Opalka

If you browse through the many 'paste' and 'sauce' discussions here you'll discover that most prefer a sauce made from many different varieties and types of tomatoes, not just paste varieties. This is because paste types are not known for flavor. Begin with good tasting tomatoes and you get good sauce. ;)

That said, if paste types are what you want to grow then Opalka, San Marzano, Amish Paste, and several of the heart-shaped varieties like Bull's Heart, Kosovo, and Oxheart are all commonly recommended. There are many other varieties to choose from as well.

Spacing is standard tomato plant spacing of 3-4 feet and stake or cage (assuming you mean true tomato cages) is your choice. I cage everything with 5 and 6 foot CRW cages but Amish Paste would do alright on a stake. The others I listed are quite huge plants.

Dave

Thanks Dave, but I already have the non-paste ones, because at peak there is no way we can eat them all. The smaller paste plants are less productive, and I prefer 2/3 paste ( a little on the dry side), and also paste tomatoes get eaten in pasta with raw tomato sauce through the summer (which is way too liquid when done with regular tomatoes).

Maybe I should just bite the bullet and spend two beds on the sauce tomatoes, and one for regular (I am a little overorganized in the garden, I want one bed one veggie). But the info I got here is that most of you think that larger paste plants produce more per square foot than the smaller varieties.

I also recommend many heart types for sauce/salsa/etc. Hearts are truly multi-purpose--they can be made into sauce, diced for salsa, or sliced for sandwiches. They usually have very few seeds too. Some favorites:

{{gwi:1377884}}
{{gwi:1351699}}

{{gwi:1351698}}
{{gwi:1391639}}
{{gwi:1351697}}
{{gwi:1382454}}

For some great paste varieties:

{{gwi:1349488}}
{{gwi:1351696}} (try to picture a 5-6'' Roma!)
{{gwi:1363738}} (clusters of 4 to 6)
{{gwi:1363727}} (pink pastes)
{{gwi:1391640}} (great canner too, juicier than many pastes)
{{gwi:1359724}}
{{gwi:1363728}} {{gwi:1363742}} very dry paste type.
{{gwi:1363744}}

All are indeterminates, 5-7 feet depending on conditions/climate/food/water.

Hope this helps.

Sorry, I forgot Uncle Steve's, from rxkeith:

"Italian plum from my great uncle Steve Messina, 6oz and up plum type tomato, nice and meaty, great for cooking, and sauce, juicy enough to eat fresh too. a good tomato."
{{gwi:1351695}}

And Ernie's Plump:

"My favorite Italian saucer since I first grew it, 3 years ago.. Cooks down to the the reddest, richest, flavorful sauce ever! 8 -12oz. fruits are a most unique shape: "plump" double pears with a tiny blossom scar. Rich beyond words, I ate plenty this year straight out of hand. Extreme producer. I receive more comments on this tomato than any other I sell."

{{gwi:1351705}}

There are many, many others, like Sausage, Prue, Rio Grande, Big Ray's Argentina, Polish Paste, Bisignano #2, Grandma Mary's, Mama Leone, Rocky, Rosalie's Paste, Orange Banana, {{gwi:1351700}}, etc.

Your request was for a way to "produce as much sauce for the winter as possible". Of the varieties mentioned above and considering your climate, you are going to get less than stellar performance. My suggestion would be to use a determinate tomato in combination with an indeterminate to spread out production a bit and and to increase plant density in the bed while boosting production. Three varieties that I can think of are Heidi, Rio Grande, and San Marzano. These suggestions are specific to your climate and are highly productive varieties that can handle a range of adverse conditions while still producing boatloads of tomatoes.

You will have to support the tomatoes using stakes or something similar to maintain vertical growth. I'd suggest 4 ft stakes for the Heidi, 6 ft for the others. I would also suggest using much more than "a lot" of compost. In this type setup, nutrient availability is critical.

DarJones

Thanks to all. I will trial Heidi and Joliet for the small ones, and Opalka and San Marzano for the biggies. I already have Ukrainian Heart.

I will start in hoop houses and keep the plastic on until early June to limit climate effects. There will be a lot of compost. One of the beds will be excavated to make a root cellar in the winter, so next spring it will be 100% compost.

In a 2002 Heirloom tomato trial by the University of Illinois, They tested 100 varieties, 2 plants of each. While it was a small sampling, the top paste types tested were as follows, sorted by yield/plant:

Cultivars #of Fruit Lbs. #/plant lbs/plant avg fruit oz Brix
San Marzano (1 plant) 268 50.5 268 50.4 3.01 5.20
Ten Fingers of Naples 873 100.0 437 49.9 1.83 5.08
Ernie's Plump 192 73.8 96 48.8 8.14 6.03

I didn't include Ten Fingers (nor Heidi) because it sounded like you didn't really want small fruited varieties.

As for most of the paste type pics, most that have more than 2 maters on a plate are all from 1 picking from ONE plant. For example, Roughwood I picked a dozen in one picking from 1 plant, Speckled 7, Uncle Steve's 6. You can judge production/yield easier this way, plus they are all on standard 9'' plates for size comparisons.

