I like growing Pony Express tomato. Discovered it when my local CSA offered it.

First off, the seeds are not that common. There's a handful of sellers that offer it and it's expensive relative to the seeds. Like 100 seeds for $17.

Why is the cost so high? Is it hard to produce seeds? Is it licensed to only a few growers? Does anyone know the recipe (i.e, cross Roma with X variety)? Not that I have any interest is trying to grow seeds myself.

I generally plant one seed per cell and avoid wasting it unlike other varieties.

100 seeds for $17 is 17 cents per seed. That's cheap. The best deal I could find online for Sungold was 3.10 for 20 seeds, or about 15 cents per seed. $3.95/10 seeds was more typical; that would be 40 cents/seed. Not including shipping.
In order to get hybrid seeds, the flowers may have to be emasculated and pollinated by hand. Possibly it's easier, if one of the parents has only pistils and no stamens. In any case, properly fertilizing the parent plants is very labor-intensive.

How did Pony Express perform for you? What about the taste? (Strong, mild, sweet, tart, balanced, etc.)

https://paramountseeds.com/product/pony ... ma-tomato/

Never have I ordered from the outfit above, but they have 100 seeds for $8.30

Nan6b wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2020 4:12 pm 100 seeds for $17 is 17 cents per seed. That's cheap. The best deal I could find online for Sungold was 3.10 for 20 seeds, or about 15 cents per seed. $3.95/10 seeds was more typical; that would be 40 cents/seed.

How did Pony Express perform for you? What about the taste? (Strong, mild, sweet, tart, balanced, etc.)

You bring up a good point on the cost. I guess the price is comparable to get what you can find at Johnny Seeds and some other places. I had it in my head that you should be able to get a packet of tomato seeds for $4 and to see that these were $9 and up, it made me think they're more expensive without looking at the per-seed cost. Just looking now, I see one can get a package of 30 Roma seeds for $1.50 but I guess the difference is Roma is OP while Pony Express and others are hybrid.

I'm not a tomato expert so I can't comment on taste other than I like how they looked, produced and they were a good sauce tomato. I'll try to pay closer attention to taste this year.

I do know that Brandywine is one of my favorite beefsteak tomato for taste. Juliet (paste) is one that I'm not fond of because the tomato is kind of rubbery and has lots of pulp/seeds.

Got my first bunch of tomatoes from my garden today.
Haven’t eaten any yet but will make a sauce tonight. Yes, these are Pony Express. I only have one plant this year. Did have a few more but the voles chomped on the seedlings