Tomato Report

I only have a few tomato plants this year, because a) I'm not a huge tomato fan and b) I was trying to find just one good regular tomato to grow every year, since I have so little room.

I got a sample pack from Dollar Seed with 10 seeds each of ten different heirloom varieties. I bought it just for the Cherokee Purple seeds, but decided to also try Mortgage Lifter. This is my report on the tomatoes for this year to date.

Regular Tomatoes

Early Girl - I don't like this plant, other than that it is early bearing. It's way too tall and spindly and doesn't bear especially well. I didn't remove the suckers this year, and it still isn't filling out well, but it's early. I grew this year's from a sucker from last year's plant and overwintered. I don't think this is one I'm going to continue planting, but I may try the Early Girl Bush, which is supposed to be a lot more compact and easy to grow.



Cherokee Purple - Who doesn't love this tomato? It's absolutely amazing. I like its thick, sturdy stems and the fact that is is very prolific. The only thing I don't like is that the fruit tends to split, but I avoid that by picking it just as it starts to turn and ripening it on the windowsill. Beautiful, big fruit and nearly disease resistant. Awesome taste. Mine has 5 baby fruits on it right now, and is loaded with blooms.


Mortgage Lifter - This plant is pathetic, so I didn't even take a picture of it. Planted it in sterile soil, but it has picked up some sort of early blight which is killing all the leaves. It was the last one I planted, so I guess that's why it has no fruit to date, but I may have to pull it out and toss it due to the blight. The stems are weak and spindly. I may move it away from the other tomatoes just to see what it does, but I don't think I'll be planting this again.

Cherry Tomatoes

EVERGLADES

Everglades - Of course, this one is always amazing. I have planted several outside the wall, which I just let sprawl all over the ground and they put out fruits like crazy. This is my absolute favorite cherry tomato ever

NOID Cherry - grown from seeds I got from a tomato from McCrorie Garden, I have no idea what it is, but it looks a lot like Husky Cherry Red and is delicious. It's not very prolific to date, though. I planted it out in the outside garden staked to the pigeon pea, and it got a little spindly. I cut off some of the pigeon pea's lower branches to give it more light. We'll see what it does. It has an Everglades planted close by that might be stealing all its nutrients.

Black Cherry - these are seeds from a friend's tomatoes, so they may not come true. Cut worms got the first seedling I planted, so I put foil around the next one and it seems to be doing well. It will be interesting to see if it actually IS a black cherry tomato or not.

Others

I did grow a couple of Roma seedlings, but I'm not sure I'm going to plant them. I'm running out of space, and although I had planned to put them into my neighbor's garden next door, he doesn't seem very interested in really DOING any gardening, in fact, I think he thought I was going to do it for him. No thanks. I have enough to do. I may just put these into 1-gallon pots and try to keep them going until Fall, or I may toss them. I don't want to waste a 5-gallon bucket on one of them, since they probably won't do much this summer.

So the verdict is that this fall, I will only grow Cherokee Purple and maybe try the Yellow Plum seeds I have. Of course, the Everglade stays, but the rest are pretty much history, especially the Mortgage Lifter.

Happy Gardening!