The top 3 were all within a pound or 2 per plant so it's a coin toss; I prefer Ernie's because less chance of BER and much larger fruit size than San Marzano--less work. Plus it has a higher brix rating (sugar solids.)

Hi, I know I'm late to this, but would like to add that my San Marzanos gave fairly small fruits, about the same size as the Romas. The Opalka (long and kind of funny shaped) and the Amish Paste (which is a bit heart shaped) are nice, big, meaty tomatoes.

Caryl

Thanks Korney, your posts are most illuminating. I do not understand how Ernie's gave 73.8 lbs, with 49.9 lbs per plant. I will just assume that 73.8 is wrong.

So 50 lbs per plant (indeterminate). It is noted that this does not optimize production per square foot. In my beds I can plant two indeterminate tomatoes (well, they spill quite a bit into the paths) across or three determinate tomatoes across. It is purely a comparison of undeterminate plants.

San Marzano, the pro is that it is a really dry tomato and also the top producer. Very useful as I get a lot of very juicy tomatoes to mix with. The con is BER, however, I should have drip.

Let me also mention that there are two things that we do often that absolutely require San Marzano or other very dry tomato. One is pasta with blended raw tomato sauce, which is fantastic (we blend also fresh garlic, basil, salt and olive oil), but becomes a soup with regular tomatoes, and even Roma and Joliet are marginal. The other is meat stew in a crockpot. With blended sauces it is too liquid, even after 6 hrs of simmering. For these, straight paste is the only answer.

Fingers of Naples presumably has only the problem of pick, pick, pick.

Earl has BER resistance, and I see recommendations for flavor. It seems to me that I should go with Earl, San Marzano, and Opalka, 4 plants each, one bed. If I do it right, it should be 600lbs. I'd be happy with 400 in fact.
There is no need for a second bed I guess.

I rechecked the original #s and they may have erred on the 73.8 because when you divide the total # of fruits for 2 plants (192) and multiply by 8.14oz and divide by 16oz in a pound you get 97.68; divide by 2 = 48.84lbs per plant.

For the tests, here's what they did:

Transplant production

One hundred Heirloom tomato cultivars were seeded in the greenhouse facilities on April 3,2002. Seedlings were grown in 50 cell plastic trays. Plants were transplanted into the field on June 5, 2002 and watered in with a nutrient starter solution. (20-20-20@100ppm/N)

Plot Establishment

Plot was disked with the herbicide Treflan 0.9 lbs. aia, ppi on May 28. The trial was planted on black plastic mulch-covered beds with trickle irrigation lines beneath. Evaluation had ten rows, each one hundred feet long, spaced 6 feet apart, on center. Plots consisted of two plants of each cultivar, planted 2 feet apart with 6 feet between each cultivars. Plants were supported during the growing season by five foot tall, #10 reinforced concrete wire caging. For extra support, each two cages were then staked together using wooden stakes, which were then secured together with cable ties. No additional fertilization was used through out the growing season.

Plot Maintenance

Preventative insect pest management strategies were used with the application of Baythroid at 2.3oz/A on 7/30 and 8/27. Preventative fungicide treatments consisted of Flint at 4oz/A on 7/30 and Quadris at 5.60z/A on 8/27. Irrigation was provided as needed through drip irrigation.

Data Collection

Fruits were harvested one time a week from July 2 through October 6. At harvest, fruits were counted and weighed. Four Ph and Brix readings were taken, beginning August 31.

Results and Discussions

Overall tomato cultivars performance was extremely favorable under the hot, dry growing season of 2002. Results are shown in Table1. Most cultivars continued with fruit production and plant growth until frost (October 14). A few cultivars experienced inherent radial and concentric cracking as well as some cat facing but overall fruit quality was exceptional. Trial experienced little pressure from pests or disease.

*UI Kane County Master Gardener; Sr. Research Specialist, Food Crops, Dept of NRES
...........................

The weight of each fruit would have to be off by over 2 oz to get #s near the 73.8, thats still possible, however the description for Ernie's said fruit were 8-16oz each I think.

The same trial for Joe's Plum & Opalka gave these #s: Joe's Plum: 45.5 fruit/plant, 25.3lbs/plant, 8.91oz avg fruit size, 6.13 Brix.

Opalka: 37.5 fruit/plant, 11.5lbs/plant, 4.88oz avg fruit size, 6.35 Brix.

San Marzano, given i did get the right seed, which i think i did comparing it to what i've read, sucked big time here in southwest WI. Flavor was nonexistent, yield was OK, plants got diseased big time (VERY WET THIS YEAR)..cracking was not a huge problem. I would never grow them again here. Something like Opalka or Amish paste is a lot better way to go, even with some cracking issues.

Yes, but Opalka in Illinois produces 1/4 the San Marzano yield, according to Korney.

don't worry about the size go with the ten fingers of naples and martino's roma. you'll do fine. if you want a great hybrid try the Italian variety scipio from franchi seed sold by grow Italian.