Tomato Report 2018

I see I haven’t written one of these reports since 2015. That’s because I’ve settled on favorite varieties and and grown them year after year. But friends are always urging me to try different cultivars, and so this year I tried a few that were entirely new to me, along with others I’d grown in the past and forgotten about. Here is my report.

DeBerau & Purple Russian

De Berao Braun, left, and Purple Russian, right.

Purple Russian. This Ukranian heirloom, which I wrote about 2015, is sold by Baker Creek and Totally Tomato. The pinkish-greenish fruits, about 3½ inches long and 6 ounces in weight, are impressively uniform in size and shape. The cultivar is supposedly very productive; I found it slow to start fruiting but unusually prolific late in the season. All of these late tomatoes, however, were deeply cracked, even though I’d long since stopped watering and we’d had no rain to speak of. Baker Creek says Purple Russian has “flavor that tops the charts,” and one person compared the flavor to bacon. I found the tomatoes a little bland, nothing like bacon, and too low in acid. All of the Purple Russian slices I dried turned black in the dehydrator, while none of the other varieties did. Perhaps the Purple Russians were too ripe. As I noted in 2015, they taste best when picked while still quite firm.

De Berao Braun. Andrew Still and Sarah Kleeger, of Adaptive Seeds, got this cultivar from Gerhard Bohl, a seed steward in Germany (I don’t know where the seeds originally came from; the name looks to me like a misspelling). The fruits are smaller than those of Purple Russian, about 2½ inches long, and rounder. The color is similar to that of Purple Russian but more copper and therefore more attractive, at least to me. The tomatoes are juicy, tart, and sweet, and as suitable for salad as for drying or sauce. They are far less prone to cracking than Purple Russians, and the vines have continued to produce unblemished fruit through late October. I will definitely plant this variety again.

 

Italian heirloomItalian Heirloom. I got the seeds for this one from Lisa Almarode, who urged me to try them. Like me, you might expect this to be another plum-shaped paste tomato. But Italian Heirloom has big, irregular, round to heart-shaped fruits. Although they are meaty, they are also tasty; they won the Seed Savers Exchange tomato tasting in 2012. The plant is extremely productive and early. I picked my first fruit, weighing a pound, on July 17, and in early August I picked a 1½-pounder.

Chocolate Stripes. I am no less enthusiastic about this tomato than I was in 2015. In late October, I am still getting fruits as big as 4 ½ inches across. Their thin skins are prone to damage from snails and slugs and may develop fine cracks around the top, but I cut out any blemishes and thoroughly enjoy these beautiful fruits. It’s lucky I set my one plant in a corner of a bed this year, because this vine likes to sprawl.

Chocolate Stripes seeds are sold by Baker Creek, Tomato Fest, and other companies.

Druzba. I wrote a little about this tomato in 2014, but now I’m even more enthusiastic about it. This Bulgarian heirloom, whose name means “friendly,” produces perfectly uniform, unblemished, round medium-size fruits, about 6 ounces, all season long. (Celebrity, which I grew alongside it, did pretty much the same thing, although Celebrity’s fruits are a little bigger, about 8 ounces. The important difference is that Celebrity is a hybrid; if I save the seeds, the plants that grow from them may lose disease-resistance and other good features.) The fruits’ flavor isn’t special, but it’s very good. This is the tomato you give to people who won’t eat fruit that doesn’t look like it came from a supermarket. They will learn what those supermarket tomatoes are supposed to taste like.

Druzba seeds are widely available.

ananas tomatoesAnanas Noire. This is a Belgian variety introduced in 2005, a cross between Pineapple and a black tomato. For me Ananas Noire produced big fruits (1 to 1½ pounds) that were more green than black, with dark red streaks throughout. The tomatoes looked beautiful when sliced, but if I hadn’t taken a picture in July I wouldn’t remember this. Now, in late October, the fruits are small and a uniform orange-red. Has anyone reading this had a similar experience?

Seeds of Ananas Noire are sold by Baker Creek, Territorial, Totally Tomato, and other companies.

