Dale, One thing to remember about disease resistance/tolerance in tomatoes is that they are only resistance or tolerance and not total immunity. Also, I have found some heirlooms have just as much or more disease resistance/tolerance as some hybrids. The reason you don't see heirlooms labeled for disease resistance is because no specific seed company owns them (they are just out there in the public domain), so no one is willing to pay for the testing to get the seed labeled. It isn't that they don't have some disease resistance and tolerance (after all, there's a reason people saved seeds of that specific variety and passed it down) because many of them do. It's just that the heirlooms haven't been tested and proven to have those tolerances because no one is willing to pay for testing on a variety unless it is their own patented variety. Here's some hybrids we like for flavor and disease resistance/tolerance/: Big Boy Better Boy VFN Big Beef VFFNTA Moreton V (avail. via Harris Seeds or Rutgers/NJAES) Ramapo VF (avail. via Rutgers/NJAES) Jet Star VF Primetime VFNTA Red Defender VFFA-TSWV Scarlet Red VFFASt Celebrity VFFNTA (not as flavorful to me as some of the others, but lots of folks like it more than I do) Supersonic Beefmaster VFNASt Brandy Boy (great flavor but some disease issues) Momotaro (Japanese great flavor; name means 'Tough Boy', great flavor) Porterhouse (Burpee) With the Cherokee Purple, I'd grow it side-by-side with Indian Stripe and compare the performance/flavor of the two. As grown in my garden, the flavor of the two is almost identical and Indian Stripe produces earlier, produces more fruit per plant, and has less cracking. For cherries, I recommend SunGold (or the almost-identical SunSugar which has the same flavor but less cracking), Black Cherry and Sweet Million, which is very similar to Sweet 100 but larger and more productive plants. If you like Druzba, you'd probably also like Eva Purpla Ball or Cuostralee.' If you have something the size of a shed that you want to hide, plant Tess's Land Race Currant and you'll have a huge plant that produces hundreds (well, more likely, thousands) of tiny, currant-sized tomatoes with big flavor. Black Krim and True Black Brandywine are similar to one another and somewhat similar to Cherokee Purple and if I had to choose one of those two, I'd choose True Black Brandywine which produces more heavily and has better disease resistance. Of all the hybrids listed above, Better Boy is probably the heaviest producer in my garden with Big Boy not far behind. However, Scarlet Red and Red Defender (both new to me this year) might surpass them--I just won't rate them higher based on only 1 year's experience with them Other than those two, Big Beef and Beefmaster have performed well for us for years, and Ramapo has been great in the 2 or 3 years we've grown it. I've been very impressed with Moreton, which is in its first year here. The Harris hybrids (Jetstar, Supersonic, Primetime) are impressive too and I have grown them for several years now. As Jay noted above, different tomatoes taste different to different people because our tastebuds vary, so you and your family will have to try them and see which ones have the flavor you prefer. Because flavor is influenced so much by environmental factors, I try to give a variety 2 or 3 years to prove itself 'worthy' before I give up on it. With sandy soil, especially if it has root knot nematodes, the more organic matter you add, the better. In sandy soil it is almost impossible to add too much organic matter. Jay mentioned Whopper and Goliath too, and I meant to add that every time I've grown them they have shown moderately good disease resistance and have been heavy producers. Their flavor is fine, but I just happen to like lots of others too so they don't always make it onto my grow list. I've linked the order page for Ramapo in case you want to try it. And, I hope Bill, who posts here as Tomatomanbilly, will see your thread and respond. He grows a lot of varieties in Anadarko, and he has tried some of the newer hybrids like Red Defender and Scarlet Red too. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Ramapo and Moreton Ordering Info

Jay, I am married to a former Pennsylvanian and he still has relatives there who garden and every summer I envy their cool temperatures (you know, they think 85 degrees is hot) and their usually abundant rainfall. When we go there to visit in summertime, everything is so lush and lovely that it blows my mind, especially compared to how roasting hot and tired everything looks in this part of the country at the same time. On the other hand, Late Blight seems to be on a tear there the last few years, so their beaufiful crops can fail suddenly. Marcy, That's a great list from the Kerr Center. Thanks for linking it. Susan, I think each of us adds/drops varieties for many reasons. After growing tomatoes for 25 years on my own and for at least 15 years with my dad prior to that, I'm just through with the massive experimentation. The truth is that out of every 20 or 25 new (to me) varieties that I try, maybe one or two is worth putting into the permanent growing rotation. So, rather than constantly looking for something new, I'm trying to refine the grow list and weed out those that perform least well in a broad range of conditions. I've reached the conclusion that there really aren't many, or maybe not any, incredible undiscovered varieties out