Newer hybrids with better taste

[b54red]

I have only found a few hybrids that I really like and fewer still that produce well down here. First in flavor would be Brandy Boy which is similar in flavor to the better heirlooms but it is more disease prone for me; but I grow it every year. Number one hybrid in my book is Big Beef which has good flavor, great production, and disease resistance. The other two hybrids that I have found to be both productive and tasty are Bella Rosa and Jetsetter.

[feldon30]

Originally Posted by Randy

Hi, I am Randy. I am from NE Kansas. Just joined "Tomatoville" a couple days ago. Kansas State has a good ag department, and I was browsing their web site a few days ago. They had an article about some relatively new hybrids that were supposed to have flavor rivaling some heirlooms, but had very good disease resistance. They listed these 4 as some of the newer varieties. Fabulous, Mountain Glory, Red Defender and Scarlet Red. My local garden supply house does not have the seeds or plants. Was wondering if anyone had any experience with any of these varieties that you might share with me, and where I might buy seed or plants.

When someone brings up disease resistant/tolerant varieties, my first question is, Do you have a known problem in your garden or have had past problems in your garden that you are trying to prevent against?

I don't go out of my way to grow varieties known disease tolerances/resistances. The hybrids I grow (Sungold, Sweet Quartz, Jet Star, and Momotaro) because they are productive and have good flavor. Otherwise, I mulch, water the soil (not the plants) in the morning using soaker hoses, and cross my fingers.

Welcome to Tomatoville!

[travis]

Momotaro has no disease resistances advertised. While Sungold doesn't either, SunSugar and Sun Cherry, a sister line, are both FT resistant, and it wouldn't surprise me if Sungold is too. Jet Star is VF, and Sweet Quartz is VFNT.

[b54red]

Travis I can tell you from experience that Momotaro has no fusarium resistance and Sun Gold has very little.

[travis]

That is good to know about Sungold. I suppose fusarium comes in more than one race. I've never grown Tough Boy.

I do agree with your assessment of Big Beef. I wish it came in a shorter vine version!

I'd like to try Bella Rosa, but each time I get ready to order, that is the first variety that seems to sell out of seed.

[feldon30]

travis,

Thanks for those details. I don't think I've run into Fusarium or Verticillum in Houston and my soil wasn't sandy enough to worry about Nematodes. The only disease I've really been flummoxed by was the botrytis on Black Cherry, such that I've pretty much moved on to Purple Haze. Larger, better fruit, why not?

[Fusion_power]

You can find several current generation hybrids at Seedway.

http://www.seedway.com/Pages/store_catalog.aspx

The problem I see with most of the hybrids is that they are determinate. That limits their use in the average garden where demand leans heavily toward indeterminates because they produce over a longer season.

I am growing some unnamed lines from Randy Gardner. The best of the bunch is segregating from a cross of Brandywine X disease tolerant pink. At least two plants are producing some very desirable fruit on highly disease tolerant vines.

DarJones

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

You can find several current generation hybrids at Seedway.

http://www.seedway.com/Pages/store_catalog.aspx

The problem I see with most of the hybrids is that they are determinate. That limits their use in the average garden where demand leans heavily toward indeterminates because they produce over a longer season.

I am growing some unnamed lines from Randy Gardner. The best of the bunch is segregating from a cross of Brandywine X disease tolerant pink. At least two plants are producing some very desirable fruit on highly disease tolerant vines.

DarJones

Darrel, I too am encouraged by some of Randy's most recent crosses. I don't know which ones you're growing this year, I grew four of them last year. Perhaps you did as well and made some selections. I'd have to go back and check my notes but I think I received all four as F1 hybrids. And I have an e-mail somewhere with the parental inputs on all four as to tomato varieties as well as the disease tolerances bred in and you probably have the same info I have. I do remember tha tone of them had Mr. Stripey in it, and I have to confess that that variety is definitely not one of my faves but Randy has worked with it before, that I know.

The truth is every garden is different. Every gardener is different. Every growing season is different than the year before and almost every variety of hybrid or open pollinated tomatoes perform differently each year for different people in different gardens.

This year, Brandywine Pink, Mortgage Lifter, Black Krim, and Hillbilly were outstanding in taste and production. The hybrids Big Beef and Super Fantastic were also outstanding in production and taste. I am so convinced I have found the perfect tomatoes to grow in my garden every year. Nope! Just because they performed well for me this year, it doesn't mean they will perform the same every year. It depends on the variables of weather, seed source, soil condition, and luck. Don't forget the variables of insect variety and density as well as various diseases.

