Choosing Tomato Varieties

Hi, I'm Stephen and Jen with a backyard farmer from Iowa and today we're going to talk about how to pick the

tomato

es you want to plant in your garden, how you decide what to grow, and what it will do what you want it to do in your garden. There are so many seed options out there, how do you decide? Yes, that's a very common question, although they look at the catalogs and say there are so many that it's a little confusing. How do I know which ones to choose? Then we will talk. Some of the current principles on how to choose the right

tomato

for you.

The first thing you'll want to decide is what your end use is. Will you use it for canning? Do you want it used in burgers? Do you want small cherry tomatoes? to dry, find out and we have them sorted in our plant sale list as you know you can buy small or a little bit larger or paste tomatoes so let's start with paste tomatoes today which is an area that everyone they like. I want to make sauce or I want a can of paste tomatoes, that's where it is, but even in paste tomatoes there is a lot of variety, so how do I know which one is right?

Yes, when determining which ones you want to consider, of course, we sell. 10 different pasta tomatoes, there are hundreds available. We've reviewed and tried to select the ones that are best for our area, but one of the first things you should consider is the growth habit of the plant and what does that mean? There are really two or I would say two and a half types. plant becomes very large, requires stakes or some type of support and will bear fruit. You will keep light tomatoes until the plant dies, usually at the time of frost, basically it keeps growing until the frost kills it.

They will get taller if you grow them in a greenhouse and make a greenhouse tomato. You could grow those vines for a couple of years. They will continue to grow. They will grow 30 feet long until frost catches them in our garden. they won't last that long in your garden, yeah, in our garden they'll usually grow six or seven, sometimes eight or nine feet, a determinant is a plant that has a certain number of what would you call it, um, it's a certain growth habit and So it will reach a certain size, it will start to bear fruit, it will bear a bunch of fruit and it will be done after that point, it will not put on new branches, it will not maintain itself. pulling out new fruit it has a kind of arch that's going to go up and make a bunch and then it's and then it's done and you'll probably be done before the frost yeah you'll usually get a decent crop for about three weeks and then it's time to pull it up and plant something else there if you want a lot of something at once, uh, determiners are the way to go because if nothing else it's more irritating than today I picked a tomato and a potato. tomorrow and I'm trying to make sauce and I don't have enough tomatoes all at once.

Determinants can really help you with that, yeah, so number one, if you're going to do it, do you want a whole bunch in a short period of time? a determinant if you want a bunch over a long period of time or not as many but a much longer harvest then you would choose an indeterminate type of plant. The following is semi-determinant, you didn't explain semi-determinant. it's crazy stuff, so the standard aroma, so everyone comes and says I need a roma tomato, give me aroma, the original roma tomato is a semi-determinant, it only weighs a couple of ounces, it's kind of a small tomato, but it's a Very vigorous plant and it grows, it grows more than a determinant, but it doesn't want to go up like an indeterminate, so I have problems with it on my trellises because it turns black, yes, in terms of height, the determinate. you're about three feet tall, that's what you can expect from those, an indeterminate well can go on, you know, six, eight, ten feet or even more, whatever the semi feels like, the semideterminant will grow to about five or six feet, so it certainly gets bigger. than the determinant, it produces a pretty big wave at first and then fades away, but it will continue to produce, although not as much, until frost time comes, so a regular scent is a good example of that, we'll probably put Here in the screen appears our picture, but it is the aroma, it is just one small one among many, it is actually a category, so people say: I want aroma and I am going to say what kind, what is our next question, because Rome is not it's just kind of like tissues for tissues, everyone says I want a tissue, well you just need something to blow your nose in, so the tomato aroma may be that original aroma, but it's the smallest or It could be any of these newer

varieties

. let's talk about some of them, like early resilience gladiator royal plum paisano san marzano, it's not really aroma, but in that case it's another category, they are all plum-shaped tomatoes, they have a lot of flesh, they don't have many seeds.

They have a small core, they are good for processing, yes, and they come in all kinds of different shapes and sizes, from that roma vf that Jennifer mentioned that weighs about two ounces to we have a super sauce that is much larger. getting closer to a pound the determinants that they produce over that fairly short period of time are all about the same size, you can choose any of the different

varieties

, they are all about the same size, they are grown for different purposes and have different strengths fine, that It's a good point because some people always say: I would like a tomato but I need a traditional tomato.

