Monday, August 4, 2008

Tomato variety evaluations - The Best of the Best






This year we trialled many varieties of tomatoes we have never grown before to see which ones would do well here at The Funny Farm. We got most of them from our friend Daniel who farms at Gaia Gardens a few miles from us. - These are our favorites. The photos are in the same order as the following descriptions
1. Black from Tula - Everyone who has eaten this one agrees that it is the best tasting tomato they have ever had. Juicy, acidic, flavorful. It is beautiful as well. Dark red/black on the bottom with green shoulders. One slice covers a whole slice of bread. Good producer not too much problem with blight.
2. Amana Orange - Most people really like the flavor of this one too. Kind of fruity, not too acidic, juicy. Beautiful solid orange colored large, bread covering sized fruit. Prolific and not too much blight. The minor complaint i have is that it is hard to harvest. If you try to pull it off the vine the whole cluster tears off. The best thing to do is to cut the stem with pruners or a knife.
3. Eva Purple Ball - Don't know why this one is called purple ball because the fruit is pink. They flavor is really good. Medium acid, lots of flavor, juicy. The fruit rarely has blemishes.It is about the size of a baseball. Thick fleshy stems, good producer. Not much of a problem with blight.
4. Big Beef - This is a hybrid but it is very flavorful, juicy, and sandwich sized. It is a very heavy producer with little blight problems. This is our main crop.
5. Juliette - Small, oval shaped, meaty flesh. this a good tomato for making sauce. Flavor is good and it is amazingly prolific. We will always grow a few of these.

Next post will rate the middle of the pack.

1 comment:

Robbyn said...

I'm so glad you rated and took pics of the ones you grew...I've been really hoping for more individual trials in different regions out there with notes about particular favorites, or ones that disappointed. The seed catalogs make it hard to choose and it's difficult to judge taste based on a verbal description. thanks for this...it's very helpful! :)