You have shortened your list, Dawn! With good reason. You'll be super busy with all of your landscape plans. But, that is still a lot of tomatoes for most people.

I had planned on planting only 12 tomatoes total, but here I am with 24 that I want to try. Honestly, some of them are dwarf varieties, so they don't really count, do they? haha. It's so funny because, once again, I'm tracking along with you. I'm going to do all 24, but am only keeping one of each variety.

I picked up seed from Jen this afternoon and she brought me the 16 varieties I asked for. (Thanks, Jen!)

Here's the seed I already had:

Sungold

Arkansas Traveler

Brandy Boy

Lime Green Salad

Eva Purple Ball

Early Girl

Supersonic

Jet Star

And here is what Jen brought me:

Juliet

Austin's Black Cherry

Baxters Bush Cherry

Black Cherry

Black Krim

Chang Li

Dr. Wyche

Rebel Starfighter Prime Heart

Dwarf Golden Gypsy

Dwarf Mr. Snow

Dwarf Orange Cream

Hardin's Miniature

Isis Candy

Matt's Wild Cherry

Snow White

Tiny Tim

I think that is a total of 24. Some of the dwarf varieties I'll take to my Mom's patio. I think she'll get a kick out of them.

Juliet needs an entire bed to herself. Goodness.

And...that is my list.

I'll take Dawn's excellent advice and find:

Homestead 24

Mule Team

I also want to try:

Coyote

Chocolate Stripe

I requested these from Jen:

Black Krim

Lemon Box

Hillbilly

Big Brandywine

Speckled Roma

Mr. Snow

Egg Yolk

and have many left from last year--jury's out on which I'll try. And what I don't have room for will go to the school. I didn't have a very good year with them last year--all the flooding/rain.

I went through and started with all the oldest seeds. I figure they're just going to waste sitting in a box under my bed, so I might as well try growing them out. If they don't sprout, I'm not out a whole lot. Then I planned backups, just in case. So with my luck I'll have everything sprout and I'll have to figure out how to cram all of them into a small area.

So for the ones I for sure want to grow, I have:

Girl girl's weird thing

Sungold

Egg Yolk

Black Krim or Cherokee Purple

Rebel Starfighter

Purple Calabash (according to the guy who sent me all the seeds, this is the one tomato I won't like. So I have to grow it and see if he's right)

Jennifer, Well, I was shooting for about 5 or 6 varieties for a total of 6-8 plants, but I think I knew I never could cut it down that low, even though I tried. I just couldn't reduce the list to only one or two pinks, purples and blacks so the list stubbornly refused to get any shorter. I'm worried about what will happen at planting time. I think I'll freak out and get panicky and feel like I didn't plant enough tomatoes. I'll just have to stay calm and work my way past that feeling.

You have a nice list this year. My complaint with Juliet, and the reason I seldom grow it, is that keeping all the fruit harvested is such a colossal job. The first year I planted it, I planted 6 of them and 6 of Jelly Bean, which also is a heavy producer, and I had many other plants in addition to them. When I couldn't keep up with the harvesting, I ended up with tons of Juliets and Jelly Beans on the ground and I just had to ignore them because there weren't enough hours in the day. Lesson learned, so I don't grow them more than once or twice a decade now.

Nancy, I'm pretty sure I bought Homestead 24 right off the seed rack in a big box store a few years ago, and probably ordered Mule Team, which I'm growing this year sort of in memory of Dr. Carolyn Male, who passed away last summer. Her book about Heirloom Tomatoes is what fueled my desire to grow more than the 6 or 8 heirloom varieties I was growing before I read her book, so I wanted to grow at least one variety that I learned about from her. In fact, when Joe Bratka, one of our original prolific seed savers who kept many O-P varieties alive until the rest of the gardening world could re-discover them through him, had trouble germinating very old Mule Team seed he found in his dad's seed collection, he sent it to Carolyn Male and she managed to germinate them, grow them, and save seed to disperse to keep this variety alive. Both of these varieties barely made the list, though, as I don't have many seeds of them and the seeds are pretty old. If they don't germinate, I'll just buy the plants when they hit the local store shelves. Homestead 24 plants usually are pretty easy to find in stores, but I have to look harder to find Mule Team downing Texas at specialty nurseries that focus on O-P varieties. I just figured I'd start with the older seed and see if it has any viability left. Neither variety is particularly early to produce, and I prefer early producers that beat the heat, but both of them will set pretty well in June and then produce harvests in July and August when some of the earlier producers are slowing down in the heat, so they do have their place in our hot gardens. They sort of bridge the gap between the earlier varieties that give us fruit beginning in May and Sioux, which always is pretty late in my garden and doesn't give us much fruit until August.

