow from year to year (I also only grow maybe 6 or 7 varieties/year). Last year I also tried Big Beef and it was very prolific and produced throughout the season.

[geeboss]

Mule Team

http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Mule_Team

Cuostralee

http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Cuostralee

Chapman

http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Chapman

Donskoi

http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Donskoi

Carol Chyko's Big Paste

http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Carol_Chyko's_Big_Paste



George

[daylilydude]

Summer Cider
Spears Tennessee Green
Vorlon
Pork chop
Blagojevich (working name) Brandywine x NAR

[habitat_gardener]

No one has mentioned Druzba yet. Does it do well in the south? Here in the west, it's been one of my favorites. I ate my last one a couple weeks ago. Great balanced flavor, juicy, good production. Smaller than many of the ones so far recommended (less than a half pound). It's also in Carolyn J. Male's book "100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden," which is a great source of noncommercial (unhyped) recommendations and a good starting point.

I'd also recommend a green when ripe. The one I've grown for a few years is Aunt Ruby's German Green -- also juicy with balanced flavor. It's fun to hand a ripe one to someone and watch their face!

I grew Black Krim one year. It's good as is but very perishable, so I was giving lots away until I started cooking with them. They made an incredibly rich sauce.

[camochef]

Having grown hundreds of tomatoes for a few years now, it's not the easiest thing to cut the list to just five. My main goal is taste, production, and a slicer, which eliminatesthe Sun Golds.

1. Cowlick's Brandywine
2. Amazon Chocolate
3. Sandul Moldovan
4. Lillian Maciejewski's Poland Pink
5. Barlow Jap

Alternatives:

Brandywine-Glicks
Tarasenko6

I could easily add a dozen more that are just about as good, but these meet your criteria, with the cowlicks brandywine being the most productive tomato for quite a few years now.
Camo

[b54red]

Camo, you seem to be the expert on Cowlick's Brandywine. I am going to try to grow them this next season. I assume it needs to be put out early in the garden and will make a very large vine? I have tried various Brandywines in the past and the only one that has succeeded was a hybrid version Brandy Boy. Usually what happens with them is they die before any fruit gets large enough or the vines just won't set fruit in our heat and humidity. Even the Brandy Boy is a hit and miss thing down here, with a success rate for me of around 30%. Two years ago I only got 2 fruit out of 2 plants, but this year was better with 2 plants producing some good fruit before a sudden failure of both. I really love the taste but it is frustrating dealing with these finicky varieties. If you have any hints on growing Cowlicks please let me know. I had a very productive year over all this year, in fact it was the best year in over 30 years of growing tomatoes. I still feel like a novice when it comes to growing some of these OPs and am trying to learn as much as I can. I would like to replace most of the less than tasty hybrids with better tasting tomatoes; but I do want to have decent production.
I am unfamiliar with the other tomatoes on your list. Can you elaborate on them? Thanks, Bill

[camochef]

Originally Posted by b54red

Camo, you seem to be the expert on Cowlick's Brandywine. I am going to try to grow them this next season. I assume it needs to be put out early in the garden and will make a very large vine? I have tried various Brandywines in the past and the only one that has succeeded was a hybrid version Brandy Boy. Usually what happens with them is they die before any fruit gets large enough or the vines just won't set fruit in our heat and humidity. Even the Brandy Boy is a hit and miss thing down here, with a success rate for me of around 30%. Two years ago I only got 2 fruit out of 2 plants, but this year was better with 2 plants producing some good fruit before a sudden failure of both. I really love the taste but it is frustrating dealing with these finicky varieties. If you have any hints on growing Cowlicks please let me know. I had a very productive year over all this year, in fact it was the best year in over 30 years of growing tomatoes. I still feel like a novice when it comes to growing some of these OPs and am trying to learn as much as I can. I would like to replace most of the less than tasty hybrids with better tasting tomatoes; but I do want to have decent production.
I am unfamiliar with the other tomatoes on your list. Can you elaborate on them? Thanks, Bill

