The most productive tomato?

[Barmaley]

Just wondering - how many pounds of tomatoes one plant can produce? What are the most productive tomatoes? Can it also taste good?

[AlittleSalt]

If you want a slicer tomato, then Big Beef F1 can produce a lot of tasty tomatoes.

If you want quantity, Sungold F1 produces a lot as a cherry tomato. It has three different ripeness levels which each tastes differently.

Both will grow in PA

[Whwoz]

Have had upwards of 30lb off several tomatoes, including the GWR MS and Midnight Sun. No reason why the taste won't be there just because volume is up if sunlight amount is good and water and nutrition right. Over 1000 fruit from a Pink Thai Egg and as for cherries and currents, don't know anyone who counts them.

Main thing with tomatoes is to find some that you like the taste of and grow them to the best of your ability

[mama_lor]

Unpruned, branches spaced and in conditions with very little disease or pests, something like 100 lbs should be achievable for a decent variety. From my experience the varieties with high vigor and decent sized fruit have the chance of overall highest production if you have a long enough season. I haven't gotten anything more than 30lbs, but heavily pruned. As long as the leaf area to fruit production ratio is high enough, it has all the chances to taste good.

[Ginger2778]

Best producer I ever grew was Red Lithium. It's delicious. I grow it every year.

[Paulf]

A question right up my records keeping alley. According to the twenty-three years of weighing and recording the numbers of every tomato I have grown, not counting cherry tomatoes that even a crazy person like myself could possibly weigh and count, my winner is...Kellogg's Breakfast/KBX. A sixteen year average of fifty-six pounds of one of the best tasting tomatoes out there. Others will have more fruits and higher weights per year depending on the year, but taken as an entire history of averages, there you go.

[maxjohnson]

For me, climate, soil, and space out do the other factors. The genetics come next.

I'm growing less plants this year because tomatoes are so prolific here in Ohio. Yes it help if you have a very productive variety. But unfortunately it seems living in the right part of the country help a lot.

I have pretty good success with growing in straw bales last year. Maybe give it a try if you have soil problems.

[Paquebot]

The most productive variety that I have ever grown is very aptly named, Moneymaker. Out of about a thousand varieties grown, none have ever come close. I don't have all of the figures but one plant ripened 124 fruit. There were probably another 20 green at end of the season. That plant was grown cordon style on 8' support. It went to the top, back to the ground, and started back up again.

Martin

[Tormato]

I've only had one OP variety make the 40/40 club (40+ tomatoes/40+ pounds), Kellogg's Breakfast. Then there's Supersonic F1. which had too many tomatoes to count and weigh.

[Barmaley]

For me, climate, soil, and space out do the other factors. The genetics come next.

I'm growing less plants this year because tomatoes are so prolific here in Ohio. Yes it help if you have a very productive variety. But unfortunately it seems living in the right part of the country help a lot.

I have pretty good success with growing in straw bales last year. Maybe give it a try if you have soil problems.

What is considered the best part of the country to grow tomatoes. I am in PA and since it is close to Ohio I assume ,my climate should be good?

@maxjohnson what is the straw technique? Last year I grew in pots thinking that a deck of a house should protect against squirrels and racoons but I was wrong. Now I am thinking about diversifying part of plants to grow on ground since I will loose majority of the crop anyway!

[Barmaley]

Should growing in ground produce more crop than large pots or those options are equal?

Is Kellogg's breakfast a yellow tomato? I bought few fruits in a farmers market and they were large yellow tomatoes labeled Kellogg's Breakfast.

[Cole_Robbie]

Flavor goes down at some point of increasing production. For some uses of the tomatoes themselves, that would not matter as much, like cooking or sauce. I have grown russian dwarfs that made so many fruit the pics look like a fertilizer ad, but the flavor was mediocre.

[Cole_Robbie]

Should growing in ground produce more crop than large pots or those options are equal?

Is Kellogg's breakfast a yellow tomato? I bought few fruits in a farmers market and they were large yellow tomatoes labeled Kellogg's Breakfast.

Where I live, ground plants produce much more, but it probably depends on your soil and climate.

And Kellogg's is known as an orange, I think, but the line between orange and yellow is somewhat blurred. Some yellow tomatoes turn orange when very ripe.

[Paquebot]

What is considered the best part of the country to grow tomatoes. I am in PA and since it is close to Ohio I assume ,my climate should be good?

At one time New Jersey was the center of tomato production. As population moved west, Wisconsin and Northern Illinois was the second center. Then it moved to California.

Martin

[Shule]

For me, climate, soil, and space out do the other factors. The genetics come next.

