Tomato Variety Trial: a success (and some trial prelim results)
Our third first frost scare is coming up in half a week or so. One of these is going to be The One. I didn't do much for the previous two but I'm giving serious thought to pulling all the green tomatoes for this weekend.
Given the size of the trial it hasn't been very productive but that is kind of the point: the entire harvest came from fewer than half the plants, and half the harvest will have come from maybe 10 or fewer of the 55. If I plant those productive ones in the same space next year I'll be swimming in tomatoes.
A bunch have made it onto the permanent list:
Minsk early is the earliest of prolific tomatoes, more on the acid side but wins for sheer quantity.
Bloody butcher is the earliest. It drops off in production after that but that's ok.
Mikado black is really tasty, and has a good balance of ripening fully within season/producing several lovely unblemished fruit/tastes good.
Taiga is not very productive but it ripens and is tasty.
Cole, Glacier (unevenly sized), Moravsky Div, Cabot, and Katja (large fruit but may need to ripen inside) all go into the pretty productive/not necessarily the best flavour but they sure put out fruit that can ripen category. Stupice doesn't compete as well as I thought in there. Silvery Fir Tree will be a little on the later side, along with Katja, but does have a lot of fruit set.
Karma miracle ripened some and is prett tasty; I may have missed some fruit since it retains a lot of green when ripe.
My grocery store green cherry performed well and is tasty. It stays.
Sweet apertif did ripen some this year. Matt's wild cherry and Sweet cherriette ripened outdoors at the same time and had similar fruit: Matt's was an enormous sprawling plant that should have been on an edge and Sweet Cherriette was very compact and determinate.
A bunch didn't do as well as I'd like:
Galina was tasty but is just starting to ripen yellow cherries, it seems late for cherries? I may try it again but not super sold on it.
A bunch just didn't set much fruit at all. Cherokee chocolate comes to mind particularly.
Northern ruby paste started setting very late, as did old italian pink. Alas.
Northern Sun ripened one fruit per plant that I could see. It's normally a little more reliably early? Maybe it needs to be deflowered when planted.
Lime green salad doesn't seem to have ripened this year, we'll see when I go in to pull the plants. It was one of the few to ripen outdoors two years ago after being frosted back in June. Maybe another try? It tastes good. It didn't ripen on the deck or in the field though. Very nice bush form.
Czech bush ripened a couple fruits early on and then just... slowed way down, I'm not sure it'll give me many more big enough to ripen indoors even. Very strange. Too bad, it is a very nice plant form.
The panamorous tomatoes, in which I'm including exserted orange, had the most reliably producing row. A couple plants were pretty loaded down but especially exserted orange just kept trickling them out. Some plants did nothing, one looks like it did some small green weird fruit -- that's the wild genes -- and I'm looking very much forward to planting my saved seeds from them next year and seeing what happens. I have two seeds stuck to a piece of paper from a tomato that only had two seeds on it, the paper reads "zesty yum! best"
There is a single tomato in the corn patch that volunteered from, I guess, grocery store fruit seeds and looks like it'll ripen. I'll keep seeds from it too.
There's more, but basically I've learned a ton and am very happy with this knowledge. Still need to rate everything on some basic features: earliness, reliability (if I have multiple plants of that variety), flavour, yield, plant shape/ease of cultivation.
It looks like I may have enough squashes ripen, or close-enough-finish-indoors ripen, to be able to evaluate those. Most of the grains are cut. but I still have triticale, rivet wheat, ladoga, korassan, and the two late-planted cedar isle wheats to harvest. OF my three varieties of pickling cuke I think I can eliminate boston, which is producing well now but was last to start compared to Morden and National. Sweet success was absolutely the best slicing cuke, I think because pollination in the greenhouse was an issue and it's parthenocarpic. Suyo long will get another chance.
Famosa F2 cabbage was first to head, and made small savoyed heads with lots of earthworms in them. Sorrento rapini was an excellent early veg and should be generously seeded until it volunteers, it far outdid conventional broccolis or even kinda-conventional broccolis. Mammoth red rock cabbage was slow to head and maybe is more reliable than copenhagan market? Copenhagan market has a couple huge heads out there and some small ones.
It wasn't a great bean year, and I'm still sorting out my favas. They fell over. Russian black looked like they'd be done first since they podded up first, but the lofthouse ones may be ripening first.
No word on the flour corns yet, I'm letting them go as long as possible.
The beauregarde soup peas did a truly fantastic job. Small plants of maybe 8", not vining or climbing at all, lots of peas per plant. I want to experiment with more soup peas. I get along with them better than I do with beans anyhow.
This is a reminder to plant more basil next time.
Ronde de nice zucchini has just started pumping out fruit in the last two weeks. Maybe it needed much more rain? I think the pollinators were pretty sparse in the main garden this year so that may be it too, or they needed a specific temp to pollinate that I was not getting. The field squash didn't start to take till a little later either, even with and pollination.
