Gardening

Meet the Ladies | Tomatoes

The Ones We Bought

earlygirl2
In an effort to jump start the season of tomatoes we decided to buy a few plants already started at our local nursery. I’m not big on hybrids but Chris’ mom loves Early Girl and so we decided to give her a try.

cherokeepurple2
I’ve wanted to try Cherokee Purple for years but it has never made it into our garden. I have seeds, in storage. We’ll see how she performs for us.

cherokeepurple1
I ended up with two Cherokee Purple’s because when I went to grab this one, I broke the tomato. Guilty, I had to get a second one and pay for both. I decided to try sticking the broken end into the pot to see if it would root, but also to see if the original rooted part would re-leaf too. It didn’t, but the broken piece I stuck in did root! I didn’t do anything special, had no rooting hormone and didn’t actually particularly care for it for several days after because I went into the field for work. But here it is still living!

yellowpear
I think I am going to like the yellow pear. I love small, eat-off-the-vine types.

The Ones We Started From Seed

For most of our tomato planting existence we have started them by seed. It’s pretty awesome to see them through the whole cycle.

amazonchocolate2
Amazon chocolate is a tried and tested tomato in our garden. It has great flavor and grows rather large. It is one of Chris’ favorites.

amazonchocolate

Sungold
Sun Gold’s are one of my favorites, a very prolific tomato. I’ve saved seeds from them in the past and grown them again and frankly, I felt they were pretty much the exact same thing. Being an F1 hybrid they aren’t supposed to come back true from seed if you save the seeds, but the ones I had were yellow, the same size and tasted great.

Arkansastraveler
Arkansas Traveler is my very favorite tomato. If my niece were here I’d have her say, as if she’s talking to our cat Samson, “You’re my best, old friend”. Because really, it is my best, old friend.

sabreukrainian
This is another one of Chris’ favorites, Sabre Ukrainian. It is a sauce tomato and is excellent for making into spaghetti sauce. We get our seeds (when we aren’t saving them) from Amishland Seeds. They are pretty rare/uncommon so you don’t get many seeds for your money. Use them wisely!

That said, we have several other tomato seedlings that need to go in the ground still but we’re waiting for a few other beds to empty out before putting the tomatoes in. I wish I had about 10 beds dedicated to tomatoes.

What are you favorite tomatoes to grow?

5 Comments

  • chel

    I’m not even sure *what* we are growing, to be honest! We started out with two plants when we first started gardening, and I have been extending their lives since we got them (Tom got a tomato FULL of seeds one day, so we used that to make more plants) and I cut them back in the summer but keep them alive. We have tons of tomatoes, though, more than we can eat, so it’s still making us happy. I’m sure this is some sort of HUGE gardening no-no or something, but it’s what I have done. My eggplant plant is also going on two years and producing beautifull right now, but it’s more of a *tree* at this point.

  • Gayle

    I also really like Celebrity and Better Boy! So enjoy your tomato advice. What we also need are good recipes and ideas of what to do with all the tomatoes when they all ripen at the same time!

  • Curtis

    Per wikipedia:
    The patent holder of the Early Girl variety is Monsanto Corporation following its 2005 acquisition of vegetable and fruit seed company Seminis, Inc

    Misti: seriously? Your vegetables should not have a patent on them. 🙁

  • Patrice

    Um, I should have read this post before I bought seeds. I had NO idea there was such a variety of tomatoes. I ended up getting “hybrid” and “bistro steak.” Oh well.

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