Tomato varieties that others love-- but you find little use for?

[maxjohnson]

Medium sized red round tomatoes typical appearance to store bought. I probably missed out on a great deal of great tasting tomatoes. Sorry, it just seem too typical. I do prefer big pink beefsteaks that are 2 pounders.

I'm a hypocrite on this, but I tried to stopp growing those super sweet small cherry tomatoes: Sungold, Sun Sugar, Ambrosia Orange UBX. They always cracks in the rain and go to waste. Lemon Drops has been my favorite sweet yellow cherry. But this year I will give Esterina F1 a try.

And lastly, I might sound like the grinch on this one, but it's more of just not being impressed. Some of these bigger budget heirloom seeds websites like to promote really hard these new attractive looking multi-colored multi-striped tomatoes, the ones with anthocyanin traits. You know what I'm talking about. A lot of these new fancy colored antho tomatoes from my experience tend to be disappointing in term of taste and performance. Not saying I haven't grown good antho varieties before, I'm a sucker and will grow one or two each year, but in term of flavor, production, and disease resistance, most of them has left me disappointed.

[AKgardener]

Alberto shatter even thought they were cute tiny tomatoes that grew like crazy they had no flavor but despite all of that my husband insisted on a dedicated bed for those plants every year it hopes they would drop and the seeds would start again in the spring haha he likes the fact that there small and grow like weeds

[Nicolesica]

Brads Atomic Grape. We so wanted to like that tomato, but it ended up with the unfortunate nickname of Brads Atomic Gross

[NMRuss]

Tried to grow 2 orange varieties super high in tetra sislicopene, Moonglow and Olga's round yellow chicken egg. Huge disappointment in production and taste on the few i got. Out of 12 plants only got about 10 tomatoes total. I really really wanted them to grow well here but not suitable to our cool night time climate.
The search continues!

[OhioGardener]

Just about anything green when ripe. Green eggs and ham I'll do, but not green tomatoes .

[Labradors]

NMRuss, I grew Moonglow in 2019. Production was amazing, and the fruit were perfect round orbs, but I found the taste very tart. I'd love to hear what you thought of the taste of Moonglow and Olga's. I was going to grow Olga's Round Yellow Chicken Egg this year, but ran out of room.

Linda

[OhioGardener]

NMRuss, I grew Moonglow in 2019. Production was amazing, and the fruit were perfect round orbs, but I found the taste very tart. I'd love to hear what you thought of the taste of Moonglow and Olga's. I was going to grow Olga's Round Yellow Chicken Egg this year, but ran out of room.

Linda

I grew Olga last year. For me, it was a moderately productive mid-season tomato with a good, though not spectacular flavor that was balanced, but more acidic than sweet. It was very similar to Orange Crimea which I felt was better in all respects, except for its tendency for radial and concentric cracking which Olga's didn't have.

[Labradors]

NMRuss, I grew Moonglow in 2019. Production was amazing, and the fruit were perfect round orbs, but I found the taste very tart. I'd love to hear what you thought of the taste of Moonglow and Olga's. I was going to grow Olga's Round Yellow Chicken Egg this year, but ran out of room.

I should mention that Orange Strawberry, which is also a high cis-lycopene variety, tastes sweet and wonderful!

Linda

[Labradors]

Many thanks Ohio Gardener. I should probably try Orange Crimea next .

Linda

[OhioGardener]

Many thanks Ohio Gardener. I should probably try Orange Crimea next .

Linda

I have seed that I'd be happy to share with you from the Orange Crimea fruit pictured. The cracking just isn't visible here because I have the fruits turned upside down though it did seem a little less as the season progressed. Olgas in comparison did not crack at all, but the fruit size, color, and yield were all slightly lower than OC, at least in my garden, although it had a better appearance and ability to keep longer. I'd also describe OC fruit as a little softer than Olgas.

[Labradors]

Many thanks for your very kind offer Ohio Gardener. I already have seeds! What put me off is that they are "late". I'm growing Amish Yellow Orange Oxheart this season (if I can get them to germinate). I should start some O. C. seeds, just in case they don't!

Linda

[OhioGardener]

Many thanks for your very kind offer Ohio Gardener. I already have seeds! What put me off is that they are "late". I'm growing Amish Yellow Orange Oxheart this season (if I can get them to germinate). I should start some O. C. seeds, just in case they don't!

Linda

If your AYOO are from the swap, they're fresh 2020 seeds. I do recall them being really slow to take off for me last year, but I attributed it to them spending over a month in transit, going through USDA and then being returned to USDA with an incorrect forwarding address before finally arriving in my mailbox. When they finally took off, they really grew up quickly and put out a lot of tomatoes though!

[Labradors]

Thanks for the info about the AYOO seeds from the swap. They had an additional journey, all the way to Canada! They are not the only ones that seem slow to germinate this season - and I, of course, am being impatient........

Linda

[OhioGardener]

Thanks for the info about the AYOO seeds from the swap. They had an additional journey, all the way to Canada! They are not the only ones that seem slow to germinate this season - and I, of course, am being impatient........

Linda

The ones in the swap were harvested in September from a grow out of the seeds I received. So maybe it's just a characteristic of the variety. I'm late in getting my seedlings started this year and will see if I notice the same here.

[NMRuss]

NMRuss, I grew Moonglow in 2019. Production was amazing, and the fruit were perfect round orbs, but I found the taste very tart. I'd love to hear what you thought of the taste of Moonglow and Olga's. I was going to grow Olga's Round Yellow Chicken Egg this year, but ran out of room.

Linda

Sorry about the late reply.. yes what little amount of fruit i got, they were extremelt tart and did tend to crack. I wanted so much for these to be successful. I wanted a tomato sauce high in cislycopene..

[Ginger2778]

Cherokee Purple here it is totally bland blah tomato and yes I tried it a second time. I so wanted to like that tomato.

Ditto

[Shule]

[mention]NMRuss[/mention]
You could try crossing them with red ones that do better, and selecting for orange fruit. Also, sometimes it helps to save seeds and try again from saved seed. Sometimes it helps to grow it in a different piece of ground.

How long is your season?

I grew Moonglow in 2020. I think it had one to three fruit, and they all had BER. My guess is it wanted more organic matter and more water (it had plenty of calcium in the soil).

[FarmerShawn]

Green Zebra does nothing for me. I just don't like it. Not because it's green, just because it doesn't taste good to me. And I've grown it several years, partly because it sometimes sells at market.
And Speckled Roman paste tomato. I never get more than about three tomatoes from it, no matter what I do.

[NMRuss]

Shule.. i planted in several different locations and the results were the same. After that dismal performance i didnt even think about saving seed.
As far as season length sometimes were lucky to get 120 days. Ive extended that by planting 2 months early with kozycoats. It makes a huge amount of difference in production with both my tomatoes and chiles.
I hardly have any problems with BER since i started adding calcium sulphate to the soil mix i make .

[PlainJane]

For the most part antho tomatoes leave me cold.