largest earliest best-tasting

[maf]

Habitat Gardener, if you are interested in trialling Raspberry Beret F1 against the other candidates please PM me your addy. It hits all four of your criteria, in my humble opinion, and was the earliest slicer for me this year and also for another grower in a different region.

[Cole_Robbie]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

no, Jet Star F1 and Jetsetter F1 are not related at all.

ok. Thank you.

[Alpinejs]

Carolyn....you really know how to hurt a person. I am from Calif. and only due to the
"early" hype,, have grown early girl 3 times. IMHO, early girl rivals the store boughts and
not much better. But then, I have come to the conclusion that commercial growers
want a round, red mater with a tough skin that can survive a long truck ride, is disease
resistant and basically all ripens at the same time and are not concerned about flavor in
the least. They may grow them here in Calif., but I bet we eat them less frequently than
the majority of residents of other states. We truck them out as fast as we can to the
"gourmets" in other states. LOL

[Caspian Pink]

Habitat Gardener,
Black Krim, Anna Russian would meet your criteria based on my experience...

[b54red]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

Jet Setter is Jet Star improved, right? Do you like it better? My grandparents have grown Jet Star for a long time and love that variety.

Jetsetter is a hybrid with resistance to two races of fusarium which you probably don't need to worry about up there. I agree with Carolyn about Moreton and haven't grown Jet Star; but from the number of people recommending it I would think it would be tastier than Jetsetter.

[swamper]

Dora came in weeks ahead of the other large tasty slicers this year, and the flavor yield and fruit quality was as good as any I grew.

[remy]

My Early Girl experience~
When I first bought my home, I made a tomato garden. I went to a local nursery and bought tomato seedlings. I planted a couple varieties. The plants grew well, and then I get my first ripe tomatoes. You guessed it Early Girls. Well, I bit into them and was never so disappointed in my life. I was expecting them to taste like how I remembered the tomatoes of my youth tasting.
It all turned out well through since I had made a garden, my MIL gave me a few Organic Garden magazines she had, and I found an article or two on heirloom tomatoes (Carolyn was probably interviewed.) I requested catalogs advertised in the mag by mailing away for them. (Geeze, before the internet everything was so different!) I know I got the Pinetree one. So I started growing from seed. One of the first varieties I grew was Prudens Purple. Thankfully I picked a great one since once I tasted that I knew that heirlooms were what I was remembering from my childhood.
Remy

[Cole_Robbie]

I am really surprised at all of the bad Early Girl experiences. I don't know if my local climate and soil are just better for that variety (there are some commercial tomato growers locally), or if it's just a matter of less discriminating taste. I also grew them in buckets in my greenhouse to get early tomatoes in May and June. I thought the bucket tomatoes were good for being that early. I'd call them "ok" as far as flavor. I also grew a "container's choice" next to it under the same conditions - those tomatoes were disgusting and I didn't eat any of them, so I am at least a tiny bit discriminating. As soon as the soil-grown tomatoes come in, I throw out the bucket plants. The soil tomatoes are very noticeably better.

Someone else mentioned Carbon as a great early tomato and I agree. Black Krim was also pretty early for me and produced into the fall. I am not a fan of it's texture, but the taste is as good for me as Carbon. I think Black Krim would be better for me if I don't let it fully ripen before eating it. Carbon texture remains firm when fully ripe and holds up well for a much longer time than Black Krim when sitting on the kitchen counter. Black Krim just seems to melt after a couple of days on the counter.

Early Girl seems to be one of those love it or hate it varieties. As Carolyn said, it seems to be the California state tomato. I read somewhere that many folks in California call it Dirty Girl because it seems to get "down and dirty" as a reliable tomato in the cooler climates of California.

Ted

[doublehelix]

My observations tell me that every ounce a tomato fruit has to gain will add to the days to maturity. There are some exceptions, but for the most part the bigger the tomato, the longer it takes to get that way.

I personally like tomatoes in the 100 gram range because I can always eat an entire tomato and not have to deal with any leftovers.

If you could live with that size I could recommend several.

A new to me variety this year that I thought really performed at both ends of the season was Quedlinburger Fruhe Liebe, but it is small.




http://doublehelixfarms.com/Quedlinburger-Fruhe-Liebe

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

I am really surprised at all of the bad Early Girl experiences. I don't know if my local climate and soil are just better for that variety (there are some commercial tomato growers locally), or if it's just a matter of less discriminating taste. I also grew them in buckets in my greenhouse to get early tomatoes in May and June. I thought the bucket tomatoes were good for being that early. I'd call them "ok" as far as flavor. I also grew a "container's choice" next to it under the same conditions - those tomatoes were disgusting and I didn't eat any of them, so I am at least a tiny bit discriminating. As soon as the soil-grown tomatoes come in, I throw out the bucket plants. The soil tomatoes are very noticeably better.

