There is a tomato forum on this iVillage site. As to meaty ones, most plum types are very meaty with a lot of pulp, small cavities, sometimes hollow, and with few small seeds and gel inside. The Villaware food strainer can make quick work of removing the seeds and skins from any tomato type. One of my favorites is the San Marzano, and Super San Marzano, also, Amish paste, and a few others. I usually buy plum and paste type tomao seeds from two sources, namely- Totally Tomatoes and Tomato Growers catalogs. They have web sites and also offer other seed types. One that was really 'wierd' was a stuffing tomato. It was totally hollow, had only a small area inside with gel and seeds, and looked more like a pepper. It wasn't very meaty, but did give you the ability to stuff them and roast them. Of course, that because these have pointed ends mostly, they tend to have blossom end rot more often, but that can be easly corrected through avoiding excessive fertilizers and adding some essential calcium to the soil before they are planted.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tomato Growers link

Thanks! I will check into the types you suggested! Anyone else have any ideas!
Bee

I don't have a huge amount of experience with varieties yet but the meatiest one I've grown is Kosovo. It's an heirloom pink oxheart that I got on the exhange pages. I have some seeds left from what I saved last fall if you want some.

Brenda, I'd probably try the paste types too, but there is a caveat: They don't taste like the old fashioned tomatoes. I think most paste tomatoes are the least flavorful of all the tomatoes I've ever eaten, but they're better than nothing, I suppose.

Annie

I might suggest 'Russo Sicilian Togeta'. These are EXQUISITE and have that great tomato taste. In my opinion, the best tomato for Salsa as well as just eating out of hand. I also grow 'Pomodor Pantano Romeanesco' 'Cour Di Bue' 'Pomodoro Superprecoce' & 'Marmande'. All of these varieties have great flavor and few seeds. They are also all fast ripeners for my shorter Wyoming growing season. I I grow these for the specialty restaurant trade in Cody, Wyoming (Gateway to Yellowstone) and sell every single one I grow!
The Cour Di Bue are excellent for sundried tomato's (Cour Di Bue literally means 'Beef Heart'.)
I would be happy to save seeds for any forum member that would like some. Mary

Here is a link that might be useful: Broken Bar Botanicals

Thanks for the suggestions! I feel so bad for my dad, he misses the tomatoes! A nice fresh BLT! My ox hearts are doing pretty good. We grew them from seeds, but with all the rain, have very few on each plant!
Brokenbar, your tomatoes sound very interesting! I would love to try them, save some for me! I also grew some polish
Linguisa if you'd like to trade! My ox heart are giantissimo.
E-mail me please!
Brenda

Annie, I used to say the same thing. And, in terms of commonly available types, such as Roma, you're absolutely right. Romas are the next best thing to tasteless, IMO.

But talk to Marianne Jones before getting hard-nosed about that position. Marianne (Mariseeds.com) personally specializes in plum and paste type tomatoes, and she can set you up with some incredibly good tasting ones.

Gardenlad,
I agree, that the romas you see in stores are nothing more than red color and a waste of canning jar space. I have had good luck with many plum types I grow here. The ones you see in stores are also grown at home, and still have flavor beyond most store bought ones. The San Marzano has a longer shape, which isn't anything near the low quality of a roma. The Amish paste is also a very long thin type with a lot of meat (pulp) and low amont of liquid. Since I started to can tomatoes, I always use kinds that are defined as plum types, or sauce, paste types. MIxing these varieties, can make a very nice sauce. Soil has a lot to do with it too, but starting with good reputable varieties, you can be assured that whever the outcome, its not usually due to the tomato strain, but may be soil conditions, or weather conditions that can cause a poor quality tomato flavor.

GL, I may try one of those varieties next year, although with the increase in farm duties I've taken on, the garden is supposed to be getting smaller.

Martin sent me some seeds for a paste type that he said was really pretty good, but it was that lousy year and I got a TON of green ones and not one single ripe one before frost. Darn it, they looked good, too.

Annie

I'm growing one called Opalka - long with a pointy end. Very solid, practically no seeds and great flavor. Not exactly a paste tomato but is sure good in sauce or for eating out of hand.

Annie, was that the Wisconsin 55 he sent you?

Yes, that Opalka is a good one too, very meaty and nearly no liquid. Really has a problem with BRE though, so they do get a calcium foliar spray if it shows up.