Why do people feel like they need an heirloom tomato all the time? Many people have the perception that heirloom tomatoes will always taste better and while that is true, there is some truth to that, there is a long period of improvement where the focus was on products that could be stored better, could be shipped better and there was no focus on flavor. More recently, that focus has shifted back to maintaining traditional flavor while providing the yield, yield and disease resistance of newer hybrid varieties, so it's like you would do it if you just wanted to wear clothes. from the 1920s would look good yes, they are fabulous yes, I'm grateful for polyester and some polyester-cotton blends, you bet I am, so you know there are some good things that happen in genetics that are current, latest developments and would.

I encourage you not to be scared of them just because they are not an heirloom, if the caveat about heirlooms that often goes hand in hand is that if you want to save seeds, if you want to save seeds, you need an open pollinated variety. I've been gardening my whole life and I recently started saving seeds so don't feel pressured you can you can hybrids are fine there are some really good hybrids if you're worried about genetics and tomatoes and things like that it's a little concern and there are some cool new things out there and tomato breeders are doing some really amazing things yeah okay I think that covers the roma or pasta tomatoes oh which one is your favorite this one oh it's my favorite he works in our list has all its errors who say it is difficult to choose that is why we have so many but we are really looking for a good portfolio of tomatoes that I would not want to plant 20 of one type, unless you are a professional farmer and do all the things that a professional farmer does , I recommend that if you are going to plant 5, 10 or 20 tomatoes, choose between four or five different types, what is the criteria when you are looking at a seed catalog and you are looking to buy a tomato, what are the phrases that you are looking for that They say this tomato will probably do well, well I like to have the whole collection so I have some heirlooms for those people who want the airlines because some of them are irreplaceable and no there are not enough people working on this to keep them all the cool stuff there so if there's something really cool we keep it yeah another thing I look at.

Because it's days to maturity, many of the traditional heirlooms have longer days to maturity than some of the newer hybrids, which means there is a delay between the time I plant them and the time I can eat them, yes , so if you see a product that is a variety. that has 70 days to maturity and you look at one right next to it that has 85 days to maturity, there will be about a two week difference between when you get the first red tomato from one plant and the first red tomato from the other and this. This is a big deal, this is a big deal because I mean tomatoes are our big celery if people are planting a garden and they say what are you growing?

Everyone is growing a tomato. Everyone can't wait for that first ripe, juicy tomato. I guess. when we get them, yeah, we can get them a lot, we can get them a lot sooner if you plan it right, so my goal to get a good fresh tomato is on the 4th of July, which is a challenge here in central Iowa, but we've done it. done consistently over the years and having a due date that's not 100 days really helps, really helps shorten it, yeah, and we're busy in the fall, we really try to do most of our tutoring in the summer former.

School starts again because once school starts it's much harder for us to get out into the garden, so getting a first crop two weeks early can make the difference between getting a good crop and something from last year. If we get knocked down by the direct spectacle or a disease that comes in and takes something away, or if we go on vacation and something happens with our irrigation, that extra week or two makes a big difference for us and it does for a lot of people. so we'll look for days to harvest, that's good, if you want an earlier tomato, choose a shorter time, you're looking for a hybrid versus an heirloom and don't be afraid, choose something that works.

I would also add that we would look for some disease resistance here in central Iowa we have some plant diseases we have early blight we have some late light we have some other things what are the? what are they looking for? As Rome vf says, what are we finding when? they say roma vf yes there are many different tomato diseases and many of the plants are resistant to certain types but not all, one of the most common diseases we find here in central Iowa is septoria which is a fungal disease to which there are no tomatoes resistant to it, but if you have problems with early blight or late blight, you will be more susceptible to septoria.

There are several varieties that are resistant to Those so we can review them and if you know what your problems are you can easily narrow it down to the varieties that will work best for you and there are some tomatoes with really cool things, you'll see they have a v and an f. and an f and a b and this whole alphabet behind it says that someone has tried this and it will resist good diseases and if you have had problems in the past it is good to look it up, okay, let's try another type of tomato, what does it do? what you want to talk about so let's look at our really big tomatoes it's pretty common we'll have someone that will walk by and say I just want a big red tomato and yeah they're delicious and delicious and ask ask some. same type of questions but one of the things I will notice that is different is that if you want a very large red tomato and a certain type of plant, they don't exist, we don't have, there aren't any good ones. at the market, you can take some shortcuts if you have a smaller garden or are growing in pots with some of our smaller tomatoes and make it work, but you can't really make a huge tomato work unless you are growing somewhere like that . half a barrel yeah like a barrel like a big pot a big pot um they're going to get a lot of sun and they're going to need a longer season yeah so the same thing applies anyway the same principles apply um in terms of open pollination or hybrids, there are a lot of really good varieties, a lot of the classics that people talk about they ask and ask by name and this would be a good example, so I'll come to you and say I want a brandywine, what are you going to tell me? ?