I garden because I love fresh produce but mostly because I love the challenge.

Ted

[Fusion_power]

Carolyn, I have a dozen or so of Randy's lines. I got seed from three new crosses he made to my Big Beef X Eva Purple Ball line with his disease tolerant pink. The BB X EPB leans heavily toward Eva Purple Ball for overall shape and size but picks up disease tolerance to nematodes and maybe VF as well from the Big Beef parent. Long story short, it shows a good bit of tolerance to early blight and to septoria so I thought it would be a good cross with Randy's line. He made the cross last year and sent me the seed a few weeks ago.

DarJones

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

Carolyn, I have a dozen or so of Randy's lines. I got seed from three new crosses he made to my Big Beef X Eva Purple Ball line with his disease tolerant pink. The BB X EPB leans heavily toward Eva Purple Ball for overall shape and size but picks up disease tolerance to nematodes and maybe VF as well from the Big Beef parent. Long story short, it shows a good bit of tolerance to early blight and to septoria so I thought it would be a good cross with Randy's line. He made the cross last year and sent me the seed a few weeks ago.

DarJones

All I can say is that I'm glad that you and a few others have the room to make selections from the F1's and grow them out, etc. I wish I did and actually apologized to Randy b'c I could only grow one plant of each.

I can't tell you how frustrating it's been for me to be so limited in what I can do with tomatoes now that I have to use this walker and Freda does all the gardening for me and I can only grow less than 40 plants in the backyard in gro-bags and containers.

YEs, you and others have heard me complain before, true enough, but it still bothers me greatly.

Gone are the days when I grew out hundreds of plants and varieties each year.

On the positive side I made the decision in Jan of 2005 after I got home from rehab following surgery for the torn quads that I'd concentrate on varieties new to all or most folks. And with the generosity of many that's exactly what's happened.

So each year I do have something new to look forward to and that's good, especially when they set fruits.

Carolyn, most of us complain occasionally on the forum about disease or insect problems decimating our tomato gardens. I've never seen you write a comment about disasters in your garden. Do you simply have the perfect place to grow tomatoes or do you not believe in complaining? I've also read your posts and comments about growing tomatoes with great interest because you have a great reservoir of knowledge. You approach everything from a very analytical perspective. I'm curious if you enjoy eating tomatoes as much as you enjoy growing them.

Just curious!

Ted

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by tedln

Carolyn, most of us complain occasionally on the forum about disease or insect problems decimating our tomato gardens. I've never seen you write a comment about disasters in your garden. Do you simply have the perfect place to grow tomatoes or do you not believe in complaining? I've also read your posts and comments about growing tomatoes with great interest because you have a great reservoir of knowledge. You approach everything from a very analytical perspective. I'm curious if you enjoy eating tomatoes as much as you enjoy growing them.

Just curious!

Ted

First, I most certainly do enjoy eating tomatoes, and not just the sampling of the various vaarieties that I grow that are new so that I can share my opinion about taste with others. Remember that I was raised on a farm where we had acres and acres of tomatoes and so I was involved with tomatoes and in the fields helping in one way or another since I was about 5, and I was 72 last month.

All those years I was at home it was also helping mom with the canning, making sauce , especially chile sauce and the hottest batches were just labeled Uncle Al.

After I went to college it was just helping out at home summers when I also had a summer job elsewhere, one year for the NYS Dept of Health doing water and milk analysis, another year doing TB and STD work for the Troy Health Dept, b'c my major was Microbiology . After college there was grad work and I tried to grow tomatoes in the backyard where I had an apartment in Rochester, NY, but that was a dismal failure. THen I went to Denver where I taught med students for many years and when I finally bought a home there was a small area that wasn't shaded where I also grew tomatoes.

But it wasn't until I moved back East in 1982 to the old farm, initially, that I really got involved with growing tomatoes, and it was then that I started growing so many different varieties in large numbers b'c I now had all the room I'd ever want at the farm. My father had to stop farming b'c he had Parkinson's disease and a young local farmer, Charlie, asked if he could use the land and we readily agreed.

I took the half acre field next to what we called the big lawn so I could string water out to what I was growing in that field, rows were about 250 ft long and that's when I started growing heirloom varieties of almost everything, from radishes to squash to carrots, to beets, to you name it, and never less than at least 5-6 different varieties for each crop. One long row was just melons, another potatoes, and on and on. I also had a side garden about 90 X 50 ft where I grew the small stuff.

