The original thread got to long. So I decided to start a new fresh thread. The link to the previous thread is shown below.

I think now is the time to pick what we want/plant to grow in 2014, based on your past experience, what you have heard about .... But there can be things that we ALL learn from each other's experience. I find it very helpful when you are about to step into new territories.

So here we go: TOMATOES YOU WILL NOT GROW IN 2014, .. WHY ?
You can also add your "GOT TO HAVE ITs".

ONE MORE THING:
Now that 2013 growing season is history, let us make a report card on how our maters did, if you will.

YELLOW PEAR, MR. STRIPY, GREEN ZEBRA, BRANDYWINE, JULIET, ROMA(BER issues),
some BLACK tomatoes were negatively reviewed.

I will grow:
San Marzano: loved it for my sauces, plants were HUGE, but I lost a lot in the beginning of the season to blossom drop. I think DH had too much manure, too soon in the garden.
Siletz: Nice size and good taste and producer. Only complaint on this one is the alien tomatoes that start to grow out the bottom!
Bootie: Great producer, pretty meaty and nice size for slicing. Also great for canning.

I had a cherry tomato seed that came in a pack that it shouldn't have been there, so I have no idea what it was. But it produced heavily all summer long. I would grow it again, as my neighbors handicapped son LOVED them. So I would grow them just for him. So would appreciate knowing of a good variety for this. They were also a nice size, not real small.

== OVERALL, I will not grow any hybrid, except maybe a BETTER BOY, if I find good seedling.

SPACE CONSIDERATION:
For this reason, and also to have more early and mid season varieties, I am looking into more DETS and semi-DETS.

COOLER?shorter season reasons:
Almost same as space problem. Bigger INDETS take usually longer to ripen fruits as they spend considerable energy on growing foliage. But I will have a few late season varieties like Cherokee Purple and Mortgage Lifters.

I am all set to start germinating sometime in February.

Manitoba = plants produce plenty of slightly larger than golf ball size green tomatoes, but they tend to rot before they fully ripen here in our GA summers.

Black Krim = only got one softball size tomato last year before it died from a combination of blight and what looked like fusarium wilt. It was a nice tasting tomato, though.

On the Keeper list for this year:

Celebrity
Cherokee Purple

I'm sure I'm forgetting some.

Linda

Most so-called black tomatoes have a texture that is lacking JUICE and their meat is mushy. But I will just grow one for the heck of it (CP). JMO

Could not get seeds of Ivory Egg to germinate.
Also growing hybrid cherry tomato, and they're already producing tons of very good, sweet fruit. Can't remember it's name though. Will see how I like the others in a few months. Have had Brandywine many times before, and love it. I grow mine in raised beds, as Fl. infamous for nematodes.

Based on some of you good folks reccomendations, I'm willing to try Yellow Oxheart, Galina, Cuore di Bue and Viva Italian next fall. I agree with poster mentioning length of growing season, soil types, weather, and when fruits are picked.
Tomatoes are similar to grapes in that way. They pick up the flavors around them, and that's what you get. Give to them, and they give back to you.

I replied, but must not have hit "send" so was surprised to not see it here.

The taste was ok, but "different". Quiet sweet but nothing to rave about. Since my IR's didn't grow bigger than cherries, they won't be invited back.

Linda

By far, the two best tasting tomatoes for me in 2013 were Marianna's Peace and Stump of the World. I'm getting Marianna's Peace back in the garden this year, and Rebel Yell which I was told is a cross between Stump and something else.

I'm about to order seeds for Moravsky Div, Rebel Yell, KBX, Wes, San Marzano Redorta, Paul Robeson, Spudatula, Red Penna, Chapman, Neves Azorean Red, Super Sioux, and Omar's Lebanese. I've never grown any of those, so it should be fun.

Probably will grow:
Yellow pear - taste varies, but is mostly OK for me, produces early and well all season, provides a great color pop when mixed with chopped reds in a raw pasta sauce
Mr. Stripey - great flavor and healthy plant, though fruit may split and rot, so not particularly productive

I should have read this post Friday, I ordered some....... Oh well.

I will not plant any black tomatoes this year, I have tried so many different ones, so I can't remember them all. I don't like the texture or flavor of any of them.

2013 was a bad year for me on tomatoes, too cool and wet.

I'll plant my old standby's and try a few new ones (new for me).

Mine will be:
Burpee Supersteak Hybrid
Rutgers
Better boys
Betters girls
Brandy boy
Brandywine
Sweet 100's
and some seed that I saved from a volunteer that did very well. It was most likely a tomato on the vine from the grocery store.

