2024 Tomato Preview

Our cohort in all things tomato, Don Shor of Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, got into a lot of helpful information for tomato gardeners besides just talking about tomato varieties in Episode 317 of the Garden Basics podcast, The 2024 Tomato Preview Show. The mini-podcast (above) highlights four tips we discussed that can make you a more successful gardening tomato-head. Among Don’s tips: • The first thing you should do when you when bring that tomato plant home from the nursery. • And, if you are growing tomato plants from seed, what you need to do before you plant it outdoors. • How to save tomato seeds from open pollinated varieties for next year. • How to save your tomatoes when it gets really, really hot. • How to improve the flavor and texture of supermarket tomatoes. • Plus, I threw in an extra tip on growing fruit trees in containers for a longer fruit production life in tight quarters. The Tomatoes of the 2024 Tomato Preview Show (with links for more info) Rugby Chef’s Choice Orange Juliet Bodacious New Girl Tough Boy Blue Ribbon Pineapple Champion Purple Boy Bush Early Girl Itz a Keeper Super Fantastic Jet Star Principe Borghese Riesetomate tomato Sungold Barry’s Crazy Cherry Sweet Carneros Pink Pork Chop Michael Pollan Gardener’s Delight Big Beef 4th of July Sweet Million Super Sauce Orange Wellington Dr. Wyche’s Yellow Purple Tomato (a GMO variety) A sampling of our comments of each of those tomato varieties (listen to the full episode for even more tomatoey details) Fred: the big winner last year for me was Rugby, based on your endorsement of that tomato over the last couple of years. And Rugby is just a wonderful tomato. Don: it grows very, very well and a very good producer here. So yes, you and I definitely agree on Rugby. ======================= Don: I still highly recommend the Chef's Choice series and I strongly recommend Chef's Choice Orange based on previous years. That's still in my top ten. Fred: Several of the Chef's Choice tomatoes have been All-America Selections winners, as well. ====================== Don: I have to say every year I have one plant that just grows incredibly robust compared to all the others. It's never the same one, of course, and it produces really, really heavily. And in 2023 for me, that was Juliet. Now I recommend Juliet very highly for a lot of reasons. I did a quick count, just trying to figure out how many fruit my Juliet plant produced. It was something close to 400. ==================== Fred: One that you have recommended over the years. And I finally broke down and tried it and it was actually it was successful the second year I tried it. And that's another Don Shor rule about planting tomatoes. Give them three years, plant them for three years and see if you still like it. And Bodacious did quite well for me in 2023. It was the the last plant to give up, and I harvested the remaining green ones in November and I finally finished the green ones as they ripen slowly in the garage. I finished those off in late February. Don: Yeah, it's been a very good performer. If you're looking for something in what we sometimes call the beefsteak category, a large slicing tomato with good connective tissue that you could use in a sandwich, Bodacious is probably your best bet here in the Sacramento Valley. Bodacious has great flavor all as well, has taken heat very well for me. Continues to be a good performer for me. ====================== Fred: Another one of your perennial favorites - and I've been planting it now for like three or four years - well, I finally ran out of the seed. I'm going have to get some fresh seed. The New Girl tomato. Don: Yes, New Girl has been out yielding Early Girl for me for the last two years. ============================ Don: There's another one out there called Tough Boy. Some people are doing that one and have had very good results. Tough Boy is another one where they're trying for that same 4 to 6 ounce fruit size, nice round red tomato, good flavor, a good all-purpose tomato. That's another good one. ============================= Don: There's one that I've been recommending and it's going to be a hard one to find unless the nursery start it themselves. It’s Blue Ribbon. It doesn't crack, it doesn't split. It didn't get blossom and rot. The fruit is always 12 ounces or so, a good size all the way up to a pound. Sometimes it didn't get sunburned. It just performs really well. It's not just attractive. I mean, the Blue Ribbon refers to the fact it's a very, very good looking tomato. It also has really good flavor, and holds well on the vine. ========================= Don: So here's my big surprise from last year. Every year there's one variety that surprises me. Pineapple. The name refers to the rather tangy flavor. This year I got 14 very large fruit on the one plant, each of them about one and a half to two pounds. Fred: An oldie but a goodie. Don: I don't usually tell people heirlooms are going to be your highest yield, but the Pineapple really, really surprised me how much it produced. Great quality. I recommend if you have room for four or five tomato plants, try Pineapple. Fred: You're right, it's beautiful, with sort of a golden orange color. Don: And red striations in the flesh. It slices great, it cooks great. ======================== Fred: How did Champion perform for you last year? You seem to plant it every year. Don: It was just fine, as usual. You know, I got a lot of fruit on it. It's a really good red tomato. ========================== Don: There's a whole group of tomatoes I'm getting pretty fed up with, and that is the purple, blue and black tomatoes, Black Beauty, Blue whatever. We're just finding some of them really, really don't soften. And the flavor is, in my opinion, rather astringent. And I don't know what it takes to get them to have good flavor. If someone out there has come up with a new hybrid purple or blue tomato with good flavor. I'd love to know what it is because so far, I'm not impressed. Fred: I did ask the Facebook people who follow the Get Growing with Farmer Fred page, “What tomato did you really like from 2023?” And I did get a reply from one follower whose opinion I respect. He's a high school horticulture teacher and he said he loved Purple Boy. Said it was very productive. And that's good enough for me. I'll give that a shot. So I've got some Purple Boy seedlings coming up. Don: I'm writing it down as we speak. ============================ Fred: I have actually picked for 2024 an oldie but a goody container-sized tomato, called Bush Early Girl. It produces fairly good sized tomatoes, but on a plant that only gets 18 inches tall. Don: The dwarf tomato series varieties are becoming very popular. I have grown some of these. I haven't grown that particular one. You'll find the yields are okay for what they are. This is a small plant. There's a bunch of little miniature tomatoes, Little Napoli, Little Sicily. One of my growers handed me a Mini Marzano. The plant grew 16 inches by 16 inches. Produced about 12 fruit, each of which was about one ounce. You know, if you're in an apartment and you have a balcony, that's a fun thing to do. Many of these are not going to give you the yields you're expecting. Fred: The Bush Early Girl, by the way, is a compact determinant, which means it's going to set most of its crop once and then you can pull it out. But it ripens in only 54 days. =================== Fred: I think the seed catalogs especially the specialty tomato seed catalogs like Totally Tomatoes are getting wise to me because they're starting to throw packets of other tomato seeds in with my order, things that I didn't order. Because they think, “he'll … This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gardenbasics.substack.com/subscribe