Cool PNW varieties

[Torquill]

Hey all... surfacing for a moment here, as I shovel out the house and reclaim five acres from the wilderness.

I'm new to the Pacific Northwest, and just starting to get the hang of the climate here. I'm in the Oregon Coast Range, zone 8a (Sunset 4), a far cry from the inland SF Bay Area I came from. Gone are the long, hot, dusty summers; now I need shorter-season varieties, and I'm shifting from tomatoes resistant to spider mites toward tomatoes resistant to leaf blight. I get to try a bunch of new varieties now, and hopefully hang on to a few old favorites.

We still get a couple of dry, hot months (July and August) where it creeps into triple digits every other week, and the rest of summer is mid-80s to mid-90s with moderate humidity. Spring is late and wet, and fall starts coming in around mid- to late September most years. I figure I can probably grow any early, almost any midseason, and a few late-season varieties if I time things right and use a couple of season-extension tricks. Ultimately I'll set up a greenhouse to help along things like black tomatoes and melons, but that's some years off.

I'm looking for a good, well-rounded tomato seed library for this climate. A mixed blessing is that I had to throw out nearly a thousand varieties worth of seed packets last year, as the seed was saved during the years I was discovering and identifying a new species of tomato pith necrosis that had made its way to my garden; none of the literature suggested it was seedborne, but I got extensive evidence that P. mediterranea is indeed transmitted by seed. So the vast majority of my library went poof. Given that only about half of it would be good for my new climate, I'm taking it as an opportunity to refocus.

I collected mostly PL and vigorous growers in California, as they resisted mites well; now I can grow wispy-types, so I'm pretty excited to check out more hearts. Cherry tomatoes are a given, they like it here. Many of the Siberian varieties should do well, and ones developed in Washington State; we're cooler here than central Oregon by a good stretch, more like the Seattle area. I have Oregon Spring and Siletz so far, and I'm trialing San Marzano and Legend this year -- Legend is an old friend which impressed me in California, and it's promising to perform here as well. Oregon Spring is mild, but prolific, so I keep it for sauce and drying. Siletz is erratic but has good flavor. Last year I also grew Willamette and Patio, but they were bland, bland, bland. My old standbys used to be Mortgage Lifter, Kellogg's Breakfast (often PL), Vorlon, and Legend.

What varieties would you suggest I try? I prefer sweet tomatoes to tangy ones, and I can't eat many fresh at one time, so I'm less interested in cherries than in saladettes or larger, which I can easily roast. (Darn those tongue sores...) I'll be set up to do canning by next year. As I build beds over time, it looks like I'll have as much gardening space as I could possibly take care of by myself, and water is plentiful. I haven't seen any particularly nasty diseases here in the last couple of years, just a touch of bacterial spot and some mild early blight. Heaven, if I can get the right varieties!

So tell me, tomatophiles: what should I grow?

--Sam

Edited to add: I picked up an Earl's Faux at the nursery this year (they're still labeling it "Red Brandywine") and I'm growing it at my aunt's place in town. Just set the first batch of seeds to ferment, and the rest of the tomato tasted marvelous. I hope it likes the extra thousand feet of elevation up here!

[Tormahto]

Pervaya Lyubov for a beefsteak, and Fish Lake Oxheart for a heart, for starters.

[bower]

If you find Vorlon cranky about the cool spring weather, I would recommend Indian Stripe as a substitute. Amazon Chocolate is another, and earlier, but there are multiple strains of that so I'm not sure what you will get. They were smaller tomatoes however. IS and Vorlon fruits were pretty well indistinguishable for taste, to me here, but Vorlon never seemed to get over the cold spring and was a bit sulky and stingy all season, while IS took everything in stride.

[Torquill]

If you find Vorlon cranky about the cool spring weather, I would recommend Indian Stripe as a substitute. Amazon Chocolate is another, and earlier, but there are multiple strains of that so I'm not sure what you will get. They were smaller tomatoes however. IS and Vorlon fruits were pretty well indistinguishable for taste, to me here, but Vorlon never seemed to get over the cold spring and was a bit sulky and stingy all season, while IS took everything in stride.

Good tip. I always found Vorlon to be one of my earliest and most reliable tomatoes down south, but it's dark enough that I haven't been sure how it would take to the cooler nights we have here. I haven't tried Indian Stripe, though many years ago it seemed like people mentioned it in the same breath with Cherokee Purple... I can't stand the taste of CP, but I'll give Indian Stripe a shot.

I had a couple of friends who were absolutely over the moon with the taste of my Vorlon tomatoes, and when I was sharing my harvest they'd ask for them by name. I'm hoping that with a little finagling I can make them happy here, though it might take planting them in town to get the proper sweetness. We'll see how it goes.

--Sam

[bower]

@Torquill to be honest, I never thought there was a major taste difference between Indian Stripe, CP, or Vorlon. I thought they had pretty similar taste profile. Granted they were grown in different years not side by side, but.... I actually never grew CP myself, only tasted what a friend grew and saw how they did at the farm - unreliable, you could get a really unproductive year, or really late, and another year they were just huge and IMO not very tasty in the blown up condition. IS produced well for me, had more regular size and shape of fruit, nice consistent quality and not a whiner about weather or etc. I just dropped the others after I saw that. And then we went for breeding earlier ones.

I only grew Vorlon one year, and maybe didn't give it justice. We are probably a lot colder here than you are anyway, but IMO if you save seeds from the plants you grow, they have a chance to get better adapted to your site. So if you really love that fruit, well that's what I would do in your shoes.

[Shule]

Perhaps Pruden's Purple would be a good one for you. It's pretty early. It probably likes a certain amount of humidity. I hear it produces better in humid areas than it has for me in my arid growing season. Marion is another you might try. Also, Thessaloniki and Brandy Boy F1. I don't know how these hold up against leaf blight, though, but they can all potentially be early to early-ish and handle a variety of temperatures.

Mid-nineties is pretty warm for most stereotypical PNW areas, from what I've seen reported (at least the ones closer to the coast than the mountains). So, I'm not sure that I'd actually recommend the tomatoes that are usually known for the PNW, since the ones I've tried don't seem to produce a lot in the heat (at least they haven't for me, so far; maybe they just needed fertilizer, or more humidity, but I'm pretty sure they needed less sun than I have). But if you want to try them, look at OSU varieties (Legend is one of those), and Tom Wagner varieties.

Speaking of fertilizer, it helps a lot in the heat. I recommend trying it regularly, even if you only do it on a few of your plants.

I wonder if Brad Gates's tomatoes would do well for you. They were probably bred in something closer to your climate than the PNW varieties, I'm guessing.

How long is your frost-free growing season? If it's 5 months or more, you should be able to get plenty of all sorts of fruit (early or not) once you get the hang of things. Is it cloudy there a lot, or mostly sunny?