Best and Worst Tomatoes of 2012

Ah, January. Snow covers the garden, and fresh tomatoes are a distant memory. How I miss them! I've been making do with homemade tomato sauce all week, but nothing beats a fresh, homegrown tomato, bursting with juice and flavor. So it's time to snuggle down with my pile of catalogs, think about ordering seeds, and ponder the successes and failures of last year.

2012 was an interesting year for tomatoes. It was the best harvest season I've ever had for Brandywines, that fussy, late-producing heirloom. I suspect the mild winter, early spring, and warm, wet summer provided almost optimal conditions for Brandywines and their cousins here in coastal Massachusetts.

I say almost because it was also a year filled with fungus. Early blight, late blight, and leaf spot all hit our tomato plants with widely varying impact. While the Brandywines weathered the late blight fairly well, our  Hillbilly tomatoes started rotting on the vines. This didn't stop our raiding woodchuck from eating them like candy, and he was welcome to them. Even applications of copper fungicide could not stem the decay.

We grew ten different varieties of tomato last year. In alphabetical order, here's how they performed for us.

Bellstar

I chose Bellstar for its reputation as a reliable early plum tomato. It was non of these. My Bellstars produced very little and succumbed to early blight within a month of planting. The few fruits I got from these were round, not plum-shaped, and seriously lacking in flavor, although they did have good texture. I won't be trying this variety again, which leaves me looking for a good plum tomato variety to replace it.

Brandywine

Brandywine is a pink heirloom variety with a well-established reputation for excellent sweet and fruity flavor. Not a good choice for sauces, they are fantastic for slicing or salads. The drawback is that Brandywines take a long time to mature, 78 days on average, and I've had many a crop cut short by an early frost. Not this year. For the first time ever, my Brandywines started producing in late July and kept on going despite encroaching late blight and leaf spot. They were some of the best, tastiest, most productive Brandywines I have ever grown, and I'll grow them again next year, giving them a nice early start in the greenhouse.

Defiant

Defiant is a hybrid slicer bred specifically for blight resistance, and it did resist well, but it produced poorly. While heirlooms were blooming and fruiting like mad all around them, our Defiants produced very few rather small fruits. They were tasty, though, and I have to wonder if they simply got completely overgrown by the other tomatoes in our bed. Given their excellent disease resistance, I think I'll give them one more try but interplant them in another bed, perhaps with onions, so that they have more space to develop.

Gold Nugget

I planted this pear-shaped cherry tomato primarily for my children to nibble, and the first few we got were delicious, firm, and not overly sweet. I suspect I would have loved them, but alas! Early blight did them in almost instantly. My husband ripped them out of the beds in July, and that was the end of that. Regretfully, I cannot recommend planting a tomato so sensitive to blight.

Hillbilly

One of my seedling customers provided me with Hillbilly seeds. I'd never heard of the variety before, and they were certainly interesting. A close cousin of Brandywines, these yellow-orange tomatoes are firmer and meatier. They grow robustly, and one actually pulled down its tomato ladder. They also produce earlier than Brandywines and quite prolifically. Unfortunately, they proved to be highly vulnerable to late blight. The fruit developed dark brown pitted bruises which eventually split and turned moldy. I didn't see this kind of response on any of the other tomatoes, and it persisted despite two treatments with copper. So, with further regrets, I have to pass on this variety as well. I won't be planting it again.

Juliet

This early-producing  mini-plum, closely related to Santa tomatoes, was a delightful discovery. The fruit was excellent, a wonderful balance between sweet and meaty with a good firm texture. Our Juliets produced prolifically and were outperformed only by our Sun Golds. Better yet, they resisted cracking quite well. Towards the end of the season, they did begin to exhibit some fungal pitting, but they kept on producing right up until the first hard frost. I will absolutely grow these again.

