But, I'm new at this. What would you avoid and why? I know that there are gardenwebbers that avoid anything Monsanto has touched, for example.

I guess I'm asking for those tomatoes that just weren't worth the time or space.

Gena

Yellow Pear
Delicious
Early Girl (or most any of the "Girl" or "Boy" bunch)
Silvery Fir Tree
Celebrity
Healthkick
Clint Eastwood's Rowdy Red
Green Zebra
Mr. Stripey

for starters. All I can think of off the top of my head this late. ;) JMO and others will disagree.

Dave

Health Kick
Juliet
4th of July
Kellog's Breakfast (No joke! Every single tomato was diseased last year)
Brandy Boys
Brandywines (Yeah, no joke. Not productive. I don't know what all the hype is about the taste. Wasn't there for me.)
Sungold (Actually I might try these again. I think the seeds I got were mislabeled.)
Delicious
Red Lightening

this is a much harder question to answer than what am I adding to the list this year. interesting.

Brandywine (low production, high disease rate)
Better Boy (lousy taste compared to OP varieties)
Early Girl (same as Better Boy)
Yellow and Red Pear (Nasty tasting)

PJ

I will usually give a tomato another chance if it didn't do well tastewise or performance wise because one year can be so different from another, but those two are memorable in their 'awfulness'.

OTOH I am pretty surprised how many people don't care for Brandywine. I don't grow it because of low production, but I don't remember the taste being bad. And I like Silvery Fir Tree. Many people don't, but to me it was pretty good for a super early. But then many palates are geared for sweet and I tend to lean toward a more acidic flavor.

Duane

I want to find a few Sungold seeds to try, since everyone raves about them being better than Sweet 100, but am not going to pay Burpee $4.95 + 6.95 S&H just to try a few seeds.

Other seeds that I stopped growing from 2006 & 2007 are Soldacki Polish Red, Campbells 1327, Rose Quartz Multiflora, Siberian Russian, Box Car Willie, Roma, Giant Yellow Belgium, Ultimate Opener, Whopper, Sweet Million, Champion, Early Harvest, Wisconsin 55, Hardrock, & Voyage. It just seemed that I had too many types and the "weakest links" just had to go. Doesn't necessarily mean they are bad, could have been weather conditions, crowding, etc. This season I will have 15 other varieties that have earned a spot in my garden. I call them my "best of the best" list. Paul

Off the top of my head.

Duane

4th of July - what a joke
Aunt Ruby' German Green - tasty, but not productive
Box car Willie - huge plant, small tasteless fruit
Caspian Pink - low production, severe BER among the others
Cherokee Purple - had disease problems
Early girl - not early and not tasty
Juliet - low production, didn't like the flavor
Mortgage Lifter - didn't like the texture
Whopper - another joke..my BHN444 was twice the size.

I'm hoping that this year is a better year for the heirlooms that I have.

Happy Gardening
GK

black prince - good taste but diseasy in my garden

eva purple ball - on the bland side to me

kelloggs breakfast - outstanding taste but not worth disease and yield problems. Go with KBX!

box car willie - in my garden extremely prone to blight

berkeley tie dye - cool looks and pretty good flavor but diseasy in my garden

George

Mule, lol, at your rating system. I see Green Doctor's is 2 pukes worse than yellow pear.

Jan

Yellow Pear...almost goes without saying, had no real expectations, big healthy plant, lots of pretty fruit, awful texture, awful taste, waste of space.

Clint Eastwood's Rowdy Red...plants looked great, fruits looked perfect, but not much taste and were almost crunchy when ripe (like those crappy 'vine ripened' supermarket toms that have been turned red through applications of chemicals). From descriptions from seller I expected a lot more, and grew this in 2007 with constant sun and perfect weather.

Black Zebra...huge production on 3 plants (seeds were mislabeled, was supposed to have been Carbon), horribly bland flavour, spitter, not even salvageable for sauce

Kellogg's Breakfast...skins of ALL of these tomatoes were scarred and marred, did not happen with any other varieties. Fruits has stringy flesh like the inside of a pumpkin. Not good. However, recommendations are so positive for this that I will probably try KBX and see how it does.

Aunt Ginny's Purple, Aunt Gerties Gold, Stump of the World, Earl's Faux all looked great and produced fruit but none lived up to the tasting notes that I have read (all were grown in 2007 with perfect tomato weather)...but may need to try one or two again in the future, but not this year.

As for Brandywine Sudduth, production has been inconsistent, but taste has been top 3 (of 30 or more varieties grown over last 2 years). Problems be damned, tomatoes taste too good to leave off the list.

Same goes for Cherokee Purple...shame when plant bites the dust and only 3 fruits have matured, but they just taste so good. Also top 3 (black krim probably the other in top 3)

Green Zebra has always been tasty for me, complex and sweet and somewhat tart, but production reduced drastically due to extensive BER. Not on this year's list but would grow again...and I suppose I understand why others do not like it.

Clint Eastwood's Rowdy Red --I have to grow it this year because I didn't save seeds (for trading) the last time I did- Its a perfect looking plant and fruit, but the flavor is not what I like.

Yellow Pear--People around me have no sense of taste, and like the look, so I may have to plant it yet again so they can eat six or so of them and be happy.

Green Zebra--don't like the flavor.

Paul Robeson--don't like the musty-mushroomy flavor.

Carbon and Black from Tula--Prefer (love) Black Krim and JBT instead

Black Plum --did not develop much flavor for me and the total poundage of fruit was not enough for serious cooking.

