For me it is Precocibec. It was developed outside Quebec to be cold tolerant, early, and prolific. It's a determinate with mid-size fruit (8 to 10 ounces.) It lived up to its billing on those three counts in my garden, Northeast Texas 8a, but still left me somewhat dis-satisfied because the plant sprawls, meaning most of the fruit sits right on the ground unless given very careful support. At one point, this plant had 20 tomatoes. Even though they set early, they took an extraordinarily long time to begin developing color. The clincher was that even when fully ripe, the flavor and texture are not great. Even though it's mainly a canning tomato, I wish they tasted better.
The seeds were part of a project at Victory Seeds to preserve unpopular varieties that don't have good enough sales for a place in their regular seed catalogue. I grew them as an experiment.
https://victoryseeds.com/pages/seasonally-available-varieties
by NPKzone8a
25 Comments
Arkansas Traveler. Grew last year, never again.
They were very productive in my 7A south central Kansas garden but the flavor was SO UNDERWHELMING
Brandywine pink. Great flavor and color, but I’m a container grower and the yield vis-à-vis the work doesn’t justify it when there are more prolific varieties.
Zone 10b, Mr Stripey. Way too many problems
I feel like all the cold tolerant/early tomatoes I’ve tried have been pretty disappointing.
Spoon tomatoes. Got them free last year and they were a such a scourge!! They started out in a 20″ pot (I was thinking they’d be decorative based on the picture.) Plant reach its arms out tipped sideways and spilled out into the border garden below. By the time I hit August I was whacking off a foot at a time to prevent it from grabbing passing pedestrians and cars. Even cutting it back weekly (or more) it was at least 10 feet long, 3 feet wide and several feet high.
The tomatoes themselves were fun tart bursts in salads, but wow, soooo many of them.
I am sure I will spend the entire summer this year picking volunteers out of the border garden from the tomatoes I missed when harvesting.
Green Zebra. They just didn’t thrive like pretty much every other type I planted. They are very cool looking and tasty tho…
Still early for me to say, waiting for Korean Long and Black Strawberry to ripen, the Black Krim was very tasty.
Painted Lady. Unruly plants, the variegated foliage doesn’t continue as the plant grows and although the fruits are nice looking there is nothing exceptional or interesting in the flavour..
Not currently growing any but cherry tomatoes. They take up too much space. Most are just sweet not much else going on. And just end up with a ton roting on the ground. Maybe one day I’ll want one again, but not any time soon
Every year I get a bunch of lemon boys and I sort of regret it because it’s not that great tasting and even though they do take off running and are pretty much heat tolerant and central Texas they attract a lot of bugs
I am growing a cold tolerant tomato called Shoshone. It was developed for north Idaho. I have a feeling it will be a boring red tomato. I was interested in growing something developed for my region. Boring, but I wanted to see if it made a difference.
Sun gold. Which sounds crazy, but they have way too delicate skins. Harvesting is really tough.
Sakura, I have RKN and it just did not hold up once the temps got into the 80s. That being said like it was a super early producer and I had tomatoes in April.
Orange Hat Tomatoes, where it was super cool to see the dwarf plants in full fruiting, the tomato was much earthier and thicker skinned than I wanted it to be
Yellow pear and bloody butcher. Both pretty gross imo
Yellow Pear. I should have researched it better; I didn’t realize they were so tiny! My fault. It’s producing a lot but the fruits are smaller than several of my cherry varieties.
Siletz. I think I got a mislabeled packet so I might not be growing it now, but I will be moving away from the cool varieties.
Sugary. Same reasoning as Yellow Pear. This was a last minute impulse buy from the garden center.
San Marzano. They are fussy little things, slow to ripen and the flavor is not as blow-my-socks-off as I was hoping it would be. I prefer Tachi.
Cherry Falls. Got one small flush of small fruit, a second, smaller flush of even smaller fruits, then it was basically done. Disappointing. It actually is patio sized, which might work for some people, but I have space for bigger stuff.
Oregon Spring. Flavor is ok. Production is meh. The plants are huge despite being determinate and just annoying to keep in place.
Sun Sugar. Same reasoning as Yellow Pear. Flavor is ok but nothing super impressive.
Super snow white was super prolific but absolutely unremarkable on taste.
Nothing even close to being ripe for me here in SoCal…..but good odds that it’ll be all but one of the open-pollinated orange/yellow/striped/bicolors slicers I have going this year (some of which are getting their second or even third chances because I haven’t grown them in a very long time).
That category in general just never seems to perform for me; something they don’t like about my weather. And sure enough, all but KBX (which *is* one that does well for me) have yet to set much fruit.
Ditto for Green Zebra. I start some every year for my neighbor (and they do well for her) but every time I’ve tried it it just randomly died; something in my soil that it can’t handle? I dunno, but it seems oddly frail in my garden. Did one this year & it looks pretty great now, but I bet it’ll be dead in a month. I keep beating my head against the wall by growing it, because what little I do get from it gets *very* high marks on flavor…but if it fails again this year, that’s the last straw!
I feel ya on the cold tolerant stuff; I’ve never grown one that’s anything to write home about. Where I am, they do fill a niche — it only hits freezing once or twice a year; so if you grow them in pots over the winter the plants do ok, but it’s cold enough that only specific “cold weather” varieties will set fruit reliably. I remember growing a bunch of Stupice about ten years ago; the plants were absolutely loaded by late January…..but once they got ripe, my family said they were actually *worse* than grocery store tomatoes! (and they ripened during a month-long heat spell — it was getting into the high 80s/low 90s at times — so no excuses for Stupice!)
42 day tomato. It was underwhelming. It produced very early as billed, however if u want to grow a ton for salsa fresca in a small space without staking, probably a good fit.
Ace.
It’s super average, probably a great grocery tomato.
Fireworks
It’s not a good fit for my region, I believe. 3rd year I’ve grown it. Never produces early and it always has issues.
Berkeley Tie Dye – low producing and am not a fan of the citrusy flavor.
I see you guys in America use completely different seeds. I wonder if I should try ordering some from abroad. Which ones should I try?
Brads atomic grape. Just not much flavor but they are pretty to look at.
Super sauce from burpee. I had such high hopes. Every single seedling grew spindly weird leaves like it had a disease. Out of 6 varieties it was the only one to act like that. Same soil, watering and everything else. It has to be the genetics imo.
They’re producing fruit now, but they’re smaller than normal Roma tomatoes. The few large ones split and may be salvageable, but I’m worried whatever disease is affecting them will alter the flavor and texture.
Also, Litchi. Looks cool, but the seeds are large like pepper seeds and the flavor isn’t intense enough to make me want to deal with thorns. It’s more style than substance.
Matt’s Wild Cherry- soooo many and soooo tiny, not worth it lol
I may change my mind since I don’t have any fruit yet, but right now I’d have to say the Norfolk Purple Tomato. Most of my seeds germinated and Purple led the other varieties I had going in growth, seemed to harden off well, but when transplanted I lost all but 3. All other varieties were fine. I ended up getting some decent seedlings from a colleague who is also growing them and they transplanted just fine.