I haven't grown Mr Stripey myself but I've grown Gold Medal for a couple of years and I love it. I get about 15 fruits per plant with pretty severe pruning and the fruits are between 1 and 1.5 pound. Even though this is advertized as a late tomato it is consistently one of the first non cherry type tomatoes in my garden. I don't notice a large amount of blossom drop especially when the plant isn't already loaded with fruits. The fruits are sweet with low acidity and the texture is just really creamy.

Thank you.

Yeah, I had my first go with Mr. Stripey last year, and I'll never have one of those again. They had almost no production, and what they did produce split every single time. I never got a single ripe edible fruit from them the entire season.

Horrid plants.

I haven't grown Mr. Stripey, but grew Gold Medal in '10. Mine were huge, probably in the 1 1/2 - 1 3/4 lb. range. Ikea's description of the taste is right on the money.

Here is a picture of a few of them, harvested right before our first frost. I know there's a lot of other stuff in the picture, but they are the bi-colored ones in the middle.

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I'm trying to decide whether to grow them again, or give Pineapple a try. Anyone have comments on that one?

Bonnie

Hi, just happened to find this post. I'm growing Gold Medal for the first time as well as Mr. Stripey. So, the first few Mr. Stripey or Tigerella, we just yuk! I'm getting some now that are much better, but I wouldn't grow them again. My GM's are huge, haven't turned color yet. My question is this, I'm in zone5b, when do you usually start harvesting the gold medals? I figure I will get approximately 12 or so fruits?

I'm growing Gold medal this year in zone 5. I think it is a wonderful tomato and has been producing for a month already. I think I had some about the middle of July.

I hate Mr Stripey, too.

wow, when did you plant? My Gold Medal was only planted the 2nd week of June because they came from a farm north of Montreal and they only plant around June 15th.Normally, I plant end of May.
Plus we had extreme heat, which might have slowed down pollination. I had lots of growth, leaves and then finally flowers but I only started seeing tomatoes end of July.
Like I said, the big ones are huge and I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that the smaller ones will have a chance to make it.

I planted 1st of May and we must have had some favorable temps early on. It is a very attractive tomato.

Ok know I feel better. We can't plant here till at least the end of May as we are at risk for a late frost. However, we started with the hot weather early, so I wish I had planted earlier.looking forward to eating it.

I ended up with three diff bi-colors...Mr Stripey, Va Sweet and Hillbilly and they did well collectively. But I lost track of which was which. I weighed the biggest at 37 ounces.

Since no one has said it, I will.LOL

Here's the reason that Mr Stripey appars at almosty all the big box strores as well as commercial nurseries.

Wayne Hilton, who used to own TT and that whole stable of companies now owned by Jung's, found it in GA and sent seeds to Seeds by Design in CA, a wholesale place he was dealing with at the time.

Since the folks there didn't know that there already was a variety called Mr. Stripey, aka Tigerella as bred in England by the Glasshouse Res Insti, they called it Mr. Stripey, again, not knowing that the real Tigerella had also been called Mr. Stripey.

And SBD send out a commercial list to many many commercial growers of heirloom varieties in the US, and that's how it got spread around.

This meaning that since then I and others have had to distinguish between the two, the real Tigerella being a small red with gold jagged stripes and not a bicolor, which splits with the AM dew and has a very aggressive taste vs the gold/red large bicolor.

Yes, I've grown Mr. Stripey the bicolor and it would be about at the bottom of my list of gold/red bicolors based on production AND taste and I do know that many others feel the same way.

With over about 200 named gold/red bicolors I think there are many others that are more worthy.

Again, just me wee opinion.LOL

Carolyn