No, although he sent those too and they didn't ripen either, I got about 1/2 bushel of ripe tomatoes from 98 plants. That was two summers ago and the only thing that ever turned red that summer was my old faithful, Bonny Best, and not many of those.

The Roma one he sent me was "Martin's Roma".

Annie

Oh, yeah. I forgot about that one. Haven't grown it, but others have remarked on its surprisingly good flavor.

Let me see if I can dig up seed for DePinto and send it to you. That's a good tasting, mid-season paste tomato that should ripen by you. It's an Italian heirloom, brought to the U.S. by the DePinto family of Long Island in the mid-1970s.

When we were growing it it served as both our main-crop and canning tomato.

Whew: Tomatoes have been bred and inbred so many times it is impossible to pick one that is "right" for your area except by trial and error. When the acidic content of tomatoes was bred out of them by genetic engineering,all was lost. They don't have the good taste, nor can they be used for other useful purposes as before.

Roma tomatoes are a great example of the genetic engineering. If you want to have something that tastes like that, it is easy. put some cardboard in a container and pour some tomato juice from Krogers on it, and let it sit for a few hours. Toss it in a blender and make spaghetti sauce.

I digress. I know that. Five years ago some guy advertised in the classified ads that he had "old fashioned acidic tomato plants for sale at $5.00 each".

I bought 5 plants. When the tomatoes got vine ripe from each plant, I tested them. One was acidic, four were not.

How do you test for acidity? Take a cut tomato and use it to rub the interior of your bathtub. If it is acidic,you cannot possibly get a "ring around your bathtub".

You do know, of course that if you are going to can tomatoes in any way in a hot water bath system, that you must add some kind of acid to them to make the canned product safe to eat.

Another "No, No" don't put tomatoes in the refrigerator. Lots happen to them, but nothing good.

Whenever I hear that "low acid" nonesense I have to laugh.

First of all, those of us who grow heirlooms never had to worry about it. Second, back in the '80s there were five varieties introduced that had been bred to be low acid. None of them became popular, and all but one of them are no longer available. The one that is is only available to growers on contract to commercial canners.

But the USDA, in its infinate wisdom, decreed that modern tomatoes are all low acid (interestingly, they've never published the test results leading to that conclusion) and recommends the addition of lemon juice for safety. Meanwhile, thousands of home canners continue to put up tomatoes without additional acid, and none of them are getting sick because of it.

FWIW, John, all tomatoes are in-bred. It's the nature of the beast with self-fertilizing vegetables, and is not the evil you seem to imply.

And, while we're at it, those five low-acid tomatoes were not genetically engineered. They were hybridized to be low acid.

Now, let's examine the supermarket tastelessness, which, again, has nothing to do with genetic engineering. Instead there are two factors at work.

First, 99+% of supermarket produce consists of hybrids. When creating an hybrid they look for characteristics that make it suitable for the food distribution system. They select, therefore, for things like toughness (to withstand the abuses of truck and rail travel); uniformity of size, shape, and color; resistance to diseases, etc. Flavor is not a criteria. So anytime taste creeps in it does so by accident, as a by-product of the parents choosen for other purposes.

Second, commercial tomatoes are harvested green. They are then transported to warehouses and held in cold storage until needed, at which point they are gassed with ethylene. This causes them to change color. But they are not, _and never have been_ ripe. The result is the wet cardboard you refer to. But, again, this has nothing to do with genetic engineering.

It's also why folks go crazy over how good their home-grown tomatoes taste, even when they grow the same hybrid variety. It's the only time they get to eat ripe ones. And that makes a big difference.

First year growing San Marzano, and love them! Very easily peeled for canning, meaty, and great for salsa. Very productive plants.

Annie, At the end of the season before the first frost, you can pull the entire tomato plant and hang in upside down in a shed/porch/garage. Tomatoes will continue to ripen. When it gets too frosty out in an un-heated building, I pick all the green ones, bring them in in flat boxes and we were still eating tomatoes in January! Wyoming has a short growing season (some years as little as 90 days) so I usually have a lot of green ones. Mary

Here is a link that might be useful: Broken Bar Botanicals

Brenda,

I too very much enjoy Opalka, which is very meaty and has few seeds. E-mail me if you would like some seeds to try.

