tomatoes
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I gather that this is not truly a paste tomato (Roma is the most well-know paste variety), but is elongated like one. The plant has been wimpy and droopy, but it's borne a moderate crop. The fruit tends to be 3 or 4 inches long, bright red, with a standard tomato taste.
Aunt Ruby's Green is fairly tart, like most green tomatoes. It's large, and beautiful on the inside, though somewhat lumpy.
Big Rainbow is mostly yellowish-orange, but with a red blush on one end. Inside, it's marbled yellow and red. A gorgeous tomato, especially on the inside. Delicious, too. I think this is more of a late-season tomato.
Dark red, like Black Krim. Good strong flavor.
Black Krim is a medium-sized, maroon, extremely tasty tomato. It's a beautiful dark color, and strongly flavored. The plants are on the short side, with curling leaves, and fairly prolific early in the season.
Boxcar Willie seems to be a late-season tomato. As of mid-September, we've only had 10 or so fruits on our one plant. However, in a surprisingly close contest, Boxcar Willie took the gold medal in the 2000 tomato tasting. The fruits are quite average-looking: 4 to 5 inches across, nicely round, bright red. The flavor is good and sweet.
Brandywine is one of the better-known heirlooms, to the extent that I often see the seedlings in local nurseries. We grow the pink variety, and it's extremely flavorful. The tomatoes tend to be a little bit lumpy, on the large side, and fairly meaty. It earned the bronze medal at the 1999 Tomato Tasting.
Similar to Pink Brandywine, above. Really good flavor, nice size, prolific. Dan (Jeff's dad) grew these when he lived in Vancouver, and just got tons of them.
This one actually looks quite similar to Black Krim, large and dark red, though it's not quite as flavorful.
Cherry Bicolor Rainbow is one of my favorites. It's a beautiful tomato, orange with red blushes (and an intriguing yellow cross on the bottom), with an exceptional good, sweet flavor. Ours tend to be about an inch across; Mom's were much larger, probably due to more water. It was the hands-down winner at our 1999 tomato-tasting party, and came in third in 2000.
Another Italian paste tomato, which are by far the easiest to can. The flavor was fine but nothing to write home about. However, I don't knock a good, prolific, meaty tomato.
Hmmm. This tomato remains quite mysterious to me. The plant has not done well, and we've only gotten a few tomatoes. They've all been small -- 2 inches at best -- yellowish-orange, and sort of wrinkly.
Eva Purple Ball is a very ordinary-looking tomato, medium-sized, round, and red. Like Boxcar Willie, it was a late-season, surprise winner at the tomato tasting, coming in second in a close contest. The flavor is quite sweet and good. One plant died early on, and the other hasn't been that prolific, either.
A nice fuzzy yellow tomato with red streaks inside. We didn't get a lot, but that may have been a function of where we grew them, our first year in our Portland house.
This is a pink-red strawberry tomato, meaning that it's pointed on one end. The fruits are medium-sized, 3 to 5 inches across, sometimes with a yellow core end. This plant has produced an incredible number of fruits, most of them flawless. (A few did get sunscalded later in the season.) The flavor is good, but nothing special. I would grow this one again because it produces so many nice tomatoes early on.
I was really looking forward to this one, and besides being cute (slightly larger than grape size, actually, and yellowish-green), it tastes great! It's both sweet and tart, and had a few staunch supporters at the tasting. The seedlings were miniscule compared to others of their age, and the plants remain on the short, bushy side.
This is a surprisingly sweet, unusual-looking tomato. It's yellow with vertical green stripes, and pure green on the inside. The fruits tend to be perfectly round, between two and three inches around.
I tried this one hoping for something like Cherry Bicolor Rainbow. This is a good orange-red cherry tomato, but not spectacular.
A sweet, moderately-sized yellow-orange tomato. We grew it once but haven't chosen it again.
Kellogg's Breakfast is a huge orange tomato. It's somewhat meaty, and has a reasonably good flavor. The fruits tend to have belly buttons on the bottom, and be somewhat lumpy. Orange Oxheart remains my favorite orange tomato.
Lillian's Yellow is golf-ball sized, or thereabouts. The plant has been quite prolific, and the fruits tend to be perfect. The flavor is nice, milder than most red tomatoes.
Mortgage Lifters are supposed to be huge, up to four pounds. The plants were developed by a farmer who paid off his mortgage by selling the seedlings. We grew this in 1999, but never got any exceptionally large tomatoes. In fact, they were on the small side. The flavor is good but not exceptional, so we decided not to grow it again.
Big and orange. A good, meaty flavor, but still doesn't beat out Orange Oxheart. However, since here in Oregon we've had blossom-end rot issues with Orange Oxheart, perhaps I'd consider this one again.
A long pointy red tomato. Nothing special in the flavor department, but it was fairly prolific. Also had some blossom-end rot issues.
Orange Oxheart is one of my lasting favorites, though I haven't had as good luck in Portland with it. It's medium-sized and heart-shaped. The flavor is amazingly strong, and it's a very meaty tomato. This one tends to be better early in the season.
A good orange tomato.
We've gotten a few completely perfect Pruden's Purple tomatoes. Large, pinkish-red, round, and flawless. Very tasty... similar to Brandywine, actually.
Red Currant is a tiny variety, supposedly more like the original tomatoes of South America. These plants try their best to take over the world. The stems and leaves are very small, but the plants are quite tall, with grape-like clusters of fruit. Like most small tomatoes, they're very sweet, though they tend to get less sweet later in the season. We actually didn't intend to grow this one again, but we got a few volunteers in with the melons, so we let them live.
Stupice had the honor of being the first non-cherry ripe tomato in 2000. The fruits are on the small side, between 3 and 4 inches, and cluster heavily on the branches. The poor plant remained quite short and bent over despite our attempts at staking it, because the clusters of fruit were so weighty. The early fruits were perfect, though later ones tended somewhat towards cracking, perhaps due to erratic watering on our part.
Red with yellow-orange stripes. On the small side, and perfectly round. Similar to Green Zebra, only red... Flavor is fine, but the real reason I like this one is for its looks.
This is the first white variety we've grown. Unfortunately, because both plants were in the part of the yard that isn't yet on the drip system, they weren't watered as evenly as the rest. This could be why we lost many fruits to blossom-end rot, and those that didn't rot were stilly quite lumpy and malformed. However, later in the season the blossom-end rot subsided, and we've gotten quite a few of these. The flesh is very pale, almost white, mild and sweet in taste. Canned White Wonder tomatoes look beautiful.
Yellow Brandywine is a nice, but somewhat bland, yellow tomato. Like Pink Brandywine, the tomatoes tend to be deformed, with belly buttons.