My favorites: Tommy Toes, Sun Sugar (my only hybrid love), and Cherokee Purple.

Last year I bought a plant from a small nursery and it was labeled Box Car Willie. Well the tomatoes that grew were not Box Car Willie at all but they are my new favorite tomato. I have no idea what they are called but they are an almost neon orange color,meaty texture and have very few seeds. They are kind of flattened with some ribbing on the shoulders and are really fruity and sweet. I saved seeds and I am going to plant them again this year. Hopefully they are an heirloom and will grow true to seed.

I will be growing a bunch of new (to me) heirloom varieties this year but I am most excited about Northern Lights and Cosmonaut Volkov, just because I think their names are cool :).

Last year I got brave and tried a brown/black type called arbuznyi. Very lovely tomatoes, was fairly productive. We couldn't get past the texture of the meat- grainy. I don't know if we'll try it again. Replacing it with stump of the world to give darker tomatoes another fair shake this coming season.

Early girl is sold everywhere around here because of our short season, and I've tried them every year and every year I wonder why I torture myself. They're really productive for me, but the fruits are too visually unimpressive for me and taste way too boring. When we lived in our apartment, I'd try them in gigantic pots on the porch and BER was always present- even with regular watering via drip irrigation. Just can't make them happy, and their flavor isn't good enough to keep trying. I won't grow them ever again.

Others I've tried and haven't done well with: All sausage-shaped paste tomatoes, Japanese black trifle (got many, MANY green and half ripened fruit every year I've tried it), all pear types (skins too thick), and brandywine types (not productive enough).

I am on the hunt for the best large, heavy producing, blemish free, round or slightly flattened, evenly red with excellent flavor tomato (my husband wants to grow it). Also tempted by burpee's steakhouse hybrid, but not tempted enough to shell out seven bucks for a few seeds that I can't save and grow true the following year if I love them.

Photo is my daughter with our favorite tomato type last summer- the un-named OP whatever it is delicious tomato. :)

I'm going through this forum looking for others to give a whirl with too. Expanding here, being our second full growing season in our purchased home, things keep getting bigger and better!

Still looking for a hybrid tomato that doesn't bore me (Big Beef is closest - Its not horrible on a salad with 1,000 Island dressing).

Kind of regret I did not find Black And Brown Boar in my catalogs this year. I'll try to remember it for next year. Where did you find it?

Cherries:
Amy's Sugar Gem (not prolific)
Super Snow White (ditto and bland)
Yellow Tom Tom (bland)
Helsing Blue Junction (not prolific and bland)
Prefer: Black Cherry, Sweet 100, Sun Gold, Dr. Carolyn
Experimenting with: Blush, Matt's Wild Cherry, Galina's and Mountain Magic F1; Indigo Rose, Green Doctor's Frosted

Early:
Druzba (bland; not prolific)
Stupice (bland; not prolific)
Prefer: Kimberly, Matina
Experimenting with: Pink Honey

Red:
Haven't gotten a "lemon" yet
Prefer: Marianna's Peace, Omar's Lebanese, Gregori's Altai
Experimenting with: Stump of the World, Rose, Neves Azorean

Black:
Paul Robeson (muddy; bland and not prolific)
Nyagous (ditto)
Prefer: Noire De Crimee, Cherokee Purple
Experimenting with: Indian Stripe, JD's Special C-Tex

Yellow/Orange:
Manyel (small fruit; bland; not prolific)
Yellow Brandywine (small fruit vs. the DTM; bland)
Prefer: Kellogg's Breakfast, KBX, Hugh's, Azoychka
Experimenting with: Dr. Wyche's, Golden Queen (USDA)

Bicolor:
Virginia Sweets (not prolific)
Lucky Cross (not prolific)
Marvel Stripe (not prolific)
Prefer: Pineapple
Experimenting with: Gold Medal, Hillbilly

smithmal

Big success for 2013 - Brandy Boy. Productive, juicy and tangy. Too tangy for my wife, but I like some zing in my tomatoes.

pinusresinosa, I love the photo of your garden!

I am mystified by so many people not liking Green Zebra. We love it! Tangy, juicy, and productive.

