re: Tomatoes....What Type Do You Plant & Why?

I'm in MO, so my season and soil tolerances are probably a bit different, but I'm going to try to grow some San Marzano tomatoes this year. The seedlings just sprouted yesterday in my kitchen, so hopefully they're ready to go by the end of April, which is when our last frost date is up here.

I got the seeds from growitalian.com, and they shipped from Lawrence, KS. They're definitely from Europe, because they have a picture of Italy and the growing zones on the back and the language is most definitely not English. We'll see if they grow at all, but the thought of having a bunch of them to make tomato sauce from was enough to get me to try them.

Celebrity, Early Girl, and Better Boy. Some cherry variety for salads. Tried to branch out last year and go heirloom with Cherokee Purple but I just didn't have much success with yielding fruit.

What's the consensus best big thick slicer with a nice acidic taste?

I have never produced a Cerokee Purple in spite of planting the last three years!

I will have Early Girls, Celebrity and Creoles and whatever sweet cherry they have at Petrus

Someone needs to create a hybrid form of Cherokee Purple. The heirlooms are just hard to grow.

Heirlooms just take a little more maintenance. After we get all this rain you'll need to hit them with fungicide, and cull anything that looks to be getting sick. Don't try to save a plant because what ends up happening is the plant lingers on passing the disease along and eventually dying anyway.

Maybe I was just lucky, but last year was the first year that I planted some CP's and I had pretty good results. The only thing I did "differently than normal" methods was that I used a red plastic mulch throughout my tomato garden. Here's a link to a study done by Penn St: Red Mulch?



Hope that helps!

I had 3 Ch. Purple plants last year and they averaged 4-5 for each one. A couple of them died because I left them on the vine too long. I think you have to ripen these indoors.

I let mine ripen on the vine and really the only issue I had was some cracking due to too much water from rain. I learned too that even though they have green on the top, they can be fully ripe for eating. Mine often looked like this when I picked them: