Can you tell me what it was about the early ones that was not satisfying? I had such bad luck last year that I decided to stick with mostly early, cold-resistant varieties, specifically:

Polbig
Early Girl
Sub-Arctic Plenty
Oregon Spring
Nebraska Wedding
Anna Russian

Do you have any opinions on any of those?

Some of the early ones are tasty, I didn't find many that made a big bush and had really heavy yields. I have grown Early Girl, it can be good but compared to some of the heirloom varieties I think they have better flavor and longer yields. Same for Oregon Spring. Lots of people on the Tomato forum really like Anna Russian, but when I grew it I didn't like the flavor or yields. I'm not convinced it was the variety itself, I don't know if the seeds are uniform across the industry and maybe some companies' strains are not as good as others to explain the difference? Or different climates? The PNW is unusual in the cool night temperatures and maybe all tomatoes can't do well here. I haven't grown the others on the list.

You could certainly try it and see what it does for you. I really like Verna's Orange Oxheart but don't see if for sale many places if any.

Maybe if I went back to some of the cold-tolerant varieties I used to grow I would get better yields in a bad year, but the year before was great with the regular tomatoes so... I'm just going to de-emphasize tomatoes in my garden and leave less room for disappointment. The other vegetables didn't seem affected by the cold.

Last year was not great for a lot of things but after a slow start the beans did very well, managed to save quite a bit of seed.

My list so far for this year, but it could change

Beans
Comtesse de Chambord b
Mr Tung's p
Tennessee Cutshort p
Barksdale p
Bird's Egg#3 p
Blue Jay b
Insuk Wang Kong p
Chinese Red Noodle p
Ma Williams p
Oregon Giant p
Samos Greek Lima p
Swiss Landfruen p
Auntie Vi p and a few more if I can find space

Tomatoes
Cheerio
Snow White
Celebrity
Cherokee Purple

Cucumber Diva & Kaiser Alexander...Lettuce Outredgeous (cos) & Croatian...Carrot Scarlet Nantes...Beet Bulls Blood...Garlic Porcelain & Persian Star...Shallot Frogs Leg

There's a few more but this list is long enough.

I think that if you're using tunnels, just about anything that the seed catalog lists at 80 DTM or less should get yuo tomatoes by mid to late august, and anything with 70-75 DTM or so should get you tomatoes by late July to early August even in a chilly year. Provided you are using the tunnels to plant them out early. Of course different catalogs list different DTM for the same variety, so it's best to look at around at different sources of info and just get a general idea of how early or late a variety is.

I haven't grown too many varieties can say Anna Russian is a good one, it did well for us even in the horrible cool summer of 2010 and it tastes much much better than the super-early tomatoes. Cosmonaut Volkov performed well too, but we decided AR tastes better.

Siletz is an absolutely fool-proof tomato that will set many fruits in almost any condition that grow to slicer size, maybe 10 oz or so at the largest. It is a determinate tomato and can set fruit without fertilization. It does not taste as good as the other varieties I mentioned, but it's not at all bad, still much better than the common supermarket tomato and most super-early varieties, so I am told.

I had great yields last year with Willamette, and amazingly enough, it was our first tomato plant. We did not experience any of the tomato troubles that my other gardening friends described--probably due to both the type of tomato, and due to our freakishly hot micro-climate.

Central Willamette Valley 2010 Season:
Brandywine..v.late, taste only fair to good
Early girl..good crop, fair taste
Oregon Spring..small, late crop, fair flavor
Mortgage Lifter..v.late production, bland flavor
Legend..small, late crop, fair flavor
Black Krim..good mid-season crop, great flavor
Chocolate Cherry...good crop, outstanding flavor
Sungold...an awesome flavor and crop, couldn't keep up with production
Yellow Pear...good crop, good flavor

Thanks for posting this, it's very helpful.

This is my first year gardening in the PNW, and I'm feeling a bit at sea with all the tales of tomato disappointment I've been seeing. Not that it wasn't difficult growing them back in South TX, where I had to hope they'd produce before the blast-furnace heat and disease stopped the plants. :(

I'm glad to hear Sungold does well, as that's one tomato I don't ever want to be without. I would like to ask -- how large do Sungold plants get here (say, in the Willamette valley)? Back in TX, mine were easily over 6 ft tall. I'm wondering how big a cage I'll need here.

The others I'm considering are divided into two groups:

Ones I'm considering b/c I've heard they do well here:

Anna Russian
Legend
Willamette
Momotaro
Carmello
Bloody Butcher
Northern Lights
Japanese Black Trifele

One's I don't think I can stand not to grow b/c I love them:

Aunt Ruby's German Green
Ananas Noire
Old German/Pineapple/some other red/gold bicolor (suggestions?)

If anyone's got opinions on these, I'd love to hear them. I tend to like low-acid tomatoes with a sweet/savory flavor, meaty flesh and not many seeds (like ARGG and many other large, oddly colored heirlooms) so suggestions on that type that might be successful here are most welcome.

Also, what tomato and other vegetable cultivars can I expect to see in the nurseries and garden centers come spring? I'm not used to what people tend to grow up here, obviously, so I don't know which tomatoes I'll have to order and which I'll be able to find.

As for what else I'm going to grow, well, I just planted sugar snaps today, and will probably plant trombocino/zuccheta rampicante once it warms up. I'd love to try more vegies, but honestly, I suspect a large part of my very small garden is going to be filled with the ornamentals I could never grow in TX -- dahlias, peonies, delphiniums, and annuals like nasturtiums and sweet peas.

Anna Russian is very good, like I said. I really like that one, it does everything- tastes good, it can be a slicer, a sauce tomato, etc. Also it looks cool. I think it grows very well here as a mid season tomato.

Black Trifele is not bad too. I grew it last year and it did OK. I grew that one in a really bad space, but the plants survived and produced fruit, though late. I think that if you gave it prime real estate it would do good. It's a decent black tomato, not quite as elite as one of the bigger types like Purple Cherokee or whatever, but it is probably easier to grow and earlier.

I had good luck with Black Sea Man last year--it was the only variety that I got a crop off of before the deer figured out that I was growing tomatoes :-) It's a determinate variety with a great zippy flavor--tomatoes are medium / medium small.

Tsuki...Sun Gold grows 6' or more for me. I usually don't get ripe fruit before the end of August, then SG comes on like gang busters. I don't give a lot of room to veggies & often plant no other tomatoes than a few SG's.

I have good luck growing tomatoes in large nursery pots sunk about halfway into the ground. The sun hits the side of the pots (the portion that's above ground, obviously) and warms the soil. I feel that I get faster growth during the first couple of months they're planted.

I have a question for you tomato growers. How big do your tomato plants get? Last year, I planted 6 plants and they took over an area of the garden about 12 X 15 feet. Even at that they were so entangled it was hard to pick the fruit. Or are you very strict about picking off the side shoots and growing them taller?

The common determinate var. Heartland is easy to grow in a five gal. container so you can adjust the location and buy some better growing conditions. I prefer det. var. but sadly most of the rich flavored black ones are not. I like Carbon the best of the black types. Am trying some new Heinz paste types. Yellow pear is useless, and Brandywine produces very little. Cherry types are just a bunch of watery mess in the fall. I think Cherokee Purple is an improvement over Brandywine for that type.

Dotty, indeterminate (vining) type tomatoes can grow like crazy even in our climate; most people do keep them pruned down to just two main stems or so, unless you have a lot of space to give it. I don't think doing this encourages it to grow taller though, all of the main stems will grow tall if the plant is healthy.

Supporting them vertically and pruning the 'suckers' is a good way to keep them from latching onto each other. If you provide them with vertical support they can get to 6-7' easily, but I think around here you can probably just clip off the growing tips late August or so since fruit that start to grow later than this probably won't have time to mature anyway.

You probably already know this, but if spacing is a problem you might want determinate type tomatoes which do not continue to grow after a certain point (they form a bush maybe 3' or so). THe only problem with determinates is they tend to have bear a lot of fruit at the same time, so you get bombarded with fruit all at once; also the majority of heirloom types are indeterminate, so it limits your choice. In the past I have grown both det. and indet. in the same plot in order to save space.

I think it is so important not to crowd the tomato plants. Give them at least 3 to 4 feet apart in the row. They look small at first, but by late summer they all tangle together, 'the indeterminates', which encourages mildew and blight. You need some bare soil exposed to the sun to insure the ground drys out during the daytime. I also surround my plants with used juice bottles filled with tea water, which keeps them warmer at night.

My experience is that zuccheta rampicante needs lots of heat. They didn't get that in my coastal garden, but may get it if you are in the Willamette Valley. I love that you are growing my old favorite Danvers Half-Long carrots. It is a great carrot. You can see my current garden exploits (featuring peas today) at http://thetrinidadgarden.blogspot.com/. Best of luck with your new garden area experience. (I grew up in west Texas and it is sure different than here!)

Here is a link that might be useful: The Trinidad Garden

I combined my response above to hemnancy and tsuki chan. Sorry. Jim