Tomato Harvest 2012

Heirloom Tomato Taste Test Results:
     Ranking for best-tasting tomato as judged by my mother, husband, and self:
          #1 "Costoluto Genevese"
          #2 "Cherokee Purple"
          #3 "Brandywine"
          Also Ran: "Delicious" and "Arkansas Traveler"

My Garden

The steady stream of produce from my roughly 130 tomato plants is peeking about now. I pick them as soon as they start to get a bit pink and ripen them inside, away from the birds. This explains why these photos of my tomato plants show only green tomatoes.


This year, I planted three heirloom varieties that we enjoyed last year: Brandywine, Mortgagelifter, and Delicious. In addition, I decided to try Costoluto Genovese which gets described in the seed catalogues as "heat-loving" and Cherokee Purple because word on the street is it's yummy. I also tossed in a few Arkansas Travelers since they are supposed to do well in our climate. The midsummer evaluation of the plants is in:


Arkansas Traveler
     The plants look pretty good but they are smaller than the other varieties by quite a bit. They want to send up suckers very much but pruning them doesn't seem to reroute that vigor to the main stem. This is frustrating. I'm looking for varieties that will do well with the one-stem pruning I do. The fruit are very small. I won't be planting this one again.

Tomato variety: Arkansas Traveler

Brandywine
     Because I loved the taste of these ugly things so much last year, I admittedly favored them from seedlings. If I had doted on the other varieties as much as I did on the Brandywine, all varieties would have almost certainly done better. I just didn't expect that any other varieties would stand up to these for taste. (And I was so very wrong.) Having said that, the Brandywine vines are mostly very vigorous and some are already six feet tall with stems so thick I can hardly get a thumb and forefinger together around them. The fruit are mostly really huge. The flowers have been mostly very convoluted in shape and the resulting fruit have had truly weird shapes. This is only a problem now and then when it makes it difficult to remove them from the vine without breaking and to cut into sandwich-worthy slices. For whatever reason, the vines in rows going east-west are doing the very best. 

Tomato variety: Brandywine

Cherokee Purple
     These were really difficult to get to germinate and grow to transplant size. Only a small fraction of the seedlings made it into the garden and the ones that did were very weak and spindly until June. I gave them some choice compost in late May and they have responded somewhat. Now a few of the vines are quite robust and producing good-sized fruit. Since these were a success with all family members in the taste test, I'll save seed from these vines for next year, give them choice spots in the garden, and see if I can get more out of them in next year's generation.

Tomato variety: Cherokee Purple

Costoluto Genovese
     I bought these seeds because the catalogue description was very persuasive. They are reportedly old-fashioned in taste and very tolerant of extreme heat. That's what I want for sure. The plants seem to be generally slow. The seedlings developed more slowly than other varieties though they had a much better survival rate than all the others except the Brandywine. But, even now, they are slow in maturing: I have harvested dozens from all other vines but only now have ripened my first Costoluto. Admittedly, I had so many seedlings develop that I just took them for granted. I used these as filler plants during the transplanting phase -- as replacements in places where my more prefered varieties weren't surviving.  I even used Costoluto as the primary variety in my okay-hornworms-you-can-have-these-plants auxillary garden. It's possible that they need the hot temperatures to mature more than the other varieties, so I'll keep my eye on them and see if they pick up the pace a bit in July and August. However, considering how much my mother and husband like these, I'll have to buy seed and try again if I don't get enough from this year's fruit.

Tomato variety: Consoluto Genevese

Delicious
     These plants did well until transplanting. Then, they started dying off. They were reliable germinators though, so I have more than a dozen that have survived and they are now mostly quite vigorous. Two plants (right next to each other) have had a lot of end rot. This is strange because no other vines have had any at all. The fruits are medium-sized and nice and round but they don't have the dense meat of the Brandywine. I may not plant these again next year. I'd rather put my efforts into the Costoluto, Cherokee Purple, and Brandywine.

Tomato variety: Delicious

Mortgagelifter
     What happened to these this year?! Hardly any survived transplanting -- and the germination wasn't great either. The only fruits I'm getting from the few Mortgagelifters I have are much smaller than the Brandywines. I may try buying a package of Mortgagelifter seeds next year just because I have such fond memories of the big tomatoes I got from them last year, but I'm so very disappointed in what I had thought of as the tough workhorse of the tomato garden. Or, maybe, I'll pass on these for next year. It may be more interesting to focus on the three varieties we like -- and maybe try a new one or two.