Strangely enough, I just finished a NAR for breakfast. Thought it was OK. Then I had a small Hege's German Pink. I think the Hege's was much better.

JMO

Paul

Yes, I've had a lot of experience with NAR b'c I'm the person who introduced that variety to others. And actually it was named here at GW since I was given the seeds and no name and wanted folks to see what might go into naming a variety since I've had to do that for a lot of varieties. There were 22 folks who posted in that thread, I had given them all the background information I had been given, and I sent seeds for NAR to all of them for participating.

I think it has a wonderful deep rich taste and so do many others, but not all folks are going to agree with that assessment for one reason or another. And it's now offered commercially at many sites which also says that it has become quite popular with many.

Some of those reasons are the way someone grows their tomatoes, the weather in any one season when a variety is grown, the amendments that any one person uses, and finally taste, which is impacted by all of those reasons.

Taste is personal and subjective and actually has a human genetic component. so for almost any variety that someone mentions some will grow it and say it's lousy, others will say it's OK and others like it so much they grow the variety almost every year.

As is said, you can please some of the people some of the time but not all the people all of the time. ( smile)

Carolyn

Well, the plants are beautiful and the watering schedule has been textbook, so I really feel that my efforts haven't had any type of negative effects on the taste. I guess it's just my palate. :-(

EG

I've grown NAR four years. All four years they tasted great! But two of the years they didn't grow very well and were stingy and diseasey...

When I grew it (two years) I found that it was a very heavy producer of meaty tomatoes, but the flavor was so-so. It was fine for canning, as some of the more complex flavors tend to go by the wayside when the tomatoes are cooked, but for fresh eating I found it tasted generic. And that's despite dust-mulch gardening with just enough irrigation to keep the plants from wilting, which usually gives me amazing tomato flavor.

Since it was such a heavy producer, and I canned a decent number of them, and I grew them for two years, I have a large number of seed if anyone wants some. I'm not likely to use the quantity of seed I have, given my impression of it. As Carolyn said, taste differs depending on the person and the place it's grown, and I'd recommend it based on plant vigor alone... just not for my garden. :)

--Alison
email me at torquill at foogod dot com since direct GW messages seem to drop into my spam folder... sigh

Grow them here every year. Love 'em. Very robust with late fruit and a bit delicate when it comes to early blight or septoria. Worth the effort.

This is my first year growing NAR, three plants. They are the biggest tomatoes in my garden, including one huge one that I am letting ripen. But so far the taste is only average, but still better than a supermarket tomato, certainly not as good as a Nygamous or Carbon, or my current favorite, Marianna's Peace. The shape is nice, not all distorted like Marianna's Peace, and one slice will cover a sandwich. I am growing 27 varieties this year, and some haven't ripened yet so can't say which will be the taste test winner yet. To its credit, even the NARs that I let sprawl are ripening fruit touching the ground without rotting like usually happens for me with large tomatoes.

I hope it isn't a letdown for me. Have 3 NAR plants this year, one is shorter than the others, but the 2 bigger ones have some nice sized green fruit (and one that is catfaced in the shape of an evil grin). I'm waiting for the first to ripen and I hope it tastes good.

I have been growing NAR for about four years or so myself, in each case the taste has been superb,(Better on some years than others) but still a great tomato.

The main problem with NAR as a tomato plant, is that it is very slow growing and producing until around July /August time when it suddenly takes off like a rocket and produces tons of tomatoes after that, it appears to me to be a semi-late tomato to get the best out of it.

My seeds came from some of the original source of the first batch of seeds released to the general public some four years or so ago, and I have saved my own seeds ever since then.

The plants grow very healthy -but slowly, without a single truss of flowers on them or even showing any flower buds-until the first week in July, then they start to appear none stop until november, and that is from plants started in mid march time.

Overall NAR is top of my list for flavor and size every single time.

I've had the opposite experience Micky.

Out of my slicers, NAR was the first to set fruit. In terms of # of fruit set, it has been overtaken by Indian Stripe and Better Boy, however. But it is chugging along. It's also a very vigorous plant.

This is my first year growing it; I'm looking forward to tasting it.