Gardening & Landscaping
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Heirloom/hybrid tomatoes
Ive never grown any before but I would like to venture in and plant atleast one or two varieties this year in my garden.
The place I can get seeds from has brandywine, carolina gold, conestoga, oxheart red, cherokee purple, striped german, black prince, mr stripey and green zebra.
Does anyone have any experience growing any of these varieties? Do you have a preference based on its growth or flavour?
Re: Heirloom/hybrid tomatoes
I can comment on Brandywine. It's a big tomato (I had one or two get to almost a pound last year) with very good flavor. It does really well here in dry CA, but for my mom in humid GA, it always gets some sort of disease. I think they have very little disease resistance, and humidity promotes the diseases.
My neighbor grows green zebra, and I don't think they taste very good, but they are beautiful.
I like the taste of cherokee purple a lot. I agree with pp that green zebra are pretty, but not my favorite taste-wise.
Honestly, I would pick one or two & just try them out. Growing conditions vary so much (even within cities!) that what works for me, may not work for you. Experimenting is half the fun!
growing heirlooms can be very difficult.
As a pp said, they're not very disease resistant and are very sensitive to climate. Their pickiness is the reason disease-hardy, climate-hardy (no flavor) tomatoes were developed--better crop yield.
I think your idea to try a few is good--see what does best for your area.
Any chance near Kingston? I have a book about tomatoes called "Tantalizing Tomatoes" in which they interview growers from around the continent for their favorite 'mater choices. The Kingston guys lists "Sweet Million" (hybrid), "Fantastic," "Brandywine," "Nepal" and "Ultra Magnum" as his favorite tomatoes to grow there. It also says he uses clear plastic mulch in the spring to speed soil warming.
we planted eleven heirlooms last year.... yeah, it was too many but it was fun. i don't remember most of the names... we had two oxhearts, one was called brad's black oxheart. oxhearts are very yummy and have less pulpy stuff so they're great for sauce and you can put them on a sandwich and it won't get all soggy. we had a red/green stripe one that was really good. we had some pinks and yellow and orange ones... they were all super yummy. just pick some and try them and see what you like.
fwiw, i think hardiness and disease can be very region sensitive. we live in san jose, ca and didn't have any problems with disease or pests.