Hoy tomato

[Shule]

I've been reading about the Hoy tomato:

https://renaissancefarms.org/product/hoy-tomato/

It sounds pretty good. Has anyone grown it?

[karstopography]

I did in 2022. I really liked Hoy and intended to grow it this year, but the one Hoy seedling I had met with an unfortunate wind related hardening off accident. I have Hoy on my 2024 grow list.

I’ve seen the Renaissance farm’s description of Hoy and would say it is accurate. I didn’t tally up the harvest in 2022, but I remember Hoy being relatively productive and every tomato was large and well formed, with more or less uniform deep top to bottom blocky globes. There wasn’t a lot of blossom scar, zippering or random convoluted ugliness or drama for such a big tomato, most of the blossom scars were pretty simple, relatively small and straightforward. I don’t like tomato varieties that come with or produce tomatoes with complicated, deep, or large and messy blossom scars or a lot of misshapen monstrosities for tomatoes and Hoy wasn’t one of those types. Not a tomato that was especially prone to splitting or cracking either. I think some rather minor radial cracking came with the second half of the season fruit, but I don’t remember any concentric type of cracking going on.

Hoy was my favorite tomato to cut up into large, meaty cubes and toss with thick chunks of cucumbers. Hoy is a firm tomato, but not so much as it is a fault. Hoy handled our typical summer heat better than almost every other tomato I grew in 2022 and was producing up into August. 2022 was a cooler summer here than 2023. Up until Domingo this year. Hoy was the biggest tomato I had grown and 22-24 ounces was sort of the “normal” size for Hoy. Foliage for Hoy was relatively healthy also. 90-95 days to maturity type here. Tomatoes in my garden tend to run a bit longer than published days to maturity. Hoy is comparable to Domingo on days to maturity. Plan for 2024 is to grow Domingo and Hoy side by side. Hoy is a deeper, more blocky tomato, but not heart shaped. Domingo is wider and not quite as deep. Going off memory, Hoy has more dense and firm flesh than Domingo.

[cloz]

[attachment=0]image.jpeg[/attachment
This is the first Hoy tomato I picked in 2011 when seed first became available. I think Medbury Gardens in New Zealand did the initial seed production for distribution here. It produced tomatoes mostly in the 1 lb category. This was the first and one of the largest tomatoes I have ever grown. I have 2 plants in my garden this year as I have not grown it in several years.

Cloz