I have had pretty good luck with most heirlooms as regards disease. I would post this on the tomato forum, as mostly heirlooms are discussed there and other Tenneseans will be able to help out a bit.

Another suggestion would be to pick up Dr. Carolyn J. Male's book, "100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden." You may be able to find it at your public library or at most book stores. Also on Amazon. She disscusses all aspects of growing tomatoes, including disease resistant ones.

Best wishes,

Mary

She disscusses all aspects of growing tomatoes, including disease resistant ones.

Yes, some comments about disease tolerances, but only as regards what I see in my zone 5 upstate NY garden, with a few other observations made.

jackman, the inmportant question is what diseases are you talking about?

The most common tomato diseases are the foliage diseases and no tomato variety, hybrid or heirloom has good tolerance to those. Almost ALL of us have to fight them.

But if you're talking about systemic diseases such as Fusarium, Verticillium, Southern Blight, Tomato Spotted Wilt Disease and on and on, that's a totally different story.

So which diseases are you referring to that are a problem for you?

And hopefully you know, or if you don't for future reference, there's a Forum where tomtoes are discussed all the time, and that's the Tomato Forum, where heirloom varieties are discussed, link at the top of this page.

But we can continue here for now.

Carolyn

Sometimes I think I am going crazy.I have Carolyn book and have read over and over.Carolyn,Now I remember where you said that Black,White and green seems to do better in zone 7.
As for the blight,it comes through every year around the first week in May.The apple trees get hit first then the tomatoes.The leaves start getting large yellow spots on then.Then they turn yellow compleatly and die.Then around the middle of June the leaves get small black spots on them and wilt and die.I guess that is the blight?

The more decomposing organic matter you have in your soil the less prone your plants are to getting some diseases
Blossom End Rot for example can be reduced by having high humus levels which retain moisture longer during dry periods and thus reducing your risk of BER...ensure that your plants get even and regular watering so they are not stressed by uneven watering
The micchorrizae that build up in soils with high humus levels help prevent many soil fungal problems by actively attacking many pathogenic fungi such as cinnamon fungus
Often wilt is a soil born fungal problem that can be reduced by preventing soil splash onto the leaves during watering...one way to do this is to prune all the branches and leaves that hang down anywhere so that the bottom six inches of the plant is free of leaves...watering at groundlevel can help too rather than overhead sprinklers
Many domestic growers have problems with fungal attack because fences prevent the free flow of air around the plants so do what you can to raise the level of airflow around plants
I hope you can use some of that info and raise a great tomato patch
cheers
Peter

Most (all except one) of my heirloom tomatos this year don't have disease. But I'd have to say one of the most robust (largest "cleanest" no disases etc.) is sandul moldavian so maybe you could give that one a try. Stupice is a runner up this year for "looks" of the plant. :)

Thanks everyone
Here in west Tn.the disease is brown and yellow leaves that goes up through the plant,until all of the leaves are dead.I would say the plant gets the disease when it gets wet from rain or spraying.