Better Boy vs. Celebrity

[Ed of Somis]

For you growers out there that have grown these (hybrid bashers need not comment)...which one of these do you enjoy most? I know the Celebrity is a multiple award winner...but I had a delicious Better Boy yesterday! haha. In fairness...my Celebrity plant has suffered bigtime stress this year, and might not be a fair test. I sure love my Cherokee Purple this year!

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Ed of Somis

For you growers out there that have grown these (hybrid bashers need not comment)...which one of these do you enjoy most? I know the Celebrity is a multiple award winner...but I had a delicious Better Boy yesterday! haha. In fairness...my Celebrity plant has suffered bigtime stress this year, and might not be a fair test. I sure love my Cherokee Purple this year!

Yes I've grown both.

What you get with Celebrity F1 are many genes that have been added for soilborne disease tolerances, if any of those are needed where a person grows tomatoes and some of those tolerances might give you a week or so extra time.

What you get with Better Boy F1, which is only VFN, is one of the earliest hybrids made available to the public, along with Big Boy F1, and those two share one parent in common which is an heirloom variety from the midwest, Teddy Jones, the other earliest hybrids out there would also include Ramapo F1, Moreton Hybrid, Supersonic F1 and Jet Star F1.

If asked to compare only the two you mentioned I prefer Better Boy F1 over Celebrity F1 maybe 100 X more.

Carolyn

[Cole_Robbie]

Celebrity is one of the worst-tasting tomatoes I've ever grown.

In my own opinion, if you're looking for a hybrid red slicer for the home garden, Big Beef just stomps the competition. Nothing else comes close to being such strong plants with excellent flavor and yield.

[clkeiper]

We didn't grow any celebrity this year. The last two years were terrible ones for that variety for us. They are nice looking, but fairly bland for a garden grown tomato. big beef, better boy, goliath, early goliath...all are better.

[shelleybean]

It's been many years since I've grown hybrids but I have grown both varieties. IMO, Better Boy is a much better tasting tomato than Celebrity. If I went back to hybrids, that's probably what I'd grow.

[Lee]

My dad grows both each year, along with all the other tomatoes I give him. Of the two, Better Boy is probably the one I would rate higher, but it is my non-scientific opinion that the Celebrity seed out there is not the same as a few years back.
I see too many odd (ie. pointed) shape fruits and blah flavor on the Celebritys now, both in my Dad's garden and the local farmer market that weren't there a few years back.....

Lee

[ContainerTed]

I agree with Lee. This year, I planted 5 mature Better Boy and 1 Big Boy plants. I always find some larger plants at the local flea market to give me early large tomatoes. Better Boy was actually better this year than Big Boy. I turned down getting some Celebrity plants because I've seen too many "fake" Celebrity fruits. It's a tough year for everything around here. Even the Better Boys had green core material all over the stem end of the fruit. The up and down temperatures and rainfall have made things extremely difficult to evaluate.

[Cole_Robbie]

That's an interesting point that Celebrity may have changed over the years.

My grandparents love Jet Star, so I planted six plants in my high tunnel of Big Beef. Other than flavor being nearly identical, the Jet Star was inferior in every way: later to produce, smaller plants, much lower yield, smaller fruit, and much worse blossom end rot. Big Beef vs Jet Star reminds me of the most recent Super Bowl where the final score was 43-8.

[PaulF]

The last time celebrity was in my patch, I grew maybe 6 plants because a friend wanted me to grow them. All six plants were disease ridden and the 30 other tomatoes in the same area were clean. The fruit was all about six ounces, round and red and relatively without flavor. Compared to big boy of thirty years ago, the last time it was grown.....ahhh, I don't remember.

[MissS]

I agree that Celebrity has changed over the years. I grew this one 20 some years ago and brought it back last year. The fruit from this plant were flavorless red balls. I will not have back in my gardens again. It is too bad because I did not think that this was a bad tomato many years ago.

So to answer your question grow the Better Boy.

[Ed of Somis]

Thanks for all the kind advice. I thought my BB's tasted better than Celeb's too. Just wanted to be fair...The good news is: my other hybrid I planted a couple of weeks ago is a Big Beef. I hope that one turns out to be as good as what people say. This is fun....

[feldon30]

Originally Posted by Ed of Somis

For you growers out there that have grown these (hybrid bashers need not comment)...which one of these do you enjoy most? I know the Celebrity is a multiple award winner...but I had a delicious Better Boy yesterday! haha. In fairness...my Celebrity plant has suffered bigtime stress this year, and might not be a fair test. I sure love my Cherokee Purple this year!

Well, Better Boy has flavor, while Celebrity does not (no idea how it won so many awards -- they might want to check those folks for an absence of taste buds!), so I prefer Better Boy. If I need tomatoes of that size/shape, I grow Jet Star, Arkansas Traveler, and Big Beef. All productive (30+ pp), reliable, and tasty.

Cherokee Purple (and Earl's Faux) is the reason I garden.

[clkeiper]

I had to laugh after the comments about pointy tomatoes...Celebrity usually does have a small pointy blossom end, but it is usually a fairly round tomato, this year I have oval pointy, oval and one that ripens in flushes. Nothing like any of the celebrity's I grew a few years ago.

[Lee]

This is what I've also noticed at local farmer's markets.
As I said earlier, I don't think the hybrid celebrity seed that is
being produced today is the same as it was a few years ago.
Fruit shape is wrong and flavor is obviously off. (It won awards before, because it was tasty before!)

I would guess the producer of this hybrid has lost one of the parent lines (or it has become "corrupted") and thus what they are producing is not truly celebrity.

Does anyone have any 10+ year old Celebrity seed around?
It would be a good test to grow the old and new side by side.

Lee

Originally Posted by clkeiper

I had to laugh after the comments about pointy tomatoes...Celebrity usually does have a small pointy blossom end, but it is usually a fairly round tomato, this year I have oval pointy, oval and one that ripens in flushes. Nothing like any of the celebrity's I grew a few years ago.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Lee

This is what I've also noticed at local farmer's markets.
As I said earlier, I don't think the hybrid celebrity seed that is
being produced today is the same as it was a few years ago.
Fruit shape is wrong and flavor is obviously off. (It won awards before, because it was tasty before!)

I would guess the producer of this hybrid has lost one of the parent lines (or it has become "corrupted") and thus what they are producing is not truly celebrity.

Does anyone have any 10+ year old Celebrity seed around?
It would be a good test to grow the old and new side by side.

Lee

Lee, I first grew Celebrity back in the early 90's as part of a project I was doing with the Cornell Cooperative Extension Service. it was round and I didn't think the taste was that great at all, compared to hujndreds of others I was growing at that time.

Just my own opinion, but I think it was an AAS award winner b;c it was the first hybrid to have a boatload of disease tolerances included and all for systemic soilborne diseases. And it's one of the reasons that Dr, David Francis at Ohio State U found it so useful for grafting and others are still using it for grafting purposes instead of using Beaufort or Maxifort or a few others,

Carolyn