I also am growing Heidi this year --- it is a paste type from Africa that Carolyn Male recommends in her book _100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden_. She says it and Opalka are the only paste types she bothers with, and since I agree with her taste on Opalka I am trying Heidi. Will let you know how it does!

So far one of the Heidi plants is riepning awfully early; it has been damaged some, so I wodner if it's because of the shock. The other plant is bigger and healthier and still totally green.... (as is the Opalka, though its toms are getting nice and big!)

Zabby

I'll chip in as well with a recommendation of growing Opalka, Heidi (slightly more seeds but such good flavor) and any of the ox hearts. I've just begun growing ox-hearts last year, and as a general class, they certainly fit the bill for a meaty, decent tasting tomato. They make great sauce as well as sliced in half and dried. Last year I grew Polish Ox Heart, which was good, this summer I've got how-ever-you-say-ox-heart-in-Italian, and German Red Strawberry. Still 10 days away.

Thanks everyone! I would love to try some new ones! I also grew some kind of roma, and they are all looking healthy.
My ox hearts are a little browns on the bottem leaves, I was hoping it was damage from the flea beetles early this summer. They got almost every tomato and pepper plant! I hope they will be ok to can. The tomatoes look good and are getting huge, so are the polish l's I have. I'm starting to see hints of red!
I also found 3 horn worms! A little one, a med size one, and a big fat one that popped when I tried to remove it from the plant, it was really gross!
We have a little duck that is the neighbor's, the mommy and sibling are lost, it came waddling up the drive and my cat was gonna pounce! My older son saved him/her, and needless to say we are so in love, My little one named him/her paddle!
So if Momma and sibling come home Paddle goes home:( and
I will be buying some ducks!!
Anyway, Paddle sampled the littlest horn worm, in the end Paddle spit it out!LOL!! Paddle walks around the garden with me picking the bugs! I think I might enjoy more of these great bug pickers!
Thanks again for all the suggestions!
Brenda

Acidity can vary greatly and isn't totally dependent on the tomato type, even if its bred for high acid. Weather, and soil conditions also affect the acid levels. They used to say that yellow tomatoes were low acid. If the lower leaves are getting brown and black, its usually something splashing up from the soil. I use soaker hoses to prevent this. Septoria leaf spot can laso destroy a whole tomato patch in no time. Thats why I didn't plant a single tomato this year, had to give the garden a rest. Tomato hornworms are poisonous! Its a good thing Paddle spit it out. They get their poison from eating the poisonous leaves of the tomato plants (nightshade).

Annie, it sounds like your planting the tomatoes a little late in the season. When I start plants indoors to go out by the middle to end of May, they are already about 2 feet tall and some are already flowering. Yes, these will be shocked a little when transplanted, and the blossoms may drop off, but the plants get used to their new surroundings very quickly. Of course, I do place them in to the greenhouse for about a week to 10 days prior to planting. Some can get sun scall, but its not going to kill the plants. I also use an organic fertilizer when planting each plant. Its from Gardens Alive and is their tomato fertilizer. Very good product as it reduces transplant shock, as well as working well with peppers too. Yes, I suppose I could have used compost and manures, but because the GA fertilzer is a dry flake, its easy to grab a 1/4 cup and drop it into the planting holes for each plant. This year, not one single pepper plant out of 170 had succumbed to any shock or loss. All are producing every 5 days, and now I have way too many jars of them, so I'm giving them away. My pepper plants can reach 3 feet tall, even though the seed packs say 2 feet. If your concerned about late frosts, starting extra seeds in March can help. If I had a frost here after planting, I put out a big sheet of thw heavy weight white plastic non woven fabric. This helps to protect the tomato plants for about 3 hours if the temps drop below 32. There is also that expensive 'wall of water', gadget, but I would think that a few big buckets turned upside down over the plants would protect them from overnight frosts. Here, we were lucky, there was no frost for the whole month of April, which was very unusual. But because of all the rain, I still didn't plant until the end of May.

Speaking of greenhouse, I saw this odd, but familiar looking plant sprouting from the edge of the inside of my greenhouse. Its foliage was almost 3 foot tall, before I pulled up the plant which was behind my work bench inside the greenhouse. It turned out that at the root end, was a tiny potato.. It looked like a russian fingerling, of the type I grew last year. Somehow that little spud survived the winter outside, sprouted, and grew another little spud. No potatoes are planted this year, but if I had knwn this was one, I would have left it be, until it was ready to dig.