I'm growing less plants this year because tomatoes are so prolific here in Ohio. Yes it help if you have a very productive variety. But unfortunately it seems living in the right part of the country help a lot.

I have pretty good success with growing in straw bales last year. Maybe give it a try if you have soil problems.

What is considered the best part of the country to grow tomatoes. I am in PA and since it is close to Ohio I assume ,my climate should be good?

@maxjohnson what is the straw technique? Last year I grew in pots thinking that a deck of a house should protect against squirrels and racoons but I was wrong. Now I am thinking about diversifying part of plants to grow on ground since I will loose majority of the crop anyway!

I think which area is the best depends on your growing technique, when you want to harvest, whether you're a market grower, and which issues you don't want to deal with (e.g. diseases, insects, deer, humidity, high altitude, heat, cold, etc.) In other words, I don't know that there is a single best for everyone. Maybe you could narrow it down to the best for you, or most people, though.

[Shule]

I think Better Boy F1 holds the world record for the most pounds of tomatoes produced from a single plant. However, it didn't win the record in my garden the one time I've grown it, so far. That title probably goes to one of these:
* Sausage
* An F1 Brandy Boy cross with an unknown tomato
* Insurance_1 (Mexican Yellow x probably Chapman F3)

However, if I'm looking at the most pounds of tomatoes for the least pounds of plant, I'd probably say Napoli would win that title in my garden, of the tomatoes I've grown, if not the BB cross F1.

Some people have great success with Napa Giant (at getting a lot of pounds of tomatoes). It wasn't a big producer in my garden, however.

Better Boy F1 tastes excellent.

Sausage tastes pretty good.

The BB cross tasted quite good.

Insurance_1 had good taste, but the previous generation tasted excellent.

Napoli was kind of lacking in taste for me, but I still like it anyway.

[maxjohnson]

For me, climate, soil, and space out do the other factors. The genetics come next.

I'm growing less plants this year because tomatoes are so prolific here in Ohio. Yes it help if you have a very productive variety. But unfortunately it seems living in the right part of the country help a lot.

I have pretty good success with growing in straw bales last year. Maybe give it a try if you have soil problems.

What is considered the best part of the country to grow tomatoes. I am in PA and since it is close to Ohio I assume ,my climate should be good?

@maxjohnson what is the straw technique? Last year I grew in pots thinking that a deck of a house should protect against squirrels and racoons but I was wrong. Now I am thinking about diversifying part of plants to grow on ground since I will loose majority of the crop anyway!

I haven't grown all across the country. But my best gardening result was in North Carolina, Ohio is pretty good so far, and Florida is extremely challenging. My experience tells me tomato like dry and not humid, and it absolutely hate wet and humid.

Growing in the ground is always going to be more productive provided you prep your soil right. I always top up my raised beds with more mushroom compost or cow manure compost each new season.

Just look up "straw bale gardening". There are youtube videos showing how to do it. One of the big benefit I notice with straw bale growing is since there is so much aeration for the root that the plant don't suffer from diseases as much as growing in the ground.

For container growing. Taking my experience from Florida growing. Growing in "fabric grow bags" give better results than regular containers, because it allow more aeration to the root and better drainage, this leads to better roots growth and less diseases. Technically with containers you should only be using potting mix (not potting soil). Grow bags are more forgiving,I use 1/3rd mushroom compost and 2/3rd potting mix. And last year I switched to using the fertilizer Osmocote for containers, which is quite a complete set of nutrients, but they are expensive and more affordable to order a 25lbs bag than buy a tiny bottle from the store. But a lot of different organic slow release fertilizers works just fine.

[Cole_Robbie]

I like osmocote, too. They make a few different products. Just fyi I found the one with higher nitrogen to be too much n for the plants. The equal number npk stuff is great though.

[Gardadore]

I have grown tomatoes in straw bales for the last 12-13 years. In the beginning they always fared better than in the ground and I didn’t have a lot of disease. But now we seem to have a lot more heat, humidity and rain so things are changing. I loved the bales because they held moisture but with too much rain they can get waterlogged and if it happens when the tomatoes are ripening they can get watery. Disease seems to have become more of an issue. But I persevere because it is easier on the back. I just hope each summer will get better. I will add more potting mix to the hole and Dolomitic lime which should help. With more rain the plants require more feeding and that could be a problem because I find it hard to keep up sometimes. But the bales are in place again so will hope again! Am using grow bags for Dwarf varieties.

[Barmaley]

I just found

image.png

this picture on reddit and I think it makes my questions about the most productive tomato irrelevant!