Green Sausage (hands down the worst tomato I've ever had - hard and tasteless, even when ripe)
Any of the Zebras - I just don't like that in-between size
Arkansas Traveller - didn't produce enough (one tomato)
Pink Grapefruit - went from underripe to overripe overnight
Indigo Rose - decided I find blue tomatoes visually unappealing, and Indigo Rose is pretty tasteless
Sungold - never produces much for me (I know, weird)

Favorites:
Rebel Yell - best tomato I've ever had, good producer too
White Tomesol - Pleasant, mild flavor, very productive, beautiful
Pilcer Vesy - delicious and productive
Orange Oxheart - Super sweet, almost like a dessert tomato

I will never grow Vintage Wine again. It is a beautiful tomato to look at, to be sure, IF YOU CAN GET IT TO NOT CRACK. Perhaps it is just my specific garden conditions, I do sometimes get some cracking, but this tomato was the worst by far. I mean at least 5x worse than any other, with both vertical and horizontal crack lines and so many of them that you could barely see the colour of the tomato. Crazy. And two years in a row too, with two different seed sources. The only tomato in those years, and in my garden in general, that has ever done that. I will not grow it again for that reason, but it may not have liked my garden?

This year I am growing white and black tomatoes:
White Wonder
White Queen
Great White
(possibly Snowball or White Beauty - I'm still trying to figure out if they are diff tomatoes, I am seeing conflicting reports)

Black Krim
Black from Tula
Amazon Chocolate
Black Ethiopian
Paul Robeson
Brad's Black Heart
Bedouin
Nyagous
Noire de Cosseboef
Japanese Black Trifele
Carbon
Sara Black
Tasmanian Chocolate

And of course for some paste tomatoes: Cuore di Bue

Zaps:
Yellow Pear: Probably the worst tomato last year, or any year. Produced okay (not exceptional), but the fruit was mealy, bland and honestly disgusting. Usually ended up having to spit them out. I wished the rat took these, but even he didn't want them (lol). Most fruit stayed on the plant.
Sunset Falls: (Bi-colored red/yellow roma)- Set a decent amount for a determinate, but the fruit were mealy and almost all the fruit suffered from "puffiness" (the gel cavities were empty and the fruit square shaped). These were at least salvageable as soup ingredients. Taste was bland.
Black Cherry: Produced fairly well, good texture, had flavor, but unfortunately no one really liked said flavor.
Black Pearl: Like Black Cherry but the flavor was blander. Fruit never seemed to color up properly either, stayed a bit "green" textured no matter how long left on the plant.
Brandywine: Plant never really took off and stayed very small, it did produce but ended up being a pest magnet. The one fruit we did manage to wrestle from the rat that had minimal damage, after a thorough washing and removal of most of the pre-consumed areas was kinda mealy, though the flavor was good. Conditions aren't optimal for it here, I imagine elsewhere it'd be a good tomato.
Super Snow White: I actually didn't mind these, but most others weren't thrilled. Texture was nice and had a good size, though wasn't very productive (likely due to aforementioned larger size for a cherry type). Flavor was subtle, but if left to ripen fully was interestingly fruity and fairly sweet, which I liked. If you like a fruity, less "tomato" flavored fruit and don't mind lesser production, I might still recommend this to others. Something novel for kids.

Maybe:
Green Zebra: Didn't get a lot of fruit from this one for the trouble (like one harvest of 5 fruit), most of the fruit had developed issues that rendered them inedible due to taking too long to mature before the weather went south. The few I got made great fried green tomatoes though. Not sure if worth the space.

Grow Again:
Sun Gold: Grew well, pretty good output, sweet with good flavor.
Sun Sugar: Very similar to Sun Gold (accidently purchased thinking was the Gold), though noticeably different (mostly visually). Still very good overall if you like a sweeter tomato.

Really hoping for a better run in 2014

I will no longer grow Green Zebra or Mr. Stripy.

Black Velvet.

I love the taste and growth of this 'mater. It's vigorous, but not crazy. The fruit is about the sizeof a tennis ball and they don't crack too bad for me. The flavor tho is what I find remarkable....YUM! (I have a tendency to eat them until the corners of my mouth cracks) The first year I planted it, I thought it was an heirloom and saved seeds. The second year I planted the seeds and guess what...I couldn't tell the difference and was surprised when I read that it is indeed a hybrid and not an heirloom. I have 6,000 seeds just in case (wink, wink)

I was not impressed with flavor or texture of last years:
Cuor Di Bue, Dester, Paul Robeson, Black Icicle, Constoluto Genovese, Polbig or Applegate.

This year I'm trying:
Glacier, Golden Treasure, White Queen, (and I'm giving Early girl another shot.)

