What has been your most productive tomato?

[mgret05]

Last year was my first year really growing tomatoes, and (like the nerd that I am) I kept a spreadsheet tracking my most successful plant - a Kellogg's Breakfast. I was pretty amazed at the yield.

Does anyone else track their yield? Which tomato has been the most productive for you, either in weight or quantity?

Here were my results:*
-Planted out late March. Harvested August 1 - October 7
-Picked 113 tomatoes
-Total weight: 71.6 lbs
-Biggest tomato: 23.5 oz
-Tomatoes over 1lb: 15
-Average weight: 10.13 oz

*results don't include a few that went straight to the compost, didn't ripen, or were picked by my neighbors when they watched the garden

Attached is a photo of the plant from July, before any fruit had ripened. It's 8ft tall and just as wide - clearly, pruning got completely away from me.

Kellogg's Breakfast.jpg

Plus one day's harvest in mid-August

Kellogg's breakfast yield.jpg

[swordy]

wow that's amazing! That is truelly no match to my most productive plant which was Orange Kentucky Beefsteak!

[maxjohnson]

It was Mega Marv in 2019. Sorry, I don't keep record of my harvest, but wouldn't be surprised if it was close to 40lbs for this plant. The largest fruit was about 2.5lbs.

IMG_20190722_150307.jpg

IMG_20190730_170800.jpg

[JRinPA]

Those KB are huge! They are far more ribbed than the KB I have grown. I'll to check and see if I have pics. Pics on the internet show KB sometimes heavily ribbed like those, and sometimes practically none, like I recall.

[mgret05]

Those KB are huge! They are far more ribbed than the KB I have grown. I'll to check and see if I have pics. Pics on the internet show KB sometimes heavily ribbed like those, and sometimes practically none, like I recall.

Oh interesting! I got this plant from a nursery, for what it's worth. I got lots of fasciated fruits too.

Also, the tomatoes were pretty bland the taste probably suffered from the high production (plus meager sun conditions in my urban backyard). The best use I found was to slow roast them to concentrate the flavor.

[JRinPA]

Bland...well that does sound like KB to me. I grew it a few years, but was never really impressed. Last year I grew sweet ozark orange as my only orange tomato, and will probably stick with that this year as well. I did have one SOO come in right at 2lb, after perfectly timed rain, and it wasn't split or anything and tasted great. I hadn't grown SOO for a few years. OR117 was great for two years and then kind of yuck for the next two; that was my previous favorite orange.

My most impressive plant was an Estiva F1 that I had in sunny spot and the first year for tomatoes there. One 20" CRW cage, well over 100 (120 or 30? would need to check) of perfect red tomatoes set on nice even trusses and almost no disease on the plant. The trusses were filled out like a cherry tomato, and I never see that from a big tomato. The stems were so green and lush, even into September. But those are only about 6-8 oz each.
My brother had an Estiva F1, may be the same year, that had a huge stem at ground level. It had to be 2" across. He said he had tons of tomatoes from it. That was a plant I "pre-trenched" on its side in a cut milk jug for a few weeks.

Also, I gave my neighbor one of those and he put it in his backyard...compost area I'd call it, used to be a garden. Hadn't had anything in a long time. He just let that sprawl, maybe one post initially, and it got about 5 foot high and 8 ft wide with tons of tomatoes. I don't know how many they ate or how big the stem was, but I could see it from a window. Bigger than any single plant I have grown, but I've never allowed one such space or freedom.

Thinking about it, those were probably all the same year. The first year I grew them from seed. Probably a lot of rain. My first exposure to Estiva was getting a bunch of seedlings free that were going to compost. A whole flat of 50, plus some more. A farmer friend got them free from johnny's when he bought a 250 pack of big beef. So I saved them from the compost pile. Then when I ordered big beefs johnny's sent me a free 40 pack of estiva too. Their exclusive, at least at that time, so they were trying to push it. I grew them out over two years, I think, but then just used the big beef seed. This year I made another order from there and bought some more Estiva F1.

It makes a red round globe, very uniform, about 6 oz or so, with fairly large seed cavities inside. But very blemish free.

[jmsieglaff]

This is from memory and it isn’t scientific. I will neglect cherries. Love to see your KB, wow! I grow KBX every year and love it. It’s actually very productive, in my climate that 2nd huge set of fruit runs into frost but such good production on such a fantastic taste—a rare treat! I need to grow it again but in my garden Orange Russian 117 was stupid productive and not only that it was delicious and served many purposes as it is meaty and offers some firmness yet still juicy. Big Beef F1 is another that produced a lot of tomatoes with nice flavor as well.

[Shule]

For weight, it's probably been Sausage (just the first time I grew it). Some unstable tomatoes have been contenders (e.g. Insurance_1 and the Brandy Boy cross F1, with Insurance_1 probably producing more than the other two).