Thanks Ken, but I've been growing tomatoes for 40+ years here in Michigan. I start them under shop lights in late March and they are usually in the ground by mid-May. Since we have had snow on Memorial Day here more than once, I scramble to cover about 100 tomato plants.

No one in my neighborhood has had a ripe tomato yet, so it isn't just me, it's the farmers who have farmed their entire lives. Only certain varieties of tomatoes are successfully grown here in Northern Michigan, some of them are just too late.

As you know, I don't use any commercial fertilizers, I have a herd of cattle and a couple of horses. I have a compost bin. I mulch with hay or straw from my own place and I don't spray anything. A nice layer of composted manure spring and fall, a good layer of mulch and some extra compost on sandy/clay portions keeps my soil well amended.

My tomato plants have become a jungle and some are taller than I am, but they aren't ripe yet.

Annie

I've been picking Stupice tomatoes since July 24th but they are juicy and a bit seedy so don't fit the request for meaty tomatoes. Good flavor though.
Want to point out again that tomatoes are NOT genetically engineered - nothing at least that's on the market at this point. Hybridized, yes, but that's a natural process.
So far genetically engineered food is mostly limited to corn as in chips, cornflakes and corn meal as well as corn syrup (think carbonated drinks) but not sweet corn. And maybe soybeans and wheat. Has to be something widely grown to justify the costs involved.

Wish I could help further. Aside from all that your doing, its also helpful to choose early ripening varieties. We can't always get what we want, but if they can ripen indoors after it gets really cool outside, that will also help a little. I had some last me almost 4 months indoors and they slowly ripened, but it was obvious that their seeds inside still had some green showing.

OldRoser, the four major food crops that are genetically altered are corn, potatoes, soy, and rape.

For all intents and purposes, 100% of the rape crop is GMO, which is why I don't use canola oil. It's getting harder and harder to avoid frankenfoods, too, because almost anything that comes in a can, nowadays, has corn syrup in it.

Burpee's Garden Salsa tomatoes do not have seeds. They are a roma type and are great for salsa. All you have to do is peel! No deseeding! I bet they'd be great for your use, too!

Burpees Garden Salsa tomatoes seedless? How do they grow these? For cuttings or grafts? I would assume that still have a few tiny seeds like a seedless watermellon has smaller whitish soft seeds, but are considered seedless.

Hello Rogers--- I didn't mean that the Burpee Salsa are SeedLESS... Just that you don't have to deseed them when using in recipes. Yeah! They grow from seed... you can buy the seeds right from them! @~>

With a Villaware machine, there would be no peeling either! I have to look into them for this season.

Brenda, you still around? What varieties did you try this year? I have lots of paste type tomato varieties, some as large as 8-12 oz each, some meaty & dry with very little gel or seeds...

'MaterMark

Hi, I'm still around! I grew some of the ox hearts, San Marzano, a polish linguisha(SP) some jet setters I think they were called and another type I can't remember the name of. They are smaller but tasty. My polish, san marzano, and the oxes have not set fruit yet, but I planted them from seeds a little later then the rest. I also have some volunteers that grew out of the compost pile and a few just might be the polish. The polish were by far the best tomato I grew for the salsa! They were a huge sausage shaped and very meaty!
I will continue to grow the ox hearts in honor of my father, he passed away before the first ox heart was ripe:(
But, He was buried with one on a bologna sandwich seeds and all, I sure hope he is enjoying all the tomatoes he can eat in heaven. I sure do miss him. It will be a year Aug 31.
I'm still interested in trying new kinds so any names of new verities would be great!
I had a real horn worm problem last year, so this year I planted basil all a round my tomatoes and so far no traces of the horn worm!! Bonus the maters taste great and I have plenty of basil to try in different ways. Can you believe I've never tried pesto!! I think I will try to make sauce with my maters this year along with Annie's salsa and plain crushed maters!!! I will give you the name of the other tomato, I have to ask my husband and see if he remembers!!
Thanks for asking
Brenda

When growing tomatoes in Z5, you do need a good head start beforehand. I will start from seeds about the middle of April. My plants are now about 5+ feet tall and just loaded. Few are ripe yet, but soon I will have a lot. San Marzano is a great tomato for a sauce. I grew a few super sized ones two years ago and they were twice the size of the other plum types.