I'm very excited to see what I get for squash next year since I have at least a couple different ones that definitely cross-pollinated. The lofthouse squash, sundream, burgess buttercup, gete oksomin, and especially North Georgia Candy Roaster are on the list.
Given the size of the trial it hasn't been very productive but that is kind of the point: the entire harvest came from fewer than half the plants, and half the harvest will have come from maybe 10 or fewer of the 55. If I plant those productive ones in the same space next year I'll be swimming in tomatoes.
A bunch have made it onto the permanent list:
Minsk early is the earliest of prolific tomatoes, more on the acid side but wins for sheer quantity.
Bloody butcher is the earliest. It drops off in production after that but that's ok.
Mikado black is really tasty, and has a good balance of ripening fully within season/producing several lovely unblemished fruit/tastes good.
Taiga is not very productive but it ripens and is tasty.
Cole, Glacier (unevenly sized), Moravsky Div, Cabot, and Katja (large fruit but may need to ripen inside) all go into the pretty productive/not necessarily the best flavour but they sure put out fruit that can ripen category. Stupice doesn't compete as well as I thought in there. Silvery Fir Tree will be a little on the later side, along with Katja, but does have a lot of fruit set.
Karma miracle ripened some and is prett tasty; I may have missed some fruit since it retains a lot of green when ripe.
My grocery store green cherry performed well and is tasty. It stays.
Sweet apertif did ripen some this year. Matt's wild cherry and Sweet cherriette ripened outdoors at the same time and had similar fruit: Matt's was an enormous sprawling plant that should have been on an edge and Sweet Cherriette was very compact and determinate.
A bunch didn't do as well as I'd like:
Galina was tasty but is just starting to ripen yellow cherries, it seems late for cherries? I may try it again but not super sold on it.
A bunch just didn't set much fruit at all. Cherokee chocolate comes to mind particularly.
Northern ruby paste started setting very late, as did old italian pink. Alas.
Northern Sun ripened one fruit per plant that I could see. It's normally a little more reliably early? Maybe it needs to be deflowered when planted.
Lime green salad doesn't seem to have ripened this year, we'll see when I go in to pull the plants. It was one of the few to ripen outdoors two years ago after being frosted back in June. Maybe another try? It tastes good. It didn't ripen on the deck or in the field though. Very nice bush form.
Czech bush ripened a couple fruits early on and then just... slowed way down, I'm not sure it'll give me many more big enough to ripen indoors even. Very strange. Too bad, it is a very nice plant form.
The panamorous tomatoes, in which I'm including exserted orange, had the most reliably producing row. A couple plants were pretty loaded down but especially exserted orange just kept trickling them out. Some plants did nothing, one looks like it did some small green weird fruit -- that's the wild genes -- and I'm looking very much forward to planting my saved seeds from them next year and seeing what happens. I have two seeds stuck to a piece of paper from a tomato that only had two seeds on it, the paper reads "zesty yum! best"
There is a single tomato in the corn patch that volunteered from, I guess, grocery store fruit seeds and looks like it'll ripen. I'll keep seeds from it too.
There's more, but basically I've learned a ton and am very happy with this knowledge. Still need to rate everything on some basic features: earliness, reliability (if I have multiple plants of that variety), flavour, yield, plant shape/ease of cultivation.
It looks like I may have enough squashes ripen, or close-enough-finish-indoors ripen, to be able to evaluate those. Most of the grains are cut. but I still have triticale, rivet wheat, ladoga, korassan, and the two late-planted cedar isle wheats to harvest. OF my three varieties of pickling cuke I think I can eliminate boston, which is producing well now but was last to start compared to Morden and National. Sweet success was absolutely the best slicing cuke, I think because pollination in the greenhouse was an issue and it's parthenocarpic. Suyo long will get another chance.
Famosa F2 cabbage was first to head, and made small savoyed heads with lots of earthworms in them. Sorrento rapini was an excellent early veg and should be generously seeded until it volunteers, it far outdid conventional broccolis or even kinda-conventional broccolis. Mammoth red rock cabbage was slow to head and maybe is more reliable than copenhagan market? Copenhagan market has a couple huge heads out there and some small ones.
It wasn't a great bean year, and I'm still sorting out my favas. They fell over. Russian black looked like they'd be done first since they podded up first, but the lofthouse ones may be ripening first.
No word on the flour corns yet, I'm letting them go as long as possible.
The beauregarde soup peas did a truly fantastic job. Small plants of maybe 8", not vining or climbing at all, lots of peas per plant. I want to experiment with more soup peas. I get along with them better than I do with beans anyhow.
This is a reminder to plant more basil next time.
Ronde de nice zucchini has just started pumping out fruit in the last two weeks. Maybe it needed much more rain? I think the pollinators were pretty sparse in the main garden this year so that may be it too, or they needed a specific temp to pollinate that I was not getting. The field squash didn't start to take till a little later either, even with and pollination.
I'm very excited to see what I get for squash next year since I have at least a couple different ones that definitely cross-pollinated. The lofthouse squash, sundream, burgess buttercup, gete oksomin, and especially North Georgia Candy Roaster are on the list.