Jen, I should have done that with my oldest seed and I didn't, but I have some that is pretty old and I didn't want to waste time on the really old stuff in a year when there's a lot of gardening projects going on.

Purple Calabash is a very interesting tomato and most people have very firm opinions on it....either they love its unique, assertive flavor or they hate it. You won't know how you'll feel about it until you try it. While it does produce a very pretty tomato, I like other purples and pinks better. It isn't a bad flavor though. I think one reason some people react to it so strongly is that maybe they haven't grown and eaten many blacks and purples with complex flavor and still are stuck in the mindset of thinking all tomatoes should taste about the same as every other tomato you find at a store or a farmer's market. Some people are so married to the idea of sweet tomatoes that they don't care for the ones with a more acidic, complex flavor. Last year I grew Tim's Black Ruffles, which has a somewhat similar appearance to Purple Calabash in the sense that it is heavily ribbed or pleated and I liked it a lot and thought the flavor was better. Each of us has taste buds that are as individual as we are and that perceive flavor in their own unique way, so I always have to try a variety for myself because my taste buds might adore a flavor that somebody else's taste buds abhor. To me, that is part of the fun---finding the specific varieties that delight your own taste buds.

Sometimes I wish I was normal and could grow just any old tomato variety that exists and not be picky about different flavors, textures and colors, but I'm not. I have to try them all, compare them all, have a wide variety of flavors to experience, etc. I tease Tim by telling him "I was normal when you met me" because, back then, I could just plant six plants of one variety for fresh eating and six plants of a second variety (paste tomatoes) for cooking and canning and be perfectly content with only 2 varieties. To be fair, when we first got married we had a very shady yard, and all the big trees belonged to neighbors, so I couldn't cut them down to make our yard sunnier. That forced me to be a more normal gardener with a smallish garden. My desire to grow everything in great abundance didn't really take off until we moved here to the country and had endless sunny space available. I'm not sorry either. I'll never forget the very first time I tasted Brandywine, Cherokee Purple and Black Krim and found flavors different from the same old, same old red tomatoes we'd grown at home all our lives.

Dawn

I would like to try 5 or 6 mineral tubes for container plants. I saw somewhere that someone made a wicking container with mineral tubs. If I remember correctly, they used a tub of about 25 gallon, wound a 4" french drain tube around the inside and then drilled drain holes about 4 inches up on the side of the tub, then placing a landscape fabric over the french drain, pressing the fabric down to the bottom center of the tub, then filling the tub with potting soil. Was that someone on this forum? What tomato should I use for this project? Should I plant more than one plant per container?

Thanks for your advice. I also plan on attaching staked or cages to support the plant, and I am not too fond of cherry tomatoes. I like a strong acid taste, Madge likes something

more mild, I may have to grow more than one kind. I also will plant backups in the garden because I am new to container growing. I plan on moving the tubs with the tractor if I need a shade in the hot dry months.

Please don't be afraid of embarrassing, I am dumber than a rock when it comes to contain growing. Thanks again.

Larry

Dawn, my dad firmly believes all tomatoes should be red brandywine types. He thinks the other colors are "wrong". Fortunately for me I can grow whatever my little heart so desires (Cliff is not a veggie eater), so I try to grow a rainbow of everything.