Charlie prepared my field for me each year and one of his men did the cultivating and at that time Charlie was spraying my tomatoes with Daconil for me and also doing the fertilizing as well, although it was me with my grandfather's hoe and then my trusty Mantis tiller that I bought in 1984, that still works fine, thank you, that did everything manually after the small Farmall could n't get between the rows without doing damage.

Moving ahead and leaving a lot out, I met Dale Riggs who was the head of the Cornell Coop Ext for the 5 county area surrounding Albany, NY. She had learned about diseases from Dr. Tom Zitter at Cornell, an expert in tomato diseases, and it was from Dale that I learned so much. Growing up with the tomatoes I knew BER, but not what it was, I knew that some plants were diseased but not what it was. And honestly, we didn't have much disease with the tomatoes at all and all I can remember were Colorado Potato Beetles as an insect problem.

Dale decided to use my field for some research and had me grow some hybrids and OP's and had students who were to assess diseases on a regular basis each summer for a couple of years. That was invaluable b'c I was always there when she and the students were there.

here in the NE in zones 4 and 5 we don't have the many soilborne diseases that others do. Occasionally a random plant with Verticillium, and that was about it. But by that time I knew how to diagnose the foliage diseases and that was good as well.

There was the one year when Late Blight had blown in from the potato cull piles in W NYS and everyone was in a snit and I know I initially panicked b'c I thought my one area had LB but it turned out to be Gray Mold.

So for many years I grew hundreds of tomato plants and hundreds of varieties every summer. In the late 90's I started growing tomatoes at Charlie's farm and that worked out very well b'c by that time I was seeding and growing all my tomatoes at his greenhouses, he had 24 of them, and my spot was the end of #19 where the large fan was.

I had to retire from teaching in 1999 b/c of mobility problems ( bad hips) and that year moved here to where I am now, but was still making the trip down to Charlie's with my 20 row seedling trays to do all the transplanting, etc. So I continued to grow there as well as three places up here where I am now. So now I have critter problems at the one place with deer for the first time, but not here at home where I also grew some tomatoes in a large raised bed that was here when I moved in and there was and is a herd of about 12-15 deer here but they NEVER have touched my tomatoes. Roses yes, but nothing I grew in the backyard as to veggies. Maybe it was b'c I was kind to them, I don't know.

Everything changed when I fell Dec 12th, 2004 as you know ( bad hips).

I should say that when I moved up here there was little foliage disease and no soilborne diseases.

So no, you don't see me asking about diseases b'c I pretty much make my own diagnoses and do what I have to do. I also switched to growing organically here at home when I moved here but a few years ago when Late BLight hit so hard here in the NE I did have Freda spray with Daconil. When I was growing tomatoes just in the raised bed I did have slug problems b'c a lovely brook runs right by my home and you probably saw a picture of that if you read the thread that Craig started when he and Sue visited me this year when he brought my plants up to me straight from NC.

Finally, as my brother said when he was here a few weeks ago, my tomato plants look pathetic this year, and he's right. The cold rainy weather was not good for them, I'd rather be growing them inground than in gro-bags and containers, but what it, is.

No doubt my leadup to answering your question was far too long, but I'm up early, as usual, the temps are delightfully cool this AM, so my fingers just kept typing.

[feldon30]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

Here in the NE in zones 4 and 5 we don't have the many soilborne diseases that others do. Occasionally a random plant with Verticillium, and that was about it. But by that time I knew how to diagnose the foliage diseases and that was good as well.

There was the one year when Late Blight had blown in from the potato cull piles in W NYS and everyone was in a snit and I know I initially panicked b'c I thought my one area had LB but it turned out to be Gray Mold.

So for many years I grew hundreds of tomato plants and hundreds of varieties every summer.

I should say that when I moved up here there was little foliage disease and no soilborne diseases.

So no, you don't see me asking about diseases b'c I pretty much make my own diagnoses and do what I have to do. I also switched to growing organically here at home when I moved here but a few years ago when Late Blight hit so hard here in the NE I did have Freda spray with Daconil.

You seem to have had some pretty good luck tomato-wise to not fare worse on the many diseases which now seem to be rampaging across the Northeast. The panacea of growing tomatoes in New Jersey seems to have given way to fear and frustration.