In debate at the moment about super sweet 100. It as a hearty plant and an excellent producer, but it was nearly unmanageably large for my garden. Trying to figure if there's another good producing, flavorful indeterminate cherry that won't be quite as much of a monster.

Brandywine was a slow producer but was worth it for the taste. Big Beef was an excellent producer and great flavor. They're staying for sure.

I wasted a tremendous amount of time, work and money over about eight years listening to truly terrible advice here before discovering and proving to an absolute, scientific certitude that my "ignorant" suspicion I had after my first season (broadly derided by the assembled "experts") was right:

I will pass this along to those who are complaining of low yields from the very varieties that failed me.

The nighttime temperatures here fall too low for fruit to set on many (notional) heirlooms

I proved this by the unplanned experiment of having a strong wind splitting the stem of an unproductive Black Krim plant about in half. The smaller side collapsed into the mid-September weeds. The larger side remained erect. To that point, I had had no (0) tomatoes from any of the heirlooms I had planted in the spring.

About ten days later, I was pulling up a bunch of this wretched garden when I dug through the weeds and discovered the side of the plant that had fallen down on the ground and was now hidden in the undergrowth was covered with tomatoes!

The "healthy" side that was up in the air still had none.

Another row of somewhat sickly hybrids I had given up for dead after an almost-unproductive spring and summer were now completely overgrown. I dug through the weeds and looked at them, and they were covered with tomatoes.

Looking back on my childhood here, I remember my mother -- who was considered a serious gardener -- only had success with tomatoes that grew on thick, low-lying bushes, where they retained heat from the hot ground during the chilly nights, Every time I've had tomato plants like that (which is unfortunately rare), I got more tomatoes than I knew what to do with. If I had taller plants, I got nearly (or absolutely) nothing.

Am sticking with St.Pierre, Bloody Butcher, the hybrid Ferline and a reliable and tasty early, Matina. 15 of each sorts us out for sauces and ketchup - 60 plants is about the limit of pinching, tying and general fussing I can manage.

Reginald

I won't grow Black Sea Man again. I love all black toms except that one. Taste and texture just weren't right for me. Low and late production.

No more Early Girl unless I take up dry farming, but right now I'm using Earthboxes. (Used to have a 25'x50' plot, so this reduced number of choices is taking some getting used to.)

No yellow pear cherry types unless I live somewhere I can have chickens again. They love the things, and a single big plant can keep 10 hens occupied and happy.

I get low yields from Brandywines and Cherokee Purple, but that's OK... I can get them at the farmer's market. (I don't grow bell peps for the same reason.)

Always, always: Black cherry. Black Pear (*not* plum). Sun Gold.

Matt's wild cherry and Ghost Cherry when I can find them.

And I always try a mystery kind that's obviously mislabeled. One of my black cherries has very different leaves. It will be fun to see what it winds up to be. Last year an Early Girl turned out to be a flattish medium very fruity flavored yellow. Not worth saving the seeds, but it was fun.

Might grow again: Stump of the World. German Johnson. Caspian Pink.

New to me this year: Isis Candy, Japanese Black Trifele, Better Boy, Big Beef. My mom grew Better Boy in New Jersey and then southern Alabama when it was new. I'm hoping Better Boy and Big Beef will hold up better to the heat when the heirlooms tend to go dormant.

I'm still hoping to find the tom of my dreams to grow here: Full acid, lots of flavor, maybe a little smoky, tastes like you already salted it. I'd love some suggestions.

Why don't you guys sprinkle a dash of salt and few drops of balsamic vinegar on any juicy tomato ?

Now, that being said, here are some of my favorites: Amana Orange - just can't say enough good stuff about these...prolific, large furits with great real tomato taste, Pink Ping Pong - the hits just keep coming, Mortgage Lifter - not abundant but huge and the best tasting tomato I've ever known, Black Cherry, Green Zebra - freebie seeds I tried last year, and once I figured out to let them ripen until golden and soft, fell in love, Oaxican Jewel - too sweet, but look like stained glass window when sliced, Glacier - not the tastiest, but very early and produce until frost.

I try to stay with small-fruited prolific varieties because of my limited sun. Next year I'll probably plant Husky Cherry and Celebrity depending on how it does. Based on some of the recommendations here I'd like to try Sun Gold or Sun Sugar. I'm also intrigued by Tumbling Tom.

I'll make a Part III thread for conclusion of the 2014 season and what you'd plant in 2015.

(Part III link below).

smithmal