Larry, I think you are thinking of Leon over in Kingston, OK, who sells molasses feed tubs and teaches people how to turn them into wicking containers. He has a YouTube page that shows how. I'll try to link it here, but I am not sure in Garden Web/Houzz allows the linking of YouTube videos, so in case it doesn't link, I will cgive you the name of his page. I think it is Gardening With Leon Ep. 1 for the wicking molasses feed tubs. Let's try and see if I can link it here:

Gardening With Leon, Ep 1

Jen, Well, red Brandywine types have excellent flavor and I probably could be happy only with Brandywines, if only they produced well in our extreme heat. The problem is that they don't like our heat, so the window of opportunity to get good fruit set is really narrow for us. One year we must have had perfect weather and in the same year I had planted multiple Red Brandywine and OTV Brandywine plants. We had so many Brandywine fruit that year that I gave some away and our friends were overwhelmed by the excellent flavor. Sounds great, right? Nope. I had to explain over and over to them that we didn't grow these every year, and often got barely any fruit at all from them when we did grow them and that this was the reason why I never had given them Brandywines before. There were some people who acted like I was being stingy and just not giving away Brandywines every year. They kinda made me mad when they did not accept that explanation, so I invited them to try growing Brandywines themselves so they'd see how hard it is to get even a skimpy harvest from them. I've grown a gazillion Brandywine types, crosses, derivatives, etc. over the years and most of them still have been shy producers no matter how much people in milder climates claim that they produce like mad for them. True Black Brandywine probably has been the best performer in our climate, but only because it sets fruit earlier than most Brandywine types. Some of the Brandywine crosses, like Gary 'O Sena and Dora, are really good, but their fruit is not a pure Brandywine. Burpee's Brandy Boy is similar in that the flavor hints at Brandywine Sudduth but isn't exactly the same. Of course, unlike your dad, I still have to have all the colors so many years I have planted Yellow Brandywine, Yellow Brandywine-Platfoot Strain, Brandywine Sudduth (pink), Red Brandywine (not exactly a Brandywine at all, but sold as one for so long that people think it is), Brandywine OTV (a selection of Red Brandywine that performs slightly better in hot climates), and True Black Brandywine.

My dad was partial to all red tomatoes too, and really had no use for tomatoes of other colors except for Porter, which is pink. The only thing I felt like Porter had going for it was that it would give him fruit in July and August after everything else slowed down. He liked big, red tomatoes so usually grew Big Boy, Better Boy, Early Girl purely for earlier tomatoes, Big Set, Spring Giant, Dona, Bingo, Jackpot, Carnival and Whirlaway. He might have grown Lemon Boy a time or two as a novelty but he wasn't really a fan of it. Later on, when Big Set, Spring Giant, and the rest that I listed after them basically disappeared from seed catalogs and local nurseries, he grew their replacements---Celebrity, Merced, Heat Wave and the like, but none of those were as good as the varieties that were dropped by seed companies, and most of those, except Celebrity, are long gone now having been replaced by even newer hybrids. They were dropped, by the way, because while they were popular with Texas gardeners, they did not necessarily have a large national following so we lost them when we lost smaller regional seed houses like Gene Porter and Sons, and then had nothing available to use except the same old same old red hybrids sold nationwide.

The closing of smaller regional seed suppliers actually sent me down the road to starting my own seeds and to searching out open-pollinated, heirloom types because it became apparent in the earliest 1990s that the kinds of tomatoes I loved weren't being carried as much by the nurseries any more, and by the earliest 2000s many of my dad's favorite tomato varieties were no longer available. It is ironic now, I suppose, to see how open-pollinated, heirloom types have become hugely popular again and can be found everywhere---they are easier to find now than they were in the 1980s and 1990s and even the early 2000s. I remember when the only O-P tomato seeds I could find on seed racks were Brandywine and, much later on, Cherokee Purple, and I was thrilled to find them. Then I found the Seed Savers Exchange catalog and the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange catalog, and suddenly had more O-P heirlooms to try than I had room to grow. At one point, Burpee had a special design for the few heirloom tomatoes they carried so that you could spot them quickly on seed racks, but even at that point they had at most 4 to 6 heirloom varieties available.

Oh, and now of course we know that different antioxidants are linked to different colors of veggies and fruits, so a more colorful diet is a healthier diet and that's one more reason to grow a rainbow of everything.

Dawn

My dad will not even TASTE anything but a red tomato. I was truly disappointed, because he was a farmer's son and I thought he would appreciate the flavor. Took tomatoes to DIL's house and her mother thought the purple was rotten, LOL.

I'm still working on my list. I think I will start seeds for many things and take some to spring fling and give the rest away to my girls. My daughter will want some.

Victory has Homestead 24 and Herman's Special another Carolyn Male "discovery" which I recognised from Duck Creek's old tomato list.

My tomato list for this year. I don't have room for all of them, so some will be given away.