For number of fruits, definitely Galapagos Island. It's a cherry, but the weight of the harvest beats most of the big tomatoes.

[karstopography]

That’s nuts on production! I always wonder what is the limit for one tomato if most everything goes right with light, fertilizer, weather, etc. I tried keeping a log on production, but I couldn’t manage it. Here, most tomatoes are destined to being destroyed by heat and disease instead of fall frosts so they only have a window of Spring and early Summer production. I’ve never gotten all the things under my control just right and the weather is generally adversarial anyway. Then there’s the constant pressure from squirrels and bugs. I estimate those get 25% of the take. I had one Pineapple tomato last year that just awed me with its production, but then I see that Kellogg’s BF and...well, I think that Pineapple tomato produced somewhere north of 20# and south of 30# before the heat shut it down.

[goodloe]

Impressive, [mention]mgret05[/mention] !! That is truly a massive plant. Big Beef has always been my most productive variety, and I have, on occasion, tried to document yields per plant. But...I could never seem to manage that effort over a season. Maybe this year, I'll pick out 1 plant to keep track of. Not sure I can manage the detail that you posted, though...;/

What part of the country are you in?

[mgret05]

Impressive, @mgret05 !! That is truly a massive plant. Big Beef has always been my most productive variety, and I have, on occasion, tried to document yields per plant. But...I could never seem to manage that effort over a season. Maybe this year, I'll pick out 1 plant to keep track of. Not sure I can manage the detail that you posted, though...;/

What part of the country are you in?

Try it! I kept track of harvest date and weight in Google Sheets. (You don't need any special skills - if you highlight your column of data, the sum and mean are listed in lower right of the window.)

I'm in Oakland, CA, where we get no summer rain, not too many days over 90 degrees, and mild winters. Some people let their tomatoes overwinter here. I think the low humidity let me get away with dense foliage without fungal problems. It isn't all rosy though; we also had weeks of no sunlight and terrible air conditions due to fires, when I didn't get out into the garden at all. My production dwindled in the fall because a) my plants were being decimated by russet mites, and b) I don't get much sun in my urban backyard.

[karstopography]

I’m not sure filtered sunlight, whether by smoke, haze, dust or some other mechanism isn’t an advantage to growing tomatoes. Maybe not so much up into the middle latitudes, but moving south, I’d rather have some veil of clouds or haze or a little filtered shade than unrelenting clear air sunshine.

Wonder if anyone has every determined the optimal intensity of sunlight for long term tomato plant health and production? Then if there is a number or range that’s been researched and measured, where do real life conditions intersect with that number.

Anyone that has ever been to different latitudes realizes the intensity of light varies considerably place to place. What’s the ideal intensity for tomatoes?

[Labradors]

My most productive tomato was probably Green Zebra. Too bad that I didn't like it! I grew it the year that my support system collapsed in a storm and I decided to rip the whole thing out (and only bother to salvage the tasty varieties). It had turned into a massive bush.

Linda

[Tormahto]

Most productive is Kellogg's Breakfast, here, too.

One state south of me, the CT Agricultural Extension ran a trial with several varieties in several areas of the state. KB came out at the top.

[Paulf]

KB and KBX have been my most productive over a fifteen year period when averaged out.

[mama_lor]

Around 27 lbs for EM champion in a 5 gallon. The fact that it was unpruned (its determinate) helped with production, I prune my indeterminates to one stem. Otherwise, year after year Crnkovic does 17-19 lbs and it's constantly my most productive.

The one year I grew KBX, it was ok in production but nothing special. The taste was surprisingly sour, maybe too much so, but not that strong in flavor, I wonder if there are variants going around. Great texture, great color, makes amazing looking sauce.

[jmsieglaff]

[mention]mama_lor[/mention] I too wonder about KBX/KB variants/unknown crosses going around as well, either that or it is very sensitive to soil/weather/location. I have grown KBX every year for a number of years (aside from the year when my transplant broke...ugh), regardless of the weather, it is always intensely flavored, sweet and tangy, meaty, yet very juicy, one of the very best every year. It doesn't keep very long and overripe ones are not nearly as good as a perfectly ripe one.

[steve ok]

The past few years my most productive has been Pink Berkley Tie Dye.

[fluffy_gumbo]

For me and my not-so-great soil and weather, it was Creole last year, which we really didn't enjoy. Go figures eh.

[Cole_Robbie]

One year I grew a few former soviet commercial varieties. I think it was tsars choice that was a dwarf plant covered in fruit. Pic looked photoshopped, there were so many tomatoes on it. That was the year I learned that if a plant makes enough tomatoes, there is a point where the flavor begins to suffer. I think the calculation involves the available leaf surface area of the plant vs the yield. There is only so much sugar a plant can make and flavor becomes milder as that sugar is spread across more fruit.