Black Prince -- was identical in size and flavor to my Nyagous but tended to crack and was slighly less productive.

Lemon Boy: Prolific but totally bland. Not different than a grocery store tomato.
Red Grape: Also prolific and bland.

Why is it that the most flavorless tomatoes are always so high yielding?

Green Zebra I may grow again but only when I have space to burn.

Ditto black cherry.

Then again, that might be unfair of me, because last year's Early Girl:

1. Was my first tomato plant.
2. My first plant ever, actually.
3. I planted it in too small a container (5 gal)
4. I tried to compensate by trimming some of the stems.
5. Tomato plant subsequently stopped growing.
6. Convinced that I had messed the plant up too much, I ceased watering it entirely and gave up.

Despite all that, the little sucker managed to sprout a flowering leaf, after which I resumed watering it and managed to get a single tiny little tomato out of it.

George

Corrie

I'm laughing my head off at the yellow pear comments. I absolutely detested it last year, gave all of them away, and people LOVED THEM and are asking me to plant it again this year! ROFL! Can you believe it? ;-)

Bellatrix

Aunt Ruby's German Green - didn't care for the taste
Big Zac - only 2 fruits on 2 plants, taste and size not there
Yellow pear - yuck!
Supersweet 100 - plenty prolific, but thick skins and sungold is so much better
Black brandywine - black krim and cherokee chocolate much better

jj

Juanne Flamme (pretty but awful)
Kelloggs Breakfast (boring taste)
Rutgers (supermarket type)
New Big Dwarf (not much taste)
Prudens Purple (mushy)
Black Cherry (I don't understand all the hype for this, and I couldn't even give them away because they look so different.)
Lime Green Salad (they don't last after you pick them and they split just by looking at them.)

Good thread, keep 'em coming.

As far as the do nots:

Brandywine - Serious yuck! Tasted like "Cello tomatoes." And they produced about 6 tomatoes on two plants.

Mr. Stripey - Not very productive and not very tasty

Green Zebra - This one is on the fence. I love green tomatoes, but they didn't have the intense flavor I was hoping they would have.

Kim

I am very surprised at some of the no no varieties listed by some folks. I think they would taste better if grown in lots of compost and manure, and allowed to FULLY ripen.

I know people who have grown tomatoes for 50 years, and still pick and eat them "green". They must not have any taste buds. lol

Early Girl is the BEST early tomato ever developed, and it tells me something when people bash it.

But, like my wife, everyone has a mind of their own. lol

I grew "Bush Early Girl" last year and was impressed. It tasted better than anything I could buy at the store and produced very well, even though it was attacked all season by russet mites (I think I bought it that way and didn't find out what it was 'til the end of the season).

However, with that said, I don't think I'll be growing it again this year. My garden is going to be purely heirloom (minus the cherries) this year. If I do decide to plant a hybrid, I may go with the BHN444 for comparison purposes.

Tom

Tomatoes that suck

A great thread from '07...

Ceylon - sour, bag of seeds that quickly rotted, very pretty though

Coyote - something about the taste and my taste buds disagreed a lot! But it wasn't too sour or too sweet. I can't quite pinpoint why it tasted so bad. I just know it did.

I like reading lists like this too. Even if I know that our tastes, seasons and soils differ. I have a hard time getting any usuable info. from the catalogs regarding taste because the descriptions make every tomato sound awesome.

Cindy

Tangella - zillions of cute little orange toms with zero taste.

White Queen - bland sacks of mush that tended to rot. Made for a pretty white salsa though.

Box Car Willie - no taste, thankfully had low production.

Eva Purple Ball - didn't perform well for me, lots of sunscald (only toms in the garden with this issue) and no taste. So bad I pulled the plant in early August.

Lemon Boy - pretty low on flavor. Golden Queen USDA strain is much better.

Aunt Gerdie's Gold didn't do well for me. Tasted like smoke. Given the rave reviews I will probably try it again sometime, just not this year.

Sweet Millions - I thought Sweet 100s were much better.

This year, the varieties I am growing that I have not grown before are - Black plum, Riesentraube, Delicious, Hartmans Yellow Gooseberry (I might give the plants of this variety away if I don't have enough space in the garden), and Caspian Pink. So I am going for a couple large tomatoes, a couple small tomatoes, as well as a plum tomato which has won taste contests, and a couple varieties I tried last year (Homestead, which has a sweet tomato flavor; and Tiny Tim, which wasn't so great but I am giving it another try).

So there's what I'm growing and what I'm not growing and why. Hope you find this useful

For me, Early Girl does not compete well in any way with Jet Star.

Health Kick was only grown last yr but I didn't finish a single one of em.

Grampa's Minnesota started out as a spitter but by late season was pretty tasty.

My Darlin likes Yellow Pear so I'm doomed to at least one forever and we both think Lemon Boy is well worth the little trouble it takes.

Aunt Gertie's Gold will get a second chance but it was low and very late production with unremakable flavor. I'll tolerate both production negatives but the taste has to be worth the trouble. Too many great ones out there to bother very hard with less than Missouri Pink Love Apple or German Queen or Brandwine OTV or Cherokee Purple or Gardener's Delight which would be my current top 5 for taste.

On the other hand, Solar Fire was AWESOME last year! I highly recommend it. I only got it last year because the name was kind of cool. :-)

Any large tomato, again they always rot before they ripen. Cherry tomatos are a pain to pick but at least I always get some edible production.

What about Egg Yolk -- is that yucky too?