there that taste/perform significantly better than what I've already tried....so I've stopped looking. I had high hopes for the Brandymaster series, likely because it is so tempting to believe there could be anything that could match Brandywine's flavor. They've performed so poorly here that I doubt I'd see a better performance next year or the year after. While many of you may be seeing significantly hotter or drier weather this year than in your average year, for us here in southcentral OK, our rainfall has been exactly 'average' for the year to date and so have our temperatures. If anything we've had slightly lower temperatures, in general, in Love County than we usually have although higher than average heat indices. So, for me, this is a pretty typical year except the real heat arrived in mid-May instead of late June so we got hot earlier, but not necessarily hotter than average...just earlier than average. A tomato variety that didn't perform well in what was a fairly typical year here at our place this year likely wouldn't perform any differently next year. In Oklahoma we have a wide range of average annual rainfall....some folks may average 15" of rainfall per year in western OK while others in eastern OK may average 50-60" or more. Humidity varies widely as does soil type and pH. So, what grows well for someone in highly alkaline soil and water in western OK may not grow nearly as well for someone in eastern OK with entirely different weather and soil. I enjoy looking at everybody's lists and hearing how different tomatoes perform for different people but I know that works well in areas drastically different from mine may not work well here. Growing in containers is much more complicated. First of all, nothing that I grow performs as well in containers as in the ground. Heat and pests hit container-grown plants much harder every year than those in the ground. The grasshoppers have completely stripped my container tomatoes of every leaf and fruit, but have only done sporadic damage to in-ground plants. It is the same thing with spider mites....only the container plants have had issues with them this summer. For me, container-grown tomatoes are great from Jan. or Feb. through the end of June or early July. After that, I might as well yank out those plants and toss them on the compost pile because they're toast. Last year, the tomatoes in containers did somewhat better than they usually do....but we had much higher than average rainfall and much more rain/clouds/cool weather than we see in an average summer. I'm looking for plants that perform best in the worst of conditions, not the best ones, because more often than not, we get the worst conditions every July and August. In containers, I plant tomatoes that can tolerate the heat and the restriction of their root growth and still perform. That means I often grow tomatoes in containers that I don't consider 'good enough' to plant into the ground....stuff like Better Bush and Husky Red Cherry. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm just at the point that I want what produces best for us here, and I don't want to keep looking for something 'better' because I don't think there is anything out there that's really that much better than our tried and true varieties that make our grow list most years. For a long time, I gardened for fun....trying any and every thing that interested me. We ate all we wanted fresh and gave tons away and didn't care if we put up much for the non-gardening season or not. In recent years, though, I've developed a deeper appreciation for the truly superior flavor of anything/everything that's grown locally and picked/prepared/preserved at its peak of perfection. Thus, I give away little and try to raise as much of our annual food supply as possible. In a good year I fill up three freezers, a root cellar and manage to can 2 or 3 or 4 hundred jars of 'stuff'. Since that is what is important to me now, I want plants that produce well, that provide tasty food we like and that are not prima donnas requiring a lot of pampering. Thus, I'm less inclined to experiment and more inclined to plant what produces really well with little fuss. In a lot of ways, the 'experimentation years' were a lot more fun, but the farm-garden-preserving years have been much more productive. Now my family is spoiled and I must produce as much home-grown food as possible because they don't like grocery store stuff as much as they used to. Even DS's firestation co-workers prefer fresh, home-grown and I'm going to try to plant a lot more for them next year so I can send them all the tomatoes, peppers and other yuummy things they're craving. There just isn't room, or enough improved soil, to experiment with varieties now as there used to be. I don't mind that, really, because as long as what I'm growing is producing well, I've gotten over thinking there are incredible varieties out there just waiting for me to find them. Megan, Black Plum grew very well for me for a long time and then for 2 or 3 years it didn't and I dropped it. It is odd how that happens....and I loved Coyote too. If my garden were twice as large as it is, I'd bring it back to the grow list. So many varieties, so little time (and improved soil). The tomatoes I grow from seed invariably outperform storebought ones and I don't know why, but I've seen it enough years to know it is true. Dawn