Stupice

This potato-leaf heirloom from Czechoslovakia looks exactly like Brandywine until it fruits. It's reputed to be cold-tolerant and early producing (52 days), but they actually produced about the same time as the Brandywines. Stupice did not stand up to either early or late blight well, though it did better than many other varieties. To my surprise, I found that it grows quite well in a greenhouse at low temperatures, even down to 50 degF. So while I probably won't grow it in the garden next year, I may well start another one in the greenhouse in the spring to replace the one that has just now stopped producing.

Sun Gold

In my opinion, Sun Gold is the king of cherry tomatoes. The round orange fruit is incredibly sweet, and even my tomato-hating eight-year-old will eat them right off the vine. They are incredibly prolific and vigorous, shrugging off blight, drought, and even frost. It took three frosts to finally kill ours off! They do have downsides, though. They split at the the least provocation, so they're not great for market, and they tend to overgrow everything around them. They require very sturdy trellises and plenty of space. That said, this is our favorite tomato, and we'll be growing it for years to come.

Valencia

I chose Valencia as an orange heirloom slicer. I love to make tomato salads with a variety of tomato colors for interest and variety. Valencia was billed as a reliable mid-season tomato, and it was. The fruit, however, was, well, boring. I honestly can't recall now how a single one of them tasted. They weren't particularly blight resistant, but neither did they instantly wither and die. They didn't produce much, but they did produce two or three fruits per plant pretty reliably each week. So, this wasn't a bad tomato, but neither was it a great one. I think I'll pass on this one in 2013.

Washington Cherry

Billed as the earliest cherry tomato to market, I think Washington Cherry was the biggest disappointment. They did produce early, but with nowhere near the yield of Sun Gold. They resisted splitting quite well, but in exchange, they just had no flavor whatsoever. I may as well have bought them in the store for a good deal less trouble. So no more Washington Cherries this year.

The big winners this year were Brandywine, Juliet, and Sun Gold. Stupice and Defiant are worth trying again, I think. But the rest we'll chalk up as learning experiences. 

This leaves me wanting a good, normal-sized plum tomato, a large beefsteak, and some good color. I also want to find more good determinate varieties that don't require quite so much staking and maintenance. I should also add in a couple of blight resistant hybrids.

I'm considering trying the following new varieties next year:

Amish Paste - Mid-season heirloom plum tomato reputed to have high yields and excellent taste. Available from Bountiful Gardens and Johnny's Selected Seeds.

Attention - A new beefsteak hybrid, highly adaptive and resistant to a range of fungal infections and viruses. Available from the Natural Gardening Company.
Celebrity - "A perfect main crop tomato", highly disease-resistant with a long growing season. Available from Johnny's Selected Seeds and the Natural Gardening Company.
Golden Treasure - Yellow storage tomato. Available from Territorial Seed Company.
Grandma's Pick - "Heirloom flavor with hybrid production, uniformity, and disease resistance." Now, how can I say no to that? Bright red with orange shoulders, this tomato is a heavy producer with high lycopene content. Available from Territorial Seed Company.
Gregory's Altai - Bred in Siberia, this heirloom big slicer is reputed to be a very early producer. Available from Bountiful Gardens.
Indigo Rose - So dark purple, it's nearly black with high anthrocyanin content. Available from Johnny's Selected Seeds and Territorial Seed Company.
Legend - Early slicing tomato with excellent late blight tolerance for an heirloom. Produces big 4-5 inch fruit. Available from Territorial Seed Company.
Longkeeper - This semi-determinate hybrid will keep for up to three months when picked green or not-quite-ripe just before the first frost. Available from Territorial Seed Company.
Mountain Magic - Early hybrid, blight resistant, high yields. Available from Johnny's Selected Seeds.
Pruden's Purple - An early Brandywine cousin with dark pink skin and crimson flesh. Available from Johnny's Selected Seeds.
Taxi - Early, determinate yellow tomato, reputed to be easy to grow. Available from Johnny's Selected Seeds and Territorial Seed Company.

If you've grown any of these varieties in the past, please share your experiences and help me narrow down my selections. Also, many years ago, I grew a small Brandywine cousin called Lillian Yellow. Alas, I didn't save the seed, and I haven't been able to find it since. If you have some seed or know of a good source, please let me know.