Boy, do I know where you're coming from! I'm looking to branch out on all of my veggies but the tomatoes have been hard for me to narrow down as they all sound so darned good. :) This is what I plan to plant this year (by the way I purchase these at parkseed.com and victoryseeds.com). Also, I'm copying and pasting from my Word spreadsheet, so it contains info from the sites, which may or may not be beneficial to you: Park's Season Starter Hybrid~ 60 days from setting out transplants. F1VT. Determinate. Always grow the first tomato on the block with this super-fast determinate variety! It sets huge yields of juicy-sweet 6-ounce fruits -- and they taste as good as they look! Set plants 2 to 2 1/2 feet apart. Pkt is 30 seeds. Tomato Sugary~ The Sweetest Cherry Yet! So bountiful that you may have to prune the plant back in mid-season! 60 days from setting out transplants. Indeterminate. Many Cherry Tomatoes look great but taste like nothing, while others are flavorful but don't have the big, steady yields we all love. Well, award-winning Sugary has it all -- super-sweet flavor, a fun new shape, and huge, huge yields on plants that just keep growing up and up all season! Scoring a full 9.5 on the Brix scale of sugar content, these delicious little 1/2-ounce dark pink fruits are packed with sweetness. This plant is absolutely unstoppable. It sets huge clusters of fruit all season long, and grows so vigorously that you may have to cut it back in midseason just to keep it within bounds! Never fear -- it will keep bearing like crazy! Park's Whopper~ 70 days from setting out transplants. Indeterminate. Set plants 2 to 2 1/2 feet apart. Sweet Baby Girl~ 65 days to maturity from setting out transplants. ISI (intermediate short-internode). Our search for the Best Cherry Tomato in the World has come to an end. Sweet Baby Girl Hybrid is hands-down the finest for all kinds of good reasons: 1. It rarely cracks. 2. It grows on space-saving, manageable plants. 3. It yields HUGE numbers of fruit over a long season. 4. It has a great after-picking shelf life. 5. It is the sweetest, best-tasting Cherry Tomato ever! The fruit is small -- about to 1 ounce -- and arises in big clusters on intermediate short internode vines. Now, what this means is that the vines keep producing all season, but the space between each cluster of fruit is much less than on traditional vines. In other words, you don't waste garden space, water, and food supporting a massive vine with widely-spaced clusters of fruit! Sweet Baby Girl's vines just reach about 3 to 5 feet high and 2 feet wide, yet yield like nobody's business. Just how much fruit can you expect from each plant? Well, in our gardens they each offered up TWO POUNDS OR MORE PER WEEK at the height of the season. That's a lot of ½-ounce fruits! Resistant to Tobacco Mosaic Virus races 0, 1, and 2, Sweet Baby Girl sets fruit in giant clusters, but I recommend picking them individually rather than as a bunch. You'll get each at the height of ripeness that way, and maximize your harvest. Tomato Marcellino Hybrid~ 73 days to maturity from setting out transplants. Determinate; upright habit. Marcellino has incredible holding power, keeping fruit fresh up to a MONTH after ripening! It's determinate, so it sets its enormous harvest all at once -- dozens upon dozens of clusters of fruit, each with 20 to 25 little tomatoes dangling alluringly! There has simply never been a Tomato of any size and shape with this kind of holding ability. This plant is upright rather than vining, reaching about 5 feet tall and 3 feet wide. Tomato Better Bush Improved~ 68 days from setting out transplants. ISI (indeterminate short-internodes). If you're looking for an old-fashioned-flavored tomato with the juiciness and distinctive "tang" you remember from vine-fresh tomatoes of the past, Better Bush Improved Hybrid is the best choice. These big, luscious, 4-inch fruits grow very densely on indeterminate 4-foot plants, thanks to shorter internodes. The central stem rarely needs staking (except during those "bumper crop" times!), and this plant begins early in the season and just keeps going! Resistant to Verticillium Wilt and Fusarium Wilt Race 1. Brandywine (Sudduth Strain) 80 days, indeterminate  Potato-leaf plants produce large (fourteen to thirty six ounce fruits) that are oblate in shape and pink in color. Excellent flavor. David Pendergrass sent us the seed. This variety originally is from the Ben Quisenberry collection who reportedly obtained the seed from a Mrs. Doris Sudduth Hill who said that it had been in her family since about 1900. Black Cherry 65 days, indeterminate  This is a new variety that is very productive with cherry shaped fruits that have the dark, purplish coloring of 'Cherokee Purple'. Flavor is wonderful, very rich and sweet. Red Grape 60 days, semi-determinate  This variety is modern and currently very popular in the fresh produce market. The fruits are bright red, weigh about an ounce, and are smaller than most cherry tomatoes (½ by ¾ inches). Since they are mouth-sized they are perfect for salads and garnish plates. Twelve to sixteen fruits per cluster. Marianna's Peace 85 days, indeterminate  Reportedly a family heirloom from Czechoslovakia dating back to the early 1900s. Potato leaf foliage. Fruit are deep reddish pink, good size weighing around a pound, good sweet / acid balance flavor, very meaty and a shy seeded variety like Brandywine. This variety has been rare, highly sought after since its introduction in about 2001. It is becoming widely available and finally affordable. LivingstonÂs Favorite - (90 days) Indeterminate, 6 to 10 ounce smooth fruit with exceptional flavor and color. Introduced by Livingston in 1883. Originally developed for canners, they withstood shipping over long distances and had desirable market qualities. LivingstonÂs Magnus - Indeterminate, potato leaf with six to eight ounce oblate, pink fruit, excellent taste. Introduced by the Livingston Seed Company in 1900. "Livingston's Magnus is unsurpassed in quality and in the production of fine, large fruits. While well adapted to main-crop planting, it also takes first rank for early market purposes. The form is perfect, uniform, large and attractive; quite deep through from stem to blossom end. The flesh is very firm. A robust grower, with short joints, setting its clusters closer together than most varieties, and is a very heavy cropper. It has broad foliage which prevents sunburn in hot sections. Ripens evenly, does not crack about the stem. For staking up in the open field, as well as for forcing in greenhouses, is fully equal to any for such purposes." Giant Oxheart 85 days, indeterminate  The 1933 catalog description of this 1926 Livingston introduction follows: "Oxheart is truly the giant of all tomatoes. Its attractive shape, large size and excellent table qualities has quickly brought it into deserved popularity among backyard gardeners. Market-growers are finding it in great demand. There is now great rivalry in gardening neighborhoods to see who can grow the finest Oxheart in shape and size. Three pound specimens are quite common. One customer sent us a five pound specimen. The Oxheart is smooth, thick, tender and almost seedless; frequently showing two inches thick without a seed cavity. The color is pink and it has that delicious mild flavor that every lover of this fruit likes so well. Rich soil adds greatly to its productiveness. Late variety." So, did I help or hurt? :) Stacie

Planted today here in zone 5b, southern New Hampshire. I have raised beds and the next 10 days are forecast warm weather & fair so taking a slight risk. The traditional planting day here is Memorial Day weekend. Brandywine Belgian Giant Yellow Brandywine Beefmaster that's it. No cherry tomatoes at all this year and no early varieties. I have had enough of them. I expect that grape tomatoes will spring up near the compost heap all by themselves. We are down to 30 tomato plants this year so I limited it to large or giant varieties. This is half of what I had last year. The rest of the garden is dedicated to other vegetables including a lot of Asian vegetables. I actually prefer Lemon Boy to the yellow Brandywine but I could not find them this year. Last year I grew Celebrity they were nice shaped fruit, tasted nice and good yield -- but I want something better tasting and more variety. I wanted at least 1 VFN hybrid (Beefmaster) as insurance. The compost that I have been curing for 2 years and carefully sifted is unbelievable I put about 3" of it on the garden last month and every scoop I dig brings up an earthworm.

coeng, do you have any idea how many hours of direct sunlight the area will receive? I used to grow tomatoes just a foot from the east (brick) wall of a 2-story house. So those tomatoes had sun from the NE IL summer sunrise until noon. They did well, even though they received nowhere near the amount of direct sun tomatoes are supposed to require. There's also something called "bright shade." I have some experience with that (daylilies flowering where they shouldn't have), but I don't know how "bright shade" is defined. A few years back, there was a regular poster here whose Minnesota property was mostly dappled shade -- and with neighbors' trees he couldn't trim. He knew how much sunlight each square foot of that yard received, tucked his tomato plants into the sunniest spaces -- without regard for the landscaping -- and as I remember, had a fairly good harvest. === Tomatoes crack for different reasons. Some varieties (usually with thinner skin) are prone to certain patterns of cracking. So there are varieties you wouldn't want to buy. But if you dislike thick skin, your tomatoes will probably have more cracking. Are you starting from seed this year, or will you buy seedlings again? Which varieties did you grow last year, and which varieties are your options this year? When soil moisture is inconsistent, nearly all varieties are much more likely to crack. So to limit this type of cracking, keep soil moisture as consistent as possible. Mulching heavily helps (and also helps prevent disease-causing microorganisms from splashing onto the leaves). [You can use almost anything for mulch, including shredded office paper, newspapers, or straw.] When there is suddenly a great increase in soil moisture, fruit tend to "burst." So when there's a forecast of a good rain, pick all the fruit which have begun to show yellow (the "breakers" stage), and ripen them inside. This will not affect their taste. Oh -- and sun isn't necessary to ripen them indoors.

I've got all of those on your list except Wuhib and Campbells (I have Super Sioux, but not plain old Sioux). But this past week I added Amish Paste and Rio Fuego. Chico III has been a list standard for a couple of years, and I've got some of the classics as well; Roma, San Marzano and Principe Borghese, I've also got some yellow pastes--Early Ssubakus Aliana and Powers Heirloom. There's likely some others but it's been a long day and I'm kinda brain-fried--though the pidgeon holes of packed seeds are a head turn to my left I'm not going to bother to scrutinize the drawers to see what's there--suffice that the list is nearly 120 varieties of OPs, most come from seeds donated by growers and gardeners around the country. And most certainly not pastey--Dr Carolyn went on the list yesterday ;-) Overall, it's been a huge season for Your Choice Tomato SASE. I think the economy is in play here--some of the letters that accompany the SASE lists are tragic and heartbreaking. I've been blessed to be able to "step up to the plate" and be there with so many seeds to help people simply feed themselves or continue easily and affordably in their passion for growing OP tomatoes. Finally, my turnaround time is extremely rapid, SASEs get here in the afternoon, they are filled after dinner and they go into the mail the next day. I am sometimes up to 1am, 2am, coffeeAM, until they're done. I've got about 45 to do tonight (combined Six Packs and YCTS).