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Growing Tomatoes

Disease resistant & High yields

16 years ago

I'm looking for recommendations for 4-5 different tomatoes and 2 different cherry tomatoes to grow that have great disease resistance & high yields. I'm not picky about hybrids or heirlooms nor am I picky about determinate or indeterminate. I live in upstate NY, zone 5. Thanks for your advice.

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Comments (7)

carolyn137
16 years ago
I'm looking for recommendations for 4-5 different tomatoes and 2 different cherry tomatoes to grow that have great disease resistance & high yields. I'm not picky about hybrids or heirlooms nor am I picky about determinate or indeterminate. I live in upstate NY, zone 5. Thanks for your advice.

****

Boo,I also live in upstate NY, that's true upstate, not Westchester Co and not Western Ny, LOL, and I have to think that when you ask for disease tolerant varieties that you're talking about foliage diseases. We don't have the many systemic diseases that folks further south have.

And the bad news is that there's no variety, hybrid or heirloom, that has any significant tolerance to foliage diseases. There are a couple of exceptions, but they're of use only to a commercial farmer.

The good news is that you can put your plants on a rigorous spray schedule with a good anti-fungal and that works well. It doesn't do anything against the two major bacterial foliage diseases but the fungal ones progress much faster anyway.'
So if I take disease tolerance out of the picture why not indicate what colors/shapes you prefer and for what use b/c that will make it easier for others to make recommendations, which I will as well, when you give us the criteria to work with.

I've successfully grow a couple of thousand varieties in our area so I hope to give you some good recs depending on what you really want.

Carolyn
booberry85
Original Author
16 years ago
I'm a canner and make my own salsas and sauces. I'd like 3 good red tomatoes for that purpose. The other two, I like to experiment with, so a color other than red and any shape is fine.

In the past, I've had good luck with: Celebrity, Rutgers, Big Beef, Mortgage Lifter, Jet Star, Supersonic, and Tangerine Dream.

I have not had good luck with: Early Girl, 4th of July, Health Kick, Juliet, Brandywines, and Romas (I have a bug that looks like a house fly but its half the size. It devours the Romas the second they show a blush.)

I'd also would like two cherry type tomatoes. In the past I've grown Supersweet 100's, heirloom Red Cherry, and Yellow Pears. I like the novelty of the Yellow Pears. They are very prolific. However, the Supersweet 100's always crack late in the season. The Red Cherry was ok (skin was a little tough, not as prolific or as sweet as the Suppersweet 100's).
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I just found your forum and might be able to offer some help.I have been working with late blight for the last 40 years and have some relevant observations. Here in Wales, we have wet summers and lots of blight in our potatoes every year. In our Sarvari Research Trust we are selecting new varieties of potatoes for sustainable and low input growing, the Sarpo varieties. Tomatoes are grown commercially in UK within glasshouses mainly by big multinational companies supplying the supermarkets. Only gardeners and smallholders try to grow tomatoes outside and many lose their entire crop most years. There is clearly a need for varieties that can ripen fruit in years when blight pressures are heavy. Seedsmen in UK offer several blight tolerant varieties and these can be useful in delaying the onset of blight by a few days or even weeks, depending on the season. We have varieties like Ferline and Fantasio from a French breeding programme and Jim Baggett’s Oregon cv Legend. The thing to remember about the pathogen (Phytophthora infestans) is that many strains exist and these will come and go over the years and what looks like a resistant variety one year can be almost totally susceptible the next year. The blight that hit the eastern states so badly last year was caused by new strains of blight that had not been seen previously. Also the blight strains that you have across the pond are quite different from the ones we have here. This means that a variety that is resistant in one region or country may be susceptible in another. So it is necessary to be vigilant and keep sceening potentially resistant material with the newest strains of blight for the region you want to grow in. The breeder’s work is never done. And heirloom varieties? These are old favourites which have survived because they have a great flavour or are good do-ers. You often find that some of the old varieties are a bit more tolerant of disease as these are the ones that are easiest to keep going over the years. But it is rare to find any that are highly resistant. And what other methods can help to control the disease? Glasshouse growers don’t get blight because the plants are kept dry to prevent the “fungus” forming swimming spores on the leaf surface just before infection. This means that if we keep our plants dry by growing them under an umbrella, they will escape infection. I did some trails some years ago to test out the use of polythene cloche “umbrellas”. The results were spectacular. Protected plants remained healthy and gave a massive crop whereas the unprotected ones yielded no healthy fruit. Another way is to avoid the blight by raising the tomato seedlings early and planting out, initially under cloches to hasten maturity. Many gardeners here use the variety Red Alert because it ripens many weeks before the others, and usually before blight arrives, usually in late July here. Also Red Alert is a fairly weedy looking plant and its sparse foliage means that the fruits are exposed to the air and dry off quickly after rain. Varieties like Legend do far better if plants are severely pruned to keep a minimum of foliage around the fruits. Another trick is to use a high temperature treatment to cure fruit that are still green but will not ripen as the blight takes over before the fruit is red. In an article I wrote for The Organic Grower (vol. 11) earlier this year “No more green tomato chutney” I describe experiments with fruits that have a latent infection that is not yet visible. These are kept at 40C (104F) for at least 12 hours and then keep in a dry warm spot indoors to ripen completely. Untreated batches of green fruit rapidly developed nearly 100% blight. So if your plants become infected with late blight, it is often best to pick all the fruit and heat treat in an egg incubator or similar before ripening indoors. Good luck with your growing.
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You might to look at this thread I posted a couple weeks ago, particularly Carolyn's response ***** But the response there was not specifically about Late BLight. There's Early Blight ( A. solani) and Late Blight ( P. infestans) and they are two entirely different diseases and either one can appear early or late in the garden. So before deciding what to do about what you thought was a Late BLight infection I think it would be a good idea to know which blight you have, or indeed if it was Early or Late Blight and not one of the more common foliage diseases. Can you describe the symptoms in detatil here so that folks can have a shot at trying to Dx the problem? And it would be very helpful to indicate where, geographically you grow b'c Late Blight (P. infestans) is still somewhat regionalized. You also might want to consider Googling some tomato diseases, either by doing it straight out, or by going to Google, selecting IMAGES and entering your search words. Since Early and Late Blight and all the common foliage diseases are acquired initially by airborne transmission, clean up of the soil in the growing area really becomes a seconday issue although it might help splashback reinfection from spores and bacteria that have been shed to the gound in a previous year by infected plants.. Carolyn
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Hi Susannah Thank you for letting us know that tomato information, it sounds very promising. I always like to try new varieties and I am all for flavor in my food, when I don't have tomatoes from the garden I simply don't get tomatoes at the store. If it works well in my area, it will be a good tomato to give to the community garden that I donate seedlings, also any newbies will benefit too. I am familiar with the tomatoes from other countries and I know they value flavor, they are more demanding with their produce like it should be. Silvia
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booberry85
Original Author
16 years ago
The Romas were Big Mama (Burpee). Come to think of it the Early Girls, 4th of July, Health Kick, Juliet and Brandywines were all from Burpee!
oldroser
16 years ago
Supersonic is my favorite main crop. Sungold is everyone's favorite cherry tomato though it does tend to crack in wet weather. For an early tomato I use Stupice. And for sauce I was very happy with Opalka but this year am going to try Amish Paste. A gold/yellow tomato I would not be without is Kellogg's Breakfast.
And I use Daconil for ealy blight which is my biggest disease problem.
tom8olvr
16 years ago
If you are a canner you must try opalka.
HoosierCheroKee
16 years ago
>>"I'm looking for recommendations for 4-5 different tomatoes and 2 different cherry tomatoes to grow that have great disease resistance & high yields. I'm not picky about hybrids or heirlooms nor am I picky about determinate or indeterminate. I live in upstate NY, zone 5."Since you aren't picky regarding hybrid or heirloom, you might want to look at Cornell's list of recommended tomatoes for New York home gardens. Note on that page that the authors say:

"Tomatoes were originally desert plants. So they don't naturally have strong resistance to plant diseases that thrive under our generally humid conditions. Fortunately, many hybrids have been bred specifically for disease resistance, and some open-pollinated varieties tolerate certain diseases."

But it seems Cornell currently recommends the following cultivars for main season:
Basket Vee
Better Boy
Big Beef
Big Boy
Celebrity
Jet Star
Mountain Fresh
Mountain Spring
Sunbeam
Sunrise
Supersonic
Ultra Sweet

Looking at that list, Big Beef, Celebrity, and Mountain Spring jump out as resistant to a number of common diseases ... whether in New York or elsewhere. If you like Celebrity, you might explore Carnival which is very similar but has added resistance that may or may not be applicable to your area.

For paste, Cornell recommends:
Classica
La Roma
La Rosa
Nova
Plum Dandy
Roma
Viva Italia

Apparently, Cornell also maintains a page that lists gardener's comments and ratings about various tomatoes grown in New York HERE

You may also want to consult your local county extension agent about what tomato diseases are of concern in your area and which varieties prevail under local conditions.

Bill
booberry85
Original Author
16 years ago
Thanks so much for the recommendations everyone. Thanks Bill for reminding me about Cornell's website. Somehow between June & now I had completely forgotten about it. I'll bookmark it!

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