Orange Russian 117. I’ve grown this tomato over several summers, beginning in 2010. A cross between the red oxheart Russian 117 and the yellow and red beefsteak Georgia Streak, Orange Russian 117 is probably the only bicolored oxheart around. It is a meaty tomato, and big, weighing from 8 ounces to a pound. The texture and colors remind me of peaches–I gasp at the beauty of the fruit every time I slice one. The flavor is very good. On the farm I never got more than a dozen fruits from one of these plants (probably because I was battling deer during those years), but this year Orange Russian 117 has been one of my most productive tomato plants–perhaps the most productive. In late October the plant is still going strong.

Orange Russian 117 was bred by Jeff Dawson of Sebastopol, California, in the 1990s. Seeds are available from Tomato Fest, Tomato Growers Supply, and a few other sources.

Tomato Report 2014

I’m hurrying to get out this report to you, because here in the Willamette Valley it’s nearly tomato-starting time already.

Our long hot summer last year produced bountiful tomato harvests for many of my neighbors but a strangely scant one for me; apparently, the unusual heat made the plants repeatedly drop their blossoms. My report here is limited to the few varieties that produced fairly well in my garden.

A Costoluto Genovese tomato, left, beside a Kishinev pepper
A Costoluto Genovese tomato, left, beside a Kishinev pepper

Costoluto Genovese has deeply ribbed, meaty red fruits with large seed cavities. The lovely look of this fruit makes the bland taste all the more disappointing. Like most Italian tomatoes, this one has apparently been bred for sauce or drying, not for fresh eating. The low sugar and acid levels call for concentration. 

Tangerine is a medium-large to large, squat, old yellow-orange variety that won brief fame several years ago after scientists showed it to have more absorbable lycopene (an anti-oxidant that may protect against some cancers) than a typical red tomato.  Early in the season my Tangerine fruits seemed to have low acidity and an unremarkable flavor, but after mid-summer, as often happens with tomatoes, they tasted much better. The acid level, in fact, seemed unusually high for a yellow tomato.

Tangerine & Persimmon tomatoes
Tangerine and persimmon tomatoes. The cut one in the foreground is the Tangerine–I think!

Persimmon is an heirloom from the 1800s (says Territorial), from 1781 (says Henry Field’s), from about 1983 (says Gary Ibsen), or from the 1880s (says a Seed Savers Exchange member in Wisconsin).  The tomato is originally from Russia, says Burpee. It was grown by Thomas Jefferson, says Henry Field’s.

Whatever its origins, Persimmon turned out for me much like Tangerine—in the appearance of the fruit, the size of the plant (both are indeterminate), and earliness (about 80 days). But Persimmon’s skin color was a softer orange, truly reminiscent of its namesake, and the fruit tended to develop a navel-like blossom end. The flesh may have been a little less tart and flavorful than that of Tangerine, but Persimmon also had an appealing creaminess. My Persimmon plants were a little less productive that my Tangerine plants.

I had trouble choosing a favorite between these two big, delicious, blemish-free tomatoes. In the kitchen I didn’t try to keep them separate. I can tell you, though, that ratatouille made with Tangerine or Persimmon tomatoes or both is as tart as it should be and at the same time startlingly sweet.

Druzba, a Bulgarian red tomato, is about the same size and shape as Tangerine and Persimmon (Burpee calls Druzba a “mini-beefsteak”) but has bigger seed cavities and apparently even higher acidity. I will certainly grow it again.

Berkeley Tie-Dye tomato
Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye tomatoes

Striped tomatoes are the rage now, and Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye, bred by Bradley Gates of Wild Boar Farms, is the best I’ve tasted so far. My friend Wendy, to whom I gave a plant, reported that it was “early, prolific, very attractive, and excellent tasting.” It wasn’t prolific for me, but I have high hopes that it will be this year.

If you’re still not sure which tomatoes to plant this year, you may want to also consult my Tomato Reports from 2012 and 2009-11.