Jay, Interesting review. You grew lots of plants that I have never heard of but sound interesting. Some of your list is also on my 'always grow' list as well. It amazes me that your plants still look nice and are still producing when mine have been gone so long. Although all plants always seem to thrive on the many spring showers that we have, I think it adds to the blight issues on tomatoes. My plants don't last nearly as long as yours. This year, I didn't start watering my garden plants early enough and some suffered from neglect. Since I rarely water 'in ground' in a normal year, I just didn't realize how dry they were. By the time I started to water, they already had issues. I have read several years now about the commercial types of tomatoes and I think you sent me seeds for one, but I have not grown it yet. I am going to add either the Campbell or Heinz one next year. Are those plants small enough that you could crowd them a little? I had lovely tomatoes this year, but they all had a lot of juice and I need a good, heavy producer that is a little drier. One batch of salsa that I made this year was just too thin. I labeled it as such and plan to use it in cooking. I used a pint of it this week for some Spanish Rice and it was great, so it won't go to waste. Almost all of my tomato plants were pulled early, but a few survived because they were just in out of the way places. Of those, Sioux seems to be doing the best. It has received some water because I water the peppers that are close to it. I think it might be a good one to leave in the garden for a later crop in my climate. I may consider starting it a little later and putting it in where I take out spring crops. It seemed to tolerate the seriously hot and dry summer that we had this year. I will certainly have to plant Royal Hillbilly again because it produced the largest tomatoes I grew this season. I didn't take it out, but did cut it back drasticly. It is still alive but I don't know if it will produce again. Besides your tomato plants looking great in late August when mine are long gone, I did notice a couple of other things that were different. Did you plant more than one kind of cowhorn okra? I planted the cowhorn like the package I sent to you and mine is ten feet tall. It produces mostly on the top and I have to grab the plants and pull them down so I can cut it. Your cowhorn appeared to be short and bushy. In fact, I planted mine near a walkway thinking it would be easy to pick from there and instead I have to shove it away to make it down the path. The taste is great but my location choice was poor. I think I will work on the soil along the north fence line so I can plant this at the very north end next year. The other thing that I noticed is your Black Cherry tomatoes. Is that the size you always get? Did you use commercial seed or one from a friend? I have planted seeds from several commercial sources and my Black Cherries have larger fruit than yours. In your picture of the cherry tomatoes, your Sungold looked as large as the Black Cherry. In my garden, Sungold is a normal sized cherry tomato, but Black Cherry is a large cherry, with all of them being much larger than Sungold. Your three favorite cherries look like great choices to me since I love both Black Cherry and Sungold. We ate a lot of cherry tomatoes because I planted heavy thinking I would dry a few. I was not happy with the results, so we just ate a lot of them. LOL Your apple tree looks great. I don't have fruit trees, but my DIL picked her tree and brought me a huge box of Granny Smiths from it. It took me all week to get them processed but it is worth it. Be sure to make some 'Apple Pie Jam'. She said she only brought me a third of what her tree produced. I made jam, apple pie filling, apple butter, apple sauce, and canned plain apples for use in baking. I did the plain ones because I could get a ton of those into a jar and I was getting tired of processing apples. LOL I would think they would be perfect for a huge apple cobbler mid-winter. We are having nice weather and I haven't been able to take advantage of it. I went to the doctor last Tuesday with a request for meds and thought I had a sinus infection that was playing havoc with my ears. I started 3 kinds of meds that night and got worse each day. Yesterday I couldn't stand it any longer and went back for new meds. I knew I needed an antibiotic and kept trying to take that one but felt that it was probably the one making me sick. I seem to be tolerating this one OK, but I am trying to stay away from pollens until I am better. I enjoyed looking at your pictures and felt as if I had strolled through your garden. I will continue to pray for your step-Dad and assume his health will improve after his treatment. I think you are the type to take a lot of responsibility onto your shoulders, so be careful and don't try to run faster than you have strength. You need to stay strong and healthy.

Some of this weeks' harvest: A perfect Rose tomato (these are great): Some of my Bucket SWCs in the 'Street Garden': Some Cherries in Bucket SWCs. They've done fine in the 3.5 gallon soil chamber: Tomato Patch #1. Pruned a lot of the lower leaves that were yellowing or effected by Early Blight.: Tomato Patch #2. Pruned a lot of the Supersweet100 leaves that were yellowing or effected by Early Blight. The so far non-productive Hillbilly has set several fruit, and San Marzano is filling in to replace the Ramapo OP that is almost gone due to Early Blight: