Reviving this awesome apple thread. I was reading through what I posted and I am amused by how quickly things change. at least half of the apples I listed have fallen off my own list. I've grafted over most of my spigold because it's really not that good after all. Mutsu is also somewhat uninteresting these days. Here is my new list of favorites: - coconut crunch is extraordinary in our climate and keeps really well - sinta, fruited for the first time last Fall, delicious strong pineapple flavor - Fiesta, really good for a Summer apple - Williams pride, my tastiest Summet apple after Viking - Orin, great storage apple that still has that tropical pineapple flavor in March - alkmene, yummy summer August apple that tastes lime a cox but even better - kidds orange red, superb in the Fall - Haralson, fruits well here in California and its good - transparente de cronkels, delicious and high quality I still love gravenstein, hauer pippin and granny smith off my old list. I am curious what will stand out this year, as it surely won't be the same as last year. -

Tomato taste.....going back to 2005, GW search for Alabamians and what their taste buds say are the best tomatoes. All thru the posts that I have read...."RAIN and OVER WATERING may make a HUGE difference in how your tomato taste. It was reported over and over that because of so much (2005) that Cherokee Purple, Brandywine....etc. was not as good as last year. I read no post on how much watering is too much watering- - - yet. I do recall a local sometime ago saying that her son told her NOT to water her tomatoes at all. He had planted them just off the drip line of the house and that she did not need to water. Was her age a factor....?... If water is a taste factor, fertilizer....ph and who knows what else could be a factor. I do think that Alabama might be one of the top 10 states that love tomatoes, but no where close to being #1. This assumption solely from reading post from the GW, spanning over only a few years thus far. So far the " original " Homestead, Cherokee Purple , Brandywine ;;;; Sungold and Black Cherry are "each" highly prized as being the best.

Game on! Let the Tomato Wars begin! LOL! I cracked up when I read your post, Bonnie--a/k/a HighAlt! I decided a few years ago that the biggest problem with growing tomatoes is finding out what works for YOU. I've been getting recommendations here for what to try ever since I got this house and had a place to grow veggies, and sometimes they do well, and sometimes they totally flop! I don't think there was anything wrong with the recommendations for the ones that flopped, I just think the people recommending them had different growing conditions from me. I still haven't found a red that's on my Must Have list, but I did FINALLY find a yellow/orange last year that will most likely be found in my garden into perpetuity! This won't help on this thread because I'm sure it's not available as a plant, but if anyone is wondering, it's Earl of Edgecombe. Set fruit the earliest of my large tomatoes and didn't seem to be much phased by heat--and large flavorful tomatoes. Ripened well when cut and hung in the garage too! It's a keeper for me--but who knows how well it would grow for someone else! But the thing that really cracked me up, HighAlt, was your recommendations for cherries! Hmmm! Too bad we're too far away from each other to do some Pelting! ;-) On the recommendation of several people around here I tried Black Cherry in '08, and I didn't find them to have much flavor at all (Who's gonna do the Pelting now!) For me they also took a LONG time to ripen, and they seemed to ripen just a few at a time, so I never really got a large amount to gorge on at any one time--unlike SunGold. I do totally agree that SunGold has a cracking problem, and if I didn't like the flavor so much I'd be looking for a replacement. BUT, I think I MAY have even found a solution to the cracking problem! When I go on vacation I always take a box of MY tomatoes with me, and in the past most of the SunGolds cracked right when I picked them, and even many of the ones I put in the box to take seemed to crack--sooner or later! This year I stood and Glared at then for a while, trying to figure out what to do--but I REALLY wanted some with me so I finally decided to cut off the whole "clusters" of tomatoes, which included many ripe ones and others ranging from near ripe to mostly green. There are a LOT of tomatoes on each SunGold cluster! I packed them carefully in the box, fully expecting them to split when I pulled them off the "cluster" but found, to my amazement, that when I started "picking" them, they weren't splitting! So I don't know what made the difference--is has to have something to do with the lack of water available after I cut them, but they rarely split if they've been cut from the vine with "stem" still attached, and then kept that way for "a while" before they're removed from the stem! I will be experimenting this year to see how long you need to wait to prevent the splitting! I started harvesting all my cherries like that after vacation last year, but there wasn't enough time left in the growing season to come to any good conclusions. My Must Have red cherry is Sweet Baby Girl, but that won't help here, again, because I'm sure it's not available as a plant! Even the seed is somewhat hard to find! But Sweet Baby Girl, IMO, has a GREAT flavor (not the same as SunGold), and it does NOT crack! Almost never! Don't remember why I tried that one, but I sure am glad I did! Interestingly, I have "discussed" SBG with Digit recently, and he said he had grown it too, but described a small plant that could be grown in a pot. NOT the same thing I have! Mine get over 6' tall and would EAT a pot! I'm sure we're not talking about growing conditions in this case, and we apparently got seed for two different things! From Digit's list Yellow Pear was one of the very first cherries I tried--I think because I remembered growing it when I was a kid--but for me it was a complete catastrophe! I DID get tomatoes, but they were mushy and mostly flavorless! They were bad enough that I didn't even eat most of them--threw them in the trash! Home grown tomatoes--in the trash! I don't believe even the good Illinois Dirt they were grown in when I was a kid could explain the difference in this case, so I don't know why they were so bad, but I will not be wasting time with them again. I haven't seen this linked around here for a while, and I recently managed to find it again after losing everything to the hard drive crash, so here is a link to the Cornell Tomato Base. It's set to list them by DTM (you need to scroll past the ones that don't have DTM listed), but you can change it to look them up by ratings or variety name or some other things! The ratings come from Real Life people who have grown them! On this list SunGold is rated 4.5, Sweet Baby Girl is 4.0, Black (and Chocolate) Cherry is 4.0, Sweet 100, Sweet Million, and Super Sweet 100 are all 4.0. you can check out the specific comments about each if you click on the individual varieties! Like Bonnie/Lucky, I've had problems with Mortgage Lifter! I had grown it in the past with no luck at all, but wound up growing it again this year since, in my search for the perfect yellow/orange, I had neglected to buy seed for some new red varieties! This year I finally did get some tomatoes off of it, and they were large and pretty flavorful, but they were very late, and it definitely had the hiccups when it got hot out! I'll "keep it on the back burner" but will be testing out some new ones this year. Bloody Butcher, another one that came highly recommended around here, suffered a TOTAL Failure to Thrive for me, and I never got any tomatoes at all off of it--but there are definitely other folks around here who LOVE it! Another highly recommended one here, Thessaloniki, did very little for me. Grew it twice and both times I got VERY few small tomatoes and I rated the flavor as: very average! Others in our area swear by it! Had tried Kellogg's Breakfast in the past and not gotten much/anything but decided to give it another whirl this past year and I did, pretty late, get some big and pretty tasty tomatoes, but Earl of Edgecombe was better and more productive. It'll be another of my Back Burner ones for possible future reconsideration! So, in my opinion, I guess the moral of the story--with or without The Pelting--is that you really just need to try different varieties and figure out which are going to work the best for you, and which ones have the flavor you like best. Taste is a very subjective thing, and while reading reviews might help a LITTLE bit, the best review comes from your tongue and your sense of smell! I still very much recommend you go with more than just one, Aloha, because if you just grow one and happen to get one that flops, or that just doesn't Tickle Your Taste Buds, you might decide they're not at all worth growing--and they are SO, sosososo, worth growing, even with the yearly catastrophes we all experience! Still picking a few tomatoes from last year, Skybird P.S. If you check the drop-down menu under "crop," the Cornell site has listings and ratings for WAY more than just tomatoes!. Here is a link that might be useful: Cornell Tomato Base

Dave Even Rutgers VF which is very reliable and a good producer in most places is a borderline variety here. I assume because it's not nematode resistant. VF varieties like Rutgers and presumably Jet Star don't do well here either as they lack the "N" after their names. Here the more "letters" a variety has after it's name the better. That's why you will hardly ever see Bonnie selling heirloom plants at Home Depot because they would go out of business as none of their customers plants would survive. When people ask me what varieties will grow here I tell them to look at what varieties Bonnie is selling at Home Depot. Bonnie can't afford to sell plants that die and don't produce. It's not me as Better Boy, Sweet 100 and Black Cherry perform well here. BTW: you're right Yellow Pear is a total zero a true "tofu" tasteless tomato lacking any flavor of it's own and most others agree. Dry Powder, Tight Lines & Green Thumbs