I grow several types and combine them for sauce. I agree that some of the paste tomatoes don't have the flavor of other varieties. One year I had an overabundance of Sungolds and made a yellow sauce. Very pretty (if you can convince your DH it IS tomato sauce, mine thinks if it isn't red, it isn't a tomato...LOL).
I can sauce, salsa, plain diced tomatoes (use the instructions for crushed). This suits our needs. We aren't big on tomato juice.

Think about how you use tomatoes and that should help you figure out what to grow. We love them fresh and in the products mentioned.

Another tip if you haven't already stumbled over it here is to freeze your tomatoes whole (just rinse and remove stems) before making sauce. You can slip the skins off by just running under hot water, thaw in a strainer over a bowl (tomato juice!!), then push through the strainer. No pot of boiling water to remove skins, no cooking before saucing. If you want the sauce thicker, cook it down in a large roasting pan in the oven. You can do other things and it won't scorch. Stir every half hour or so. I often make the sauce and cook it down one day, refrigerate, then heat to boiling and can it the next day.

I think mixing varieties is the best of both worlds, paste types for the density and heirlooms for flavor!

Love my Victorio strainer (also use for applesauce, berry and grape "pulp" for jam/jelly, etc).

Deanna

Not stupid questions at all! We all want to get the most out of all our gardening and canning work.

Tomato juice and sauce - I never strain my tomato juice. I pre-cook the fruit just enough to soften, run them through my Victorio and can all the resulting juice. It makes for a much thicker, richer tomato juice. Sure it separates in the jar over time but that is easy to fix with just a light shake.

When we make tomato sauce we do the same things except we first return all the juice to the pot and cook it down to sauce consistency. When we want flavored sauce we first cook all the tomatoes with onions, peppers, carrots, herbs, celery, etc. and then run it all through the Victorio and cook it down to sauce consistency for canning.

We also can 70-80 jars of just plain Crushed Tomatoes. That way they can be used for making all sorts of things during the winter - spaghetti sauce, chili, soup, casseroles, etc.

We also can dozens of jars of the BBB recipe for Stewed Tomatoes (contain onions, peppers, celery) for winter use.

We pick varieties for flavor and production numbers. Color is only a secondary consideration. Seed numbers I ignore as the Victoric takes care of the seeds.

Small fruit varieties and colored types can be used to make all of the above just like beefsteaks or oxhearts. We plant very few paste types as they are never noted for flavor, just bulk. Why sacrifice flavor just for bulk?

The only paste-types we grow now are Viva Italia and San Marzano and they are primarily for drying. Your experience with San Marzano is unusual IME. Mealyness is an inconsistent soil moisture level issue, not a variety issue. But we never make our sauce/juice/canned tomatoes using paste-types only.

Opalka is another excellent paste-type but its production numbers are low by comparison.

Hope this helps.

Dave

Thank you very much to you both. One further question. In reading your reply, Dave, I had to think back to why I strained the juice. Oh, yeah. My 83 year old mother in law who lives with us won't eat anything that has tomato seeds in it. So, are you telling me the Victorio will remove the seeds? Oh, I hope so! That's fantastic! I cannot wait to give this wonderful machine a real run for the money this summer.
Thanks for the clarification on paste tomatoes too. I will gladly give their ground space to slicers and beefsteaks.

BBB????

You might want to give Wessel's Purple Pride a try. If I remember correctly, it's a cross between Cherokee Purple and Green Sausage. It's very meaty with small seed cavities and has great taste.

That being said, I always use a mix of tomatoes in any sauce I make. Red, purple, pink, orange - whatever is ripe at the time. This gives you a very rich flavored sauce.

Cindy