There is a variety of brandywine, there is also the kind of brandywine and we can talk about each one that we have, the variety of brandywine, it is an older one and they are different, there are different strains of This, so we chose the best strain that we could of this strain of brandywine, yes, the one we have dates back to 1885. It's called the Keysenberry strain and it's considered one of the best and at Brandywine it certainly has a strong following. super delicious flavor, but it takes a long time, this is our last ripening tomato, eh, yes, it's more than 80 days, I think so, but it's a really good mother plant, so if you're looking at the genetics of the plants and you're looking at everything In this whole list, how many of these here actually have a parent that's in the brandywine, which is a brandywine, so like Mountain Rouge, I think it's a new one that we started and you might not be familiar with that name, but guess what it's related to Brandywine, yeah. that that isA number of varieties have been created and marketed that are descendants of brandywine.

Mountain Rouge is one of the most recent. Their focus was really on having an older product, so they shaved about a week of those days. to harvest and they got a smaller core, much smaller, which is good because you can have a lot more tomato that you can eat without having to cut a big chunk out of the center, but they also brought quite a bit more resistance to disease and it also kept the flavor , but he made it better in so many other ways and with those big tomatoes nothing is as heartbreaking as having this huge, perfect tomato growing on your vine and having it split or fall apart.

It's tragic, it's tragic, so I thought, let's figure out some of this stuff if it says resist cracking, that's a good thing in my book, yeah, a lot of the same things still apply here, look for the size you want, look for I. I'll just point out one difference that maybe a lot of people don't recognize is that some of these big red tomatoes, some are pink, some are red, most of the heirloom ones are technically classified as pink tomatoes. fabulous flavors and don't be scared really very very good um pink tomatoes generally have a sweeter taste than darker red tomatoes do they really like them okay let's talk about tomatoes that they're not red because we have some of Those too, yeah, when we started we had only planted red tomatoes and we thought that was all there was really to know and then at some point we tried an orange tomato and we thought, oh my gosh, these They are so good that they are missing out.

So don't tell anyone that orange tomatoes are actually my favorite and we grew a lot of them and I was so sad that we lost them all last year. We had a problem last year. But we have many. orange tomatoes because they are very good and they fix the same thing there are some hybrids there are some open pollinated varieties one of my favorites was an amana orange and we won't be selling that one this year even though it was one of my favorites how Come on, yes, the Amanda orange It's super delicious, but I remember we could only eat them after the kids went back to school because it took a long time to ripen and then a breeder focused on improving it and brought a new variety called Chef's.

The orange chosen, that is, I would say at least a week and a half before the old Amanda orange was kept, same flavor, brought some additional disease resistance, brings everything we wanted and is it a winner of ABS? I think it's an eight, yeah, so it's a 20 2014 aas winner and again, some really good things that you tell me, like Orange Wellington or Dr. Weichi, so Dr. Wycheese, I'll cover a couple here. Dr. Wychee and Kellogg's Breakfast are some relics that have been around for many years, have some wonderful stories, taste super delicious, super sweet, um, they're really, really good, they're more of the beef filet type where you have big wrinkled shoulders um, a little bit.

A little bit bigger core than maybe some of the others, but super ridiculous, I just eat it, I just eat it right there, it's fantastic, yeah, and even though we don't sell as many orange tomatoes as red tomatoes, people come back. to them, every year, everyone who has tried one seems to want to come back and say: I need at least one or two orange tomatoes every year, they serve a very specific purpose, they are really delicious, a little brighter, something pleasant to add them to your sauce, you add a little bit, you put a little bit of red, a little bit of yellow, a little bit of green in there, it's very colorful, okay, let's talk about that, let's round it up again and talk about our little ones, there are some of the small cherry tomatoes and small ones. the difference between a grape tomato a cherry tomato a cocktail tomato all these little ones so we have bullet shaped little ones we have round little ones we have oval little ones tell me about this yeah it really comes down to size and shape and a little bit the flavor too so that cherry tomatoes will be the smallest ones we have, you can also get current tomatoes that are even smaller uh we grew them last year they were super cute they're not practical they're not yeah.