Arkansas Traveler

Baker Family Heirloom

Black Brown Boar

Cherokee Carbon

Carbon

Cherokee Purple

Defiant F1

Early Girl (F1) ind

Gary ‘O Sena

Girl Girl's Weird Thing

Grandma Suzy's Beefsteak

Indian Stripe

J D’s Special C-Tex

Jetstar F1

Jetsetter

Ozark Pink

Ramapo

Sioux

Super Sioux

Vorlon

Tomatoes, Cherry

2017 not JDs (grew in a pot with JD's Special C Tex, salad sized fantastic taste)

Black Cherry

Large Red Cherry

Be My Baby

Honeydrop

Tomatoes, Dwarf

Chocolate Champion

Fred's Tie Dye

Tomatoes, Sauce

Heidi

Herman’s Special

Heinz VF

homestead 24

Every year I say I'm not buying tomato seeds. Every year I cave.

When are you starting them, Amy?

We put together shelves (using one of the 4 shelf green houses, they hold 2 black trays per shelf) and he bought more lights and a timer today. I always panic when Dawn starts hers, and she hasn't started yet, so I'm ok, LOL. First I need to stratify and/or winter sow some natives. Then spring brassica, then tomatoes and then peppers. Actually, first I need to start some lettuce and micro greens to grow indoors.

Amy, My friends Jesse and Fred both were that way in the beginning---wouldn't touch a purple or black tomato. Once I finally got them to try them, they loved them, but it was like pulling teeth to get them to try one. My dad would eat red and pink tomatoes and that was it. Period. He did not like veggies that were the "wrong" color.

I think I'm not starting seeds until this coming weekend if that helps anyone. There is nothing I can point to and say "see, this is the reason I'm not starting tomato seeds yet" but it is just that gut feeling, and I try to always trust it.

Dawn

I am in no hurry to start. As much as I try to fight the weather to get the tomato plants in the ground early, I'm in a cold microclimate and cannot make the cold nights go away any more quickly than they are going to go away no matter how early I start my seeds. That's what happens when your location is down low in a river valley--the days can be gloriously warm and the nights still remain freezing cold.

In a good year (and I don't know if this will be one of those), if I get the plants in the ground around March 20th (my average last freeze date is March 28th but our raised bed soil warms up quick and I can use floating row covers at night, if needed) and if I have them large enough that they are on the verge of blooming, then we'll harvest the first ripe tomatoes right at the end of April. My goal used to be (a long time ago) to have the first ripe tomatoes to eat by Memorial Day weekend, and then I just kept pushing it earlier and earlier and earlier, so I know I can do it because I've done if for many years. It only takes me 6 weeks from seeding to get the plants to that point with some of the earlier varieties, and it is not uncommon for me to put plants in the ground with blooms on them---I don't pull off the blooms because we can go from too cold to too hot very suddenly, so I don't waste a single potential tomato. Once my seedlings emerge, they grow like gangbusters and I have to pot them up to larger cups while they are stuck indoors. Obviously, I cannot get those plants big enough to be about to bloom by March 20th if I don't start them now. So, I know it is time to start, but my intuition tells me to wait a few more days. So, I'm waiting. I've learned to listen to my gardener's intuition. Honestly, I'm not that late. Since I usually start seeds on Super Bowl Sunday, that usually means somewhere around Feb 1-7, so if I started them today, I'd basically be right on time.

If we magically warm up and get hot quickly, maybe I'll be sorry I waited, but that almost never happens. It might happen with some microclimates but it doesn't happen with mine. Maybe I'll hit a big spell of warm weather in early March and will be disappointed because my plants are not big enough to go out into the ground yet. Maybe I'll run into a Lowe's or Home Depot and pick up a couple of plants when they hit the shelves and I'll stick them in the ground for early tomatoes while waiting for my plants to grow a little more. Who knows? I don't even know, but all options remain on the table as always.

I usually have a really good feeling about what to expect, weather-wise, in any given year, and my intuition usually is right on. So, this year, I haven't that feeling all winter long like I usually do...I haven't really had an intuitive feeling either way telling me to hurry up or slow down. What does that mean? I don't know. Lately, though, the voice in my head is saying to go slow. So I am.

