In Minnesota, the tomatoes don’t really start to ripen until late July. This year, we had a lot of rain in July and I think that made the fruits take even longer to ripen. But once there are fresh tomatoes… nothing else in the world matters.

Our tomatoes are overrun with early tomato blight once again this year. It is at the point now where there are very few green leaves left on the vines; they are nearly all brown. Fortunately the fruit hasn’t been affected, but I’ve done as much as I can to try and manage it this year. I have some ideas for next summer – and I’m hoping to spend some time learning more about blight this winter.

That’s a giant bowl of assorted cherry tomatoes: Amish Mayberry, Prize of the Trials, and Yellow Pear. I’ve been working on our tomato varieties page, compiling a list of varieties we’ve grown over the years, seed sources, and a few notes. I’d like to put a bit more time into this, and also put together the Peppers section in a similar way. Maybe some day…

The Prize of the Trials Cherry Tomato is probably my favorite tomato to grow… and to eat. Even our terribly blighted tomato plants have been producing these like crazy this summer. They are perfect little sweet orange tomatoes, and we’ve never had a problem with blossom end rot or cracks. They are quite a bit larger than a standard cherry tomato. Wonderful halved or quartered in a salad, or – my favorite – two of them sliced on a sandwich.

We had so many of them this year, and so I cut a bunch in half and threw them in the dehydrator overnight. We are just now finishing our sundried tomatoes from last summer, so it’s time to stock up again.

You can pick up Prize of the Trials tomato seeds at Seeds of Change.

Seed Source: Ace Hardware (American Seed Company)

Date Planted: April 7, 2007

Marmande is a commune in southwestern France, a known producer of tomatoes. They hold a festival every July to celebrate their tomatoes.

One week into April, we realized that we had not bought and red tomato seeds! We were too busy focusing on fancy colored heirlooms, and completely forgot to plant one or two “standards.” I picked up some packets of Marmande and Delicious tomato seeds at a local hardware store and quickly planted them. It was very much an impulse buy, but I discovered later that the Marmande tomato is indeed an heirloom. Plus, Marmande is supposed to make an excellent market variety.

We were a bit late on transplanting these, but we have about 36 plants. I am not expecting them all to survive – a couple are starting to wilt pretty badly.

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Seed Source: Amish Land Seeds

Date Planted: March 23, 2007

Amish Land Seeds claims to be the only US Source for this paste tomato! The Sabre Ukrainian tomatoes are very large paste tomatoes with few seeds. They get their name from the shape (think, sword). They are very similar to the World’s Miracle Tomatoes we have this year, but are said to ripen late in the season.

We have 27 Sabre Ukrainian seedlings.

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Seed Source: Amish Land Seeds

Date Planted: March 23, 2007

Yes, another white tomato variety… three white tomato varieties, about 58 plants. But we are planting nearly 300 tomatoes, and these are bound to be a hit at Farmers Markets!

The White Tomesol tomato is relatively new German heirloom that was recently introduced to the United States. According to seed sellers, the Tomesol tomato is just about the truest “white” variety of tomato there is. Many white tomatoes are more of a pale yellow, and often have pink spots on the blossom end. We’ll see how these ones grow up!

We currently have 20 Tomesol seedlings.

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Seed Source: Amish Land Seeds

Date Planted: March 23, 2007

We chose two paste tomatoes from Amish Land Seeds this year: Sabre Ukrainian and World’s Miracle. Both are from the Ukraine, and the grower says they look almost alike but that the World’s Miracle tomatoes are about half the size of the Sabre Ukrainian tomatoes. They are suppoed to be quite a bit earlier though.

We ended up planting a standard roma variety just to boost our paste tomato yield a bit. We have 26 of these plants.

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Seed Source: Amish Land Seeds

Date Planted: March 11, 2007

We wanted a marbled (bi-colored) tomato for the garden this year, and were not overly impressed with the Marvel Striped tomato variety we grew last year. Amish Land Seeds describes these plants as very heavy-producing with all fruits weighing over a pound.

I don’t know much about this variety, but we’ll keep this page updated as time progresses!

We have 22 Pineapple tomato seedlings.

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Seed Source: Amish Land Seeds

Date Planted: March 11 & 23

Great White and Pineapple Bi-Color were my first heirloom choices this season. The description of this tomato at Amish Land Seeds boasts heavy yields, large fruit, and “hands down, the best tasting white tomato [the grower has] ever eaten.” Very tempting!

I ended up ordering more seeds of this variety later, which is why we have two planting dates. We have 20 Great White seedlings.

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Seed Source: Seeds of Change

Date Planted: March 5 & 23, 2007
Indeterminate

We grew these nearly-perfect orange cherry tomatoes last year, and loved them so much we just couldn’t resist for this year! The photo is from last year’s garden (to be updated later this summer), and it’s actually a smaller tomato for this variety. The plants were very productive and yielded beautiful spheres with no cracks.

We don’t have as many cherry tomato plants as slicing plants, but we do have 18 of these tomatoes. Our other cherry varieties are Sweetie and Gardener’s Delight.

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Seed Source: Seeds of Change

Date Planted: March 5, 2007
Indeterminate

Oaxacan Pink tomatoes are from the Oaxacan region of Mexico. We grew these tomatoes last year, but sadly didn’t save any seeds. They were good, but not as exciting as the Amana Orange tomatoes were.

Last year, these tomatoes varied greatly in size – from tiny cherry-sized (or even smaller!) to good palm-sized… on the same plants, even! I wish we had thought to save seeds from both extremes on this plant. We’ll see how they turn out this year, and maybe next year’s seeds will be our own.

We only have 9 Oaxacan Pink tomato plants this year; I’m not sure if they are quite suited for a market, but we wanted to enjoy them ourselves!

Both tomatoes are from last year’s garden. Note the difference in size!

Seedlings this year, April 26

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