Johnny's also has a Rebelski (F1) GH tomato for market growers - This one is $18.95 for a pkg of 15 seeds. Has anyone tried this variety. it may be worth the cost? The price is high enough for the Rebelski that I would definitely like to hear from someone who has grown this variety before I would pay that much money for seeds. Please let us know your opinion of Rebelski if you have grown this variety.

Please help me out here if you can - hasn't anyone tried the Johnny's GH tomato seed collection?? Are these varieties for commercial Greenhouse producers? I do not see the varieties offered in any catalog but Johnny's and no one is talking about these varieties on GardenWeb?? They have great write-ups and look very tasty - as anyone tried them?

Please pardon the fact that I posted a similar thread on the Greenhouse and GH Structure forum - because they are Greenhouse varieties - I wanted make sure both GH and Tomato Growers were aware of the thread.

I think I will try at least one of the varieties this coming season but your experiences with these Johnny's GH Tomato Varieties - may change my mind. Thanks!

From what I have read about them (on other tomato forums), yes they are produced for the commercial grower's market primarily. And they have only been available for last season's growing so actual experience with them will be very limited. Seed demand is likely just based on photo appearance at this point.

As a small commercial/market GH grower I prefer to stick with proven and known-to-be-salable varieties rather than waste limited space on new unproven varieties. JMO

Dave

It makes sense to stick with the proven varieties - I experiment with only one plant and am not a market grower so except for the cost of a seed pkg and my time - it is not much of a gamble. I wonder if Johnny's charges a high price for these GH tomato varieties to discourage the home gardener from growing them - giving the commercial grower an exclusive in the market? Just a thought

Well, like you said Hudson, it is not a big gamble other than the cost of seeds. Even then if you use couple of seeds and it turns out what you like, you will have enough seeds left for then next 4, 5 years.
In my case, I don't have the space to try out too many new ones. This coming year I will add Brandy Boy ( your and Daniel's recommendation), Rutgers (old time favorite) and Kellogg's Breakfast (well reviewed and popular).

Seysonn

A few years ago Vilmorin developed a greenhouse oriented tomato they call
Rebelion. They sell the seeds as F1 but only in Europe. Don't know if there
is any connection to Rebelski or not.

They've done a lot of marketing to Spanish growers for winter culture, especially
in the Almeria district, which is where a lot of tomatoes for the European market
are grown. This one is billed as having a long shelf life after harvest (and does it
ever!) The big selling point is that these could be shipped from Almeria to
Moscow and back, arriving in the same condition as they were when they
left. I actually have a copy somewhere of the advertisement that says this.
Apparently someone believes that Russians would actually eat something
like this.

Anyway, two years ago, I managed to get hold of some seed and grew several
plants.This was by far absolutely the worst tomato I have ever grown or even seen. The plants were large, vigorous and very productive. The fruit was
nice and round with a very smooth skin, almost spherical and of the most
glowing red color I have ever seen in a tomato. But you couldn't eat it. Very,
very firm flesh and no flavor. The bed where I had these was unfenced and
even the groundhog would not steal it. I had to get rid of them so I filled
a five gallon bucket with them and carried into the woods where I dumped them.
Three weeks later, I did the same and when I came to the site where I had
dumped the first lot, they were still there, in exactly the same condition.

Way ta go, Vil.

Haha - this is the best - "bad" - review I think I have ever read !! Thanks for telling it like it is Sneezer - wished I hadn't purchased the seed already :( I may squeeze one plant in the GH just to see if the Wyoming altitude and cold nights can add any flavor - now that I have the seed - but then again - maybe not.
Thanks!!

@Hudson...WY,

Are you saying you got some Rebelion seed somewhere?
I had no idea anyone else could think of that. Wonder how
you did it. Is someone selling it here now?

If you do have some, I encourage you to put in at least
one plant, just for a very strange experience.

Another note to Hudson...WY,

I notice in your initial post to this thread that you say Johnny's Marbonne F1 is a version
of "Marinade". That sounded strange, so I checked Johnny's catalog and found that it
is actually from Marmande. Slight difference in spelling; big difference in provenance.

Marmande is actually a very standard French heirloom and widely available. One thing
I found out though, when looking into Rebelion, is that there are many Marmandes. One
of the large French seed companies (this is off the top of my head, so please bear
with my vagueness) had produced a hybrid using Marmande #27, an heirloom strain
they had preserved for many years. So unless there is some kind of coordination between
firms, I guess each of them has a whole library of minor variations, each called Marmande.

Another thing I found out is that recently (say over the last ten years) there has been a
trend for large French seed firms to issue "improved" hybrid versions of well-known
heirlooms. I know there is one based on Rose de Berne (can't remember which company)
and at least several others. I'm not sure these are really improvements though for
anyone other than the large greenhouse producers. The descriptions of these new hybrids tend largely toward topics such as disease resistance, marketability, vigor, shelf life, etc.
I agree those are all important factors and we should respect them but I suspect the
one most important factor to the home gardener, i.e. flavor, often gets the short end
of the stick. I guess the only way we will really know is to try some and that's what I
was looking at when I tried Rebelion. What a disappointment, though others may be
better.

I did have a post some time ago, about when I was trying "the R word" about some
other French varieties and the publicity linked to them but I can't find it now. If I locate
it I'll reference it here.

OK, the earlier post is here:

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/tomato/msg0212400426487.html

Turned it up in a Google search but searching for it inside gardenweb doesn't work.

Of the two links, the first is dead but the second, the Pomodoro Brochure still works.
This brochure includes V's promotion of "the R fruit"; even gives it a full page.

I have never met a hybrid tomato worth eating. Big Beef is close to "OK", but only on a sandwich or in a salad with a tomato flavor dressing.

I don't want to sound like a snob, but the difference between the best hybrid and the average heirloom is "OH MY GOD".

"Are you saying you got some Rebelion seed somewhere?
I had no idea anyone else could think of that. Wonder how
you did it. Is someone selling it here now?"

Ooops - sorry sneezer - It is the Marbonne (F1) seeds that I have purchased. Thanks for correcting me on the Marmande also - I can grow them a lot better than I can keep them straight - haha

Thanks for the correction. I hope your Marbonne does well.

I'll be looking for results, yours and others' around the forum come summer.

Actually, after my experience with "the R fruit", I'm a bit leery about the whole
trend of "improving" highly successful heirlooms. I just think something is being
left out of the mix as has happened so many times before. Especially from the
point of view of individuals growing for themselves and their families.

However, it's best to keep an open mind and I intend to do that and continue
to hope that the "project" turns out more successfully than I expect.