If they're cute, they're fun to snack on, but they're not very practical, and um, we've really focused on cherry tomatoes as the smaller ones and we have several, but two, two big red ones that are a big name for people. it comes back year after year the chadwick cherry is a great super sweet heirloom 100 is another fantastic variety, really sweet, really delicious, very high in vitamin c, now from there, although we have others that are maybe a little more fun and i I know I like stripes and colors and it's fun, so Sunrise Bumblebee is one of my favorites, it's yellow with pink stripes, it goes all the way through, I just cut them up and eat them in a bowl and, um, barely stop. to be honest, I have ever entered the house, to be honest, with the ones that were in the garden before I entered and they are very good sugars too and we call those garden sweets orange solar sugars and it is very sweet and it is almost the first to ripen every year we grow over 50 tomatoes all these different things sun sugar is always the first out it's ready to go and lasts a long time who was the winner last year so this last year I was surprised during all season I loved the sun sugar he loved the dawn bumblebee but we got to the end of the year and I thought it was all done I hadn't gotten everything out but we had left all the cherries out and we didn't water it for about two weeks and a day I went out thinking it was time to pull them up, take the plants out of the garden, clean the garden and here, in mid-October, without having been watered for quite some time, was the sparkling. xsl and that is a new variety that we basically wanted to try in our garden and we also sold some other plants to others.

It's one of those, what are they? Is it one of the artists in the class? Where are they? all the fabulous flavor and everything, but it's with the new genetics and it was really worth it because you came out and it was the last one standing, it was the only one that beat everything that happened all year during last year's edition and So it's very sweet, it tastes good, but it didn't seem like something super fantastic to me until we got to the end of the year and they were still producing really big, really delicious, really fabulous cherry tomatoes, so that appeared on our list again this year and I'm very excited to let others try it too, so what is the difference between cherry tomatoes and grape tomatoes?

Grape tomatoes are a little larger and a little longer. the shape is how I like to see them our bullet is shaped in the case so some in blush and prairie fire both are little torpedoes they are fun some are just a little bit We only have a variety of different grape tomatoes anymore we have a couple of reds, a smaller one that is Napa grape, one that is a little longer than a red one, which is Julieta. Julieta is also an AAS winner. I've been around for about 20 years it's a really good standard grape tomato that a lot of people really like do you know what I really liked last year?

I liked the zebra apricot, which is new, it's in that artisanal class again, it has stripes, it has a very good tomato. flavor and I didn't think it would stand out again, but it makes the most fabulous Thunderhead tomatoes that we dry. I don't even know how many of them it was very productive, yeah, so that's another one, it's new, but really delicious and we really like that when the dried atomic grape and brad is just unbeatable for the kaleidoscope of colors that are in that, it's kind of fun, it's relatively new, but it recently won a national heirloom show award, so to get an heirloom award for a fairly new variety is pretty unique, it's cool and, um, blush, i really like it too , it's like a bumblebee at dawn, only bullet-shaped, it's fun to eat, so what if I want us to talk about those yellow tomatoes we talked about? red tomatoes we talk about all these things but we don't talk about my green, black and blue tomatoes, let's talk about the green, black and blue ones, so last year we tried a green tomato and I thought this was going to be really strange, I'm used to wait until the tomatoes are ripe and we try this green tomato and I'm trying to find my evergreen list here, emerald evergreen is the name of that emerald evergreen tomato and I'm not going to find it.

It looks like an emerald evergreen tree. It ended up being the sweetest tomato I think I've ever tasted. You have to keep an eye on it to make sure you harvest it when it's ripe because it doesn't change color more than a little. more yellowish it gets softer but it gets a little softer so you have to determine when to harvest it by feel and that was delicious. I highly recommend it if you've only tried one red tomato before, try something else too, that's it. worth a try um paul robeson we have cherokee black cream purple all of those are pretty standard they are all heirlooms they are heirlooms that people order every year so there are a lot of good options available hope this helps you , it has been very fun. talk to us we haven't um we haven't started planting anything yet neither the tomatoes nor the tomatoes I went in through the back door with the peppers we'll talk about that another time they're leaving but the tomatoes will start A couple of three weeks, so yeah you want to make sure you have yours, visit our website, check out the list and place your order if you're local, yes, that sounds good, we'll talk to you later, bye.