Plant Review: Tomato

This is going to be a long entry. If you've seen the garden list page ---> you'll know that I grew 7 tomatoes this year. I've gotta get this review written before I forget how I liked each variety. Here we go...

Long Keeper:

Small fist sized tomatoes that are uniformly round, they look like shinny green apples on the plant. They don't ripen well on the plant, they must be pulled inside to slowly ripen. If we had a normal fall we would have just pulled them off the plant. Since we didn't they've been inside about 3 weeks before we were anticipating. Regardless they look great and are just now turning colors. We should have fresh tomatoes through mid November. They ripen to a soft pink color and have good but mild flavor. I'll grow it again but only 1 plant not 5. I still am not sure what to do with them all!

Italian Heirloom:

Gianormous tomatoes! 1+ pounds each! Great slicer and heavy producer. This one was the easiest from seed to start. I had so many starts I put tomatoes in spots I never intended because I didn't have the heart to toss them. The vines grew to 6 feet and were so weighed down Jake and I had to add extra twine supports for them. The fruit was a good juicy slicer, almost bigger than the average hamburger bun, but really I'm not complaining.  I'll grow this one again, but not nearly as many, 2-3 probably. The fruit picture shows it compared to a larger roma tomato.

Martino's Roma:

Wow! This guy didn't vine up like the Italian heirloom, it only got off the ground 3 feet. But those 3 feet packed a punch. The plants were loaded, I'd venture a guess at 30+ pounds per plant. We're going to get a butcher style scale next year to be sure. I digress.... The fruit was hidden under the leaves so it was deceiving. We harvested maybe 10 of these ripe on the plant, everything else has had to ripen slowly inside. The flavor is wonderful with very little juice. I've made TONS of tomato sauce. I will be growing these next year. We put in 5 plants I am thinking a few more wouldn't hurt.

Cherry Roma:

If we would've had height these guys would have kept going. They got to 6 feet easily and likely would have made it to 8+. A typical cherry tomato plant but the fruit had little juice in it. They're excellent sun dried because of all the meat on the inside. Prolific as they were we ended up drowning in them. Exceptional flavor raw that got even more intense when dried. I ate them every time I was outside, harvested daily and couldn't keep up. I had 3 of them in the garden and I'll likely only put in 1 or 2 for next year, I haven't decided yet. Fruit picture shows them green, I didn't have any ripe when I took the pictures of them. Like everything else they came inside green and slowly ripened.

Sheboygan:

A paste tomato but much bigger than the standard roma. The vine was thin with fewer leaves than the other varieties. All the fruit seemed so exposed. I love this tomato. Not as productive as the Martino's but the fruit was on average fist sized. The flavor was awesome and slightly sweet. The fruit ripens to a pink hue. Sometimes the fruit had curled bottoms like chili peppers, which was slightly adorable. I only had 4 of these guys and I will make sure I have that or more next year. The bottom fruit picture shows it's color next to a silvery fir tree tomato. I couldn't get the camera to capture the pinkness of the color. The naked eye is no match for a camera.

Silvery Fir Tree:

Another one that was so easy to grow from seed I had to chuck some out. The foliage is similar to carrots only fatter. This one was the first to flower and produce fruit. A tennis ball sized slicer with good flavor and tons of juice. The plants were so heavy loaded they didn't vine up much, very similar to the Martino's Roma. Silvery Fir only came off the ground about 2 feet and then kinda vined outward on the ground. Each plant had at least 25 pounds of fruit on it when we pulled them inside. I had 5 of them. I will grow this one again for it's early yields, but with the Italian heirloom slicer these became too much.

Green Zebra:

I didn't like this guy too much. It was fine when under ripe but got kinda mushy when ripe. The one plant I had didn't produce much either. It vined up nicely but didn't get to the going until too late. This was a trial plant to see if we liked it before growing it in mass. I'm glad we did because I doubt I will grow it again. I don't have a picture of the plant because I forgot, but I have a picture of a ripe fruit. It's sure pretty with those yellowy stripes.

This year was insane! All of our tomato processing was done after they came inside and ripened a while. I'll remember to give them more room next year and I won't plant leeks right next to each tomato plant. Poor things got lost. As much as I love tomatoes I will be really glad when canning/processing is done.