Bill,
I'm not an expert on anything, but I am responsible for naming and distributing Cowlick Brandywines throughout the world. I've never grown them myself outside of this southcentral Pennsylvania area. I have had others do well with them in Texas, Mississippi, Alabama,and even Florida. Most were on the second planting of the year down there and they are looking forward to trying them on the first planting this year. Many have already started them (in greenhouses). I would suggest contacting those southern growers either with a PM or posting on their existing comments that for the most part can be found at that other forum under the Heirloom Gardening forum.
As far as my "secrets" go the only thing I can say is I do start them very early, which was not such a good thing this past season as most of my early starts faired much worse than the later ones. (a very cold and wet year up here).
In addition, brandywines have a larger blossom than many other tomatoes, which may lead to some pollination difficulties. I overcome this by shaking my plants about twice a day. When I first started doing this, the plants were grown between two fences and I could do 8-10 plants at a time just by shaking the fences gently.
Since then, I've gone to wire cages made from cattle fencing, so each cage gets shaken by a gentle hand at least twice a day, for the most part. (I don't go out in a rainstorm to just shake cages). This does seem to help most blossoms to pollinate and if it doesn't get too cold they will produce tomatoes. Check some of the pictures in my postings at idig and you'll see the amount tomatoes on the plants is pretty decent.
The first Cowlick Brandywine produced its first three ripe tomatoes on June 29 and it produced steadily through Oct 31 of that year when I pulled the plant which was still full of green tomatoes. (there was a killing frost that night). It produced well over 100 lbs of tasty tomatoes.
The few years after that may not have been as successful, but the weather wasn't near suited for tomatoes either, still it was the most productive variety in my gardens. It may not have been the best as far as taste, but always the best in production. This year I placed it at #9 as far as taste as later planted varieties did do better.
As far as other listed varieties:
Amazon Chocolate is a large chocolate skinned tomato with green shoulders, original seed was purchased from Amishland a few years ago. It has done great for me the past couple years. Heavy tomato with great taste. Has done well in both wet and dry years. Ranked it #2 this year. Probably my #3-4 favorite tomato now.
Sandul Moldovan is a deep pink beefsteak that has great productivity also. Most get to be around a pound or slightly less. Taste is fantastic, sweet but not overpoweringly so. Ranked it at #4 this year, was another top 5 last year.
Lillian Maciejewski's Poland Pink was seeds I got from a gardener in the mid-west that got the seeds from an elderly neighbor that had brought them over from poland many years earlier, a true family heirloom, and one of the best new varieties that I tried this year. One that will remain on my favorites list for a long time to come. Might be pretty hard to come by these seeds for a while, but I'm sure it's popularity will increase tremendously as its fame spreads. A truely Super tomato which I ranked at #5 this past season.
Barlow Jap was another family heirloom from a gardener at idig. You can follow the entire story in the forums at idig as it created a bit of a controversy there with someone wanting to rename it for political correctiveness. It is a great tomato and I thank toomanytomatoes for preserving it from her grandfathers gardens after it had supposedly been smuggled into this country after WW2.
Brandywine-Glicks is another pink brandywine that came from Amishland. Very close in taste to the Cowlicks, and this year they were gigantic, unfortunately they don't produce as well as the Cowlicks do. Still better producing than Sudduth's Strain and Better tasting too! Another that I'll always be planting.
Tarasenko6 came from a grower in Texas, who was very generous with her seeds and had some wonderful tomatoes. She is very well known on this forum and I will leave it to her to offer more information on this fantastic red tomato, which made my top ten this year.
Hope that long-winded explaination helps somewhat. Hope you have a great year ahead and I hope that the Cowlicks do especially well for you down there.
Camo

[dice]

[brief side-track]

On the Brandywine's flowers interfering with pollenation:
I recall reading something to that effect, about the structure
of the Brandywine flower (or maybe beefsteak flowers in
general) interfering with complete pollenation, but I do not
think it is merely the size of the flower that is responsible.
The reason that I doubt that is because I grew two of this
little plant called Bychiy Glaz this last year
( http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Bychiy_Glaz ).

Neither plant got over 3' tall (kind of a droopy, heart type plant
with weak stems), but they had lots of flowers, and more than
half of the flowers were those large flowers that we informally
refer to as "marigold type". In full bloom, it was the strangest
looking set of flowers on a tomato plant that I have ever seen.

Those huge flowers on those two little plants had no problem
with pollenation, and almost all of them set fruit. So I would
guess that it is not the size of the Brandywine flower that
is responsible for any pollenation problems that it may have
relative to other cultivars that set fruit more easily, rather
something else about the internal structure of the flowers.

Edit:
PS: Bychiy Glaz was a productive little plant. Once it started to
set fruit, early mid-season, production was non-stop until frost
and nicely spaced out. So I would say more semi-determinate
than determinate, despite the small size of the plant (kind of
like Aurora in that respect). I found the flavor not particularly
sweet, but it was not at all bland, and it made great sauce.