I wasn't totally nuts about the Mother Earth News list because they placed a heavy emphasis on early tomatoes, and I am not a huge fan of the typical early tomato.

Partly, though, that is because mid-season tomatoes actually produce pretty early here, and they taste better, to me, than the early tomatoes that are only a couple of weeks earlier in ripening.

So, I thought about it all day long, and came up with my list of my favorite tomatoes for our climate. Here they are:

FOR THE EARLY ONES:
SunGold (57 days)
Early Girl (52 days)
New Big Dwarf (60-65 day)*
Eva Purple Ball (70 days)
Neves Azorean Red (75 days)

PASTE TYPES FOR SAUCES AND SALSAS:
Principe Borghese' (for sun-dried tomatoes)
Martino's Roma
Opalka
San Marzano Redorta

FOR SANDWICHES AND SALADS:
Brandywine (Sudduth's)
Mortgage Lifter
Brandy Boy
Cherokee Purple
Black Krim

FOR GREAT GREENS & ZEBRAS:
Aunt Ruby's German Green OR Green Zebra
Cherokee Green

FOR ORANGES, STRAWBERRIES AND LEMONS:
Nebraska Wedding
Aunt Gertie's Gold
Kosovo or the oxheart of your choice. I don't grow oxhearts because they don't produce many tomatoes per plant in our heat. Instead of an oxheart, I'd grow Black Cherry which is absolutely delicious.

As for Fifteen Favorite hybrids, I am choosing these as much for their reliability and disease resistance as anything. They all have good flavor in most years that have good weather (with good weather being ANYTHING that is not excessively wet).

FIFTEEN FAVORITE HYBRIDS:

Better Bush
Better Boy VFN
Big Beef VFFNTA (1994 AAS winner)
Beefmaster VFN
Brandy Boy
Bucks County
Celebrity VFFNTA (1984 AAS winner)
Fourth of July
Lemon Boy VFN
Momotaro
Porterhouse
Roma VF
Viva Italia VFFNA
Sweet Million FNT
SunSugar FT or Sungold (virtually identical)

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