that is easy, the first one.

I'm with busy1, the first one! I just have all my fingers and toes crossed that we have any kind of tomato harvest at all. Thanks to the crazy wet/cold/wet/cold etc cycle this spring, I just got the first tomato plants in the ground last night. As soon as we got the garden tilled and ready to plant, the rains came, and believe me, I'm not complaining about that in the least. When it dried out, the temps dropped. Then it rained again, and so on. It's supposed to drop to a low of 34 again this week but I'll be ready to cover them. This morning I saw the extended forecast and another cold wave is expected next week! Also a wetter than normal May is forecast. Because it's such a strange year, I'm planting mostly only the early producers that gave us good yields last year. We didn't have great luck with the heirlooms last year, so will focus on Early Girl and Celebrity for the most part, and some Black Cherry if I can find any. I have a feeling that once these wet/cold cycles are finished, the heat will arrive and we'll swing to the other side of the pendulum.

Suzie

I'm with Robert and Suzie on this one. The first tomato is the one we look forward to the most.

Technically, we've already had our first three tomatoes from our plants in pots, so for us the first tomato thing already is over. Like all tomatoes that have set and ripened in cooler temperatures, their flavor, while still good and certainly superior to grocery store tomatoes, is not the same as a tomato that will ripen in hotter temperatures in May or June.

The first tomato from an in-ground plant likely will be from Better Boy, which bloomed insanely early, but the ones I'm looking forward to the most are those from the black, purple or pink varieties like J D's Special C-Tex, Spudakee Purple, Spudatula, Greek Rose, Cherokee Purple, etc. It is likely our first fruit from in-ground plants, if not Better Boy, will be from Terenzo or LIzzano, but I don't particularly crave the flavor of a typical red hybrid cherry. I crave the OPs that are impossible to come by in stores....and when I have bought the commercially grown OPs from places like Central Market, they did not taste nearly as good as OPs grown here in our garden. Fresh and locally grown still is best, regardless of the name of the variety.

Suzie, Say it isn't so! I have steadfastly refused to look further out at the forecast for next week because I didn't want to see another potential cold front. I told Tim this morning that it wouldn't surprise me to have one next week, since that has been a very consistent pattern for the last few weeks ....but I sure was hoping for a pattern change.

Some of my plants soon will be too tall to cover. At about 2.5-3' tall now, some of the potatoes already are getting hard to cover, and this heat is making them grow by leaps and bounds. Even with floating row cover, there's a limit to how much you can cover, and the taller the plants get, the harder it is.

For us, the rain has tapered off a lot down here the last two weeks....and my ground is cracking. Crazy, isn't it? Usually the ground doesn't crack until June.

All winter I looked forward to spring so much. Now,I look at all the crazy roller coaster weather and say to myself "This? This is what you were waiting for?" It was 91 degrees at our house yesterday and yet our forecast for later in the week shows 34 degrees. It seems ridiculous to have both of those temperature readings in the same week.

I'll be happy with whatever tomatoes we get this year because something tells me we aren't going to have the huge harvests we were blessed with last year. I am so happy we canned, froze and dehydrated a 2-3 year supply in 2012 because it may be that we don't get enough fruit this year to make/can salsa and all that other stuff.

Dawn

Well I cheated and have sort of already had the first and second. I started a rutgers back in december in the greenhouse and they ripened a few weeks ago. On the small side but tasty.

In the garden we planted a yellow that Im excited to try. Never had a yellow before. Sorry I dont remember the name right now.

Mike

Like Dawn, we've already had the first one. Of the greenhouse tomatoes, Chadwick Cherry produced first, followed by Bush Early Girl. These were not only first, but very productive. And as she said, they are good, better than supermarket, but not as good as summer-grown.
As usual, my first outdoor mater will be an Early Girl as it has a small fruit on it. It is often my last too as it produces well in September if it gets enough water in August.

But my favorite snacking-in-the-garden tomato is Sungold. Next is Black Cherry. For Sandwiches I have True Black Brandywine, Cherokee Purple and Black Krim. (Vorlon is very good too, but I didn't buy seed for this year. I think you will like it, Susan.) I have some red hybrids to make fresh salsa with. I actually don't like tomatoes that are too "tasty" too "sweet" for salsa. I want the tomato flavor to be the background for the tomatillos and peppers.

Dorothy,

I have that trouble with homegrown tomatoes in general---even when canned they often are sweeter than store-bought canned tomatoes. When Chris cooks with home-canned tomatoes, he always asks me "Hey, did you add sugar to those canned tomatoes" and I always say no, but he still looks suspiciously at me like "Are you sure?". When he takes home-made/home-canned Annie's Salsa to work, the guys at the station always ask if I added sugar to it. I don't, but you cannot convince them of that. I try to make the salsa for the firefighters with the least sweet tomatoes we raise, and I substitute more hot peppers for some of the sweet peppers in the salsa recipe because not only do they not like the salsa too sweet, they like it extra-hot. I normally use any old red hybrid slicer or paste tomato for salsa, and save the O-Ps with their wider flavor range for fresh eating or for making pasta sauce, pizza sauce, catsup or even just canned tomato sauce.

My favorite tomatoes for fresh eating are never the same as my faves for canning.

Mostly my favorite one for fresh eating is whatever one I'm eating at the moment.

Dawn

For me, its any fresh from the vine, homegrown tomato i can get my hands on!!!!

But a big juicy, acidic Beefsteak is my favorite of all time. The more acidic the better.

Im only planting 6 total this year. 2 cherries and 4 Beefsteaks. Cant even remember the names.. I just want a fresh tomato!!!!!

Emma

Okay, okay, for my lack of a better description of what my question was, I was trying to get at what you are most looking forward to tasting of the "new to you" Tomatos you're growing this year. The one you've been thinking and dreaming about biting into after reading or hearing all the hype about it.

Susan

Oh, well then, there aren't many new to me tomatoes out there. The last several years I've planted new ones, but this year, expecting another summer like the last two, I planted tomatoes that I know will do well. In fact the only new one I can think of right now is Aunt Ruby's German Green. And I am looking forward to it as I've never grown a green before.

This is the first year I'm growing heirloom tomatoes so I'm pretty excited about it. The varieties I'm most curious about the taste is Purple Cherokee and Ananas Noire/Black Pineapple.

I just found my first tomato fruit a couple of days ago but I didn't keep up with labeling when I potted my tomatoes to larger containers so I have no idea what variety of tomato it is.

Well, at this point any tomato I can get!! But growing cherry tomatoes is new to me, so I am looking forward to walking out to the garden with my kids, and picking those right off the plant and popping them in our mouths!