Hard to worry about taste when you don't even get a tomato, or if you do it is a tiny malformed desiccated mutant.

Two things about early girl here. If you plant it too early it typically dies. It doesn't do well at all with water logged roots in cold weather. If you wait till the standard planting time, it grows well enough to start but when the heat hits later it dies.

Apparently, at least in my garden, there is not enough good growing weather between the early wet cold spring floods and the Dog days of summer drought. And early girl doesn't have the ability to pull through the heat and make a late crop either.

I have tried it 3 times in the last 4 years because everyone around me says the weather has been freakish, not typical. If you have a tendency to not set the alarm, you may over sleep after going to bed in a sleet storm with 3 inches of water in the garden and wake up in 110 degree drought! (OK that's exaggerating slightly but if I get 30 days of good weather between the floods and the drought I count myself extremely lucky) But I have managed to get other varieties to produce. Meanwhile my early girls I have extreme difficulty even getting them to survive, much less even make a tomato! I guess that's why my neighbor goes through the expense and back breaking effort to do raised beds.

My solution for the other varieties has been to plant early and hope they survive the floods and cold in good enough shape that when the small window of opportunity comes for ideal growth they manage to set some fruit. Then because of the organic matter in the soil and heavy mulches they survive the heat long enough to ripen that fruit. Just doesn't work for early girl.

If I remember correctly about 4 years ago I did manage to get one 1/2 way decent smallish tomato only took 2 slices to make a tomato sandwich! and it actually tasted pretty good. But that's an awful lot of effort for one tomato!

[habitat_gardener]

I grew Black Krim in 2007. It had a good flavor and was relatively early (mid June; but planted out in mid Feb. with wall-o-water and bubblewrapped cage until May). Behaved like a determinate: produced all at once and then quit. Short shelf life. Incredible as a cooked tomato!

doublehelix, I have a lot of choices for cherry tomatoes and smaller tomatoes, and it's great to get a bunch of those early in the season, but I've been spoiled by tomatoes like Pruden's Purple. Now I expect to get more varieties of large, great-tasting tomatoes earlier in the season, too! I also tried a bunch of "good for an early tomato" varieties one year and decided I'd rather stick with the "good for a tomato, period" varieties.

[RobinB]

I forgot to mention two others, Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye and Malachite Box (Malakhitovaya Shkatulka) Both give you fruit fairly early (mid-July for me in 2012) and they're both beautiful and delicious! Both are on my "grow every year" list.

[JLJ_]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

I am really surprised at all of the bad Early Girl experiences.

So am I . . . sort of.

Early Girl is certainly not a California-only tomato. I've had good results with it in the Wyoming Big Horn foothills (about 5400 ft). It's among those that get at least a few planted every year -- and most years it does at least OK, though I don't find it exceptionally early here -- Marglobe sometimes beats it, and Marglobe is never an early producer here.

What keeps Early Girl on the "every year" list, though, is years like 2012. While most tomatoes that made it to the garden did OK or better, Early Girl and Black Prince were by far the earliest producers, tasty, and produced well until they froze (not just until frost). Early Girl's fruit were pretty good size, too, until the end of the season, when they were more like golf ball size.

Couple of caveats -- by "tasty" I don't mean as good as the longer season tomatoes, but *much* better than grocery store tomatoes. Also, I don't grow the "bush" Early Girl's -- have tried them alongside the regular EGs and, for me, the bush plants were markedly less vigorous, more disease prone, and much poorer producers.

[Cole_Robbie]

I don't grow the "bush" Early Girl's -- have tried them alongside the regular EGs and, for me, the bush plants were markedly less vigorous, more disease prone, and much poorer producers.

uh-oh, I was planning to grow several Bush Early Girls in buckets next spring. Last year mine were less vigorous than Early Girl, but I had them in smaller containers, so I thought that was the problem. Apparent the Bush Early Girl is a determinate and Early Girl is a semi-determinate. Early Girl in a bucket is a great plant...until it sets so many tomatoes that they all get smaller and smaller. I got fewer tomatoes off the Bush Early Girl container plants, but each tomato was much larger.