Kevin's Watch

What's the deal? I just picked my first one out of the garden, expecting that wonderful tomato taste from my youth, and it tastes pretty much like the ones I get at the store. Did we buy the wrong kind to plant? Are they all genetically modified crap now? What's the best variety?

BigBoys are my favorite - usually the easiest to find, I have the most experience with them. BBs are best when they are vine-ripened, picked when they are mature to the point just before they go mushy - it's hard to be patient long enough for them to do that, especially if you have pest/rabbit problems. Pick earlier if the plants are sagging, otherwise they will rot on the ground. If you have to pick early, take part of the vine, and let ripen in a sunny window. The plants themselves of course need consistent water and plenty of direct sunlight. MiracleGro is worth the money.

Grow romas if you are serious about making your own sauce - but that's all they are good for, in my opinion.

Heirloom varieties are back 'in fashion,' and they taste good, but honestly, I find they are really hard to grow - I haven't really figured them out yet...

Cherry tomatoes are great, and if you're careful, the plants tend to come back year after year. I can eat them all day...
I find grape tomato plants harder to keep alive, and the yield ends up not worth my effort.

beefsteak. i love me some big ol beefsteak tomatoes. you growing in a patch in your yard, malik?

i haven't had me some homegrown beefsteaks in ever and a day.

i love tomatoes so much i may go to bed and dream me up one of them long summer days of poppin beans and pickin tomatoes outa the garden at my aunt and uncle's place in salvisa.

sorry i don't have any real gardening advice. its been long and long since i grew em and never have since i moved to SF.

The best tomatoes in the whole wide world for salsa are Santa Fe; for sauce Rome and for eating Better Boy- But I will concede on the last one, not the first two.

Man, now I miss the townhouse, where I had a half-barrel planter next to the back door. I always put in a tomato plant and a smattering of other stuff (bush cucumber, green pepper, beans, even some lettuce one year). I never got more out of the other plants for more than a taste, really, but the tomatoes always went to town.

I've grown Big Boy and Better Boy, and some kinda dwarf-vine thingum that didn't take over the tub like the other two did but still turned out some pretty good tomatoes. I'm too cheap to buy a proper tomato cage/trellis/thing, so I'd end up tying the monster vine to the porch light and the cable cleats with twine. By August, it truly did look like the tomato plant was taking over. Good times!

Malik, so much of it is luck. We had one summer where it rained, like, the entire time, and my tomato crop just sucked -- they split before they were properly ripe.

you know, i have no idea why but in my previous post i almost said "i'll bet aliantha could tell you about growin tomatoes."


i have no earthly idea what put that notion in my head but i just knew you grew tomatoes!!

Lucimay wrote:you know, i have no idea why but in my previous post i almost said "i'll bet aliantha could tell you about growin tomatoes."


i have no earthly idea what put that notion in my head but i just knew you grew tomatoes!!

That's kinda scary. Unless I've mentioned the gargantuan tomato vine thing here before at some point....

Thanks for the replies. I'm not sure what variety these are. Ki planted them. They are having no trouble in terms of growing and ripening. Maybe I could have let the first few ripen a bit longer before I picked them. But they were soft and red. I'll try to let them get closer to "mushy" and see if that helps. The plants are sagging, but I've tied them up with stakes.

Pinching out the top of the plants helping to concentrate the nutrients and the bud growth towards the bottom of the plant promotes tastier fruit.
I like the smaller cherry tomatoes. Theyre really tasty and sweet and also Roma tomatoes (the egg shaped ones) are great too.
Theres a variety of black skinned tomatoes (really a dark purplish brown) called Kumara or something which ive bought on occasion when the price was right..... They are delicious.

No one mentioned plenty of fertilizer?
Tasty mater's don't get tasty by themselves.

Unless of course you have a nice garden and not a sandpit like mine.

Last summer I had cherry-type tomato plants I grew in my backyard flower bed. They grew about 7 feet tall, and produced like crazy, and were very tasty. They were yellow and pear-shaped, but I don't remember the name of the plants I bought.

I do believe dw mentioned that Miracle-Gro was a good thing earlier...

We've got the Miracle Grow designed for tomatoes. I already mentioned they are growing fine. As long at the plant is healthy, I don't see how fertilizer is going to improve the flavor. The flavor comes from the plant, not the fertilizer. But maybe I'm wrong. Has anyone done some side-by-side comparison?