I tell myself each year that I don't need any more than 12 tomato plants and no more than 6 pepper plants. I must be the biggest liar in the country because I have never listened to myself. I usually have from 2 to 4 times what I said I would need, and then run myself ragged trying to give my extra away. There is no need in going to all the extra cost and work to get too many plants. The seeds that I just start in the ground are not so much trouble, its no problem to just scratch a groove in the soil and drop in a seed. Also the seed I plant in the wildlife garden are no problem. I just drag a disc through, toss out some seeds, and then drag. I have become to enjoy that garden more than my food garden ( I plant food over there also, but it does not get the care that my food garden gets). Almost everything in the wildlife garden is done with me sitting on a tractor. The wildlife garden looks rough, but I think the critters enjoy it more, also, they have never eaten ALL of my food. My seed stock I like to grow in my food garden where I can keep a close eye on it. The thing I can just buy off the rack at the Co-op are not really a problem because they are cheap enough that I seldom save seeds.

My beat-up, home made light shelf will hold 8 flat under lights and 4 flats on top. I have fixed up the bottom shelf to starts seeds under this year. Each shelf has 6 t8 tubes, and I have enough led's to power the top shelf at 20,000 Lumins of what looks to be about 5000 k. At this point I think 4 flats will be more than enough to grow my seeds.

Lol, sounds like me. I had room last year for 8 tomatoes and 8 peppers. So what did I do? Wound up with 15 tomatoes and had to figure out creative ways to plant them all. Luckily I had 5 that were smaller bush varieties so I just used containers for them.

I currently have the tomatoes narrowed down and will probably start them this weekend or next. Since most are 2016 or older I expect a bunch will be duds...and panicking when every one of them sprout.

I’m way late to this party, but here’s my list.

Juliet

Black Cherry

Heidi

Jetstar F1

Sioux

Carbon

Indian Stripe

Vorlon

Possibly Cherokee Carbon if I get seed or find plants.

Either way, I’ll keep my totals somewhere between 24 and 30. I’ll probably keep my pepper varieties to around 8 or so and grow around 30 or so plants.

The seeds I ended up with. I may add Cherokee Purple, but that'd be the only one. At least I won't have any trouble getting rid of extras, with the school and friends.

Egg Yolk

Speckled Roma

Royal Hillbilly

Black Krim

Dwarf Mr. Snow

Big Brandy F1

Homestead 24

Heidi

San Marzona Redorta

Dr Wyche's Yellow

Super Sweet 100 Hybrid

Arkansas Traveler

Black from Tula

Anthony Bourdain

Mortgage Lifter, RC

This is shocking! It's just so abnormal, but really I'm happy you're not slaving over hundreds of jars of salsa. It would make me tired just reading about your canning activities in the middle of fire break-outs and visits from really large cats. I'm certain you are well stocked and no worries. Enjoy! <3

I'm doing 2 rounds of tomatoes this year. The first round, which I started Feb 9, will be my smart pot tomatoes. I started 9 varieties, all of which are new to me.

Adelaide Festival Dwarf

Summer Sweet Gold Drawf

McKinley

SunOrange F1

SunChocola F1

Rosella Cherry

Mocha Splash

Arkansas Traveler

KARMA Apricot

I started 9 varieties for Round 2 on Feb 20. These will be my raised bed tomatoes.

KARMA Peach*

KARMA Miracle

Dana's Dusky Rose

Break O'Day*

Aunt Ginny's Purple*

Captain Lucky

Matt's Wild Cherry

Scarlet Red Dwarf

Rosella Purple Dwarf

The varieties with an * are my "must-grows" this year. I am maxed-out for room growing 18. I tell myself this is the last year that I try so many new varieties, and will try to limit myself to 5 new ones starting next year. We'll see about that.

Lee

Tulsa

Lee, you're trying dwarf varieties too! Have you done those in the past? They are new to me and I'm excited to try them out. I'm struggling to find a place for all of mine too. My neighbor who usually has a decent sized garden is having health issues and dealing with aging and ill parents and won't have much time for a garden...although she wants one. She was unable to have one last year, but solarized her garden to get ready for this year...and now she probably won't be able to have it without a lot of help. ANYWAY, the point of all that information is, I can plant any extras in her garden for her.

I have tried a couple of dwarf varieties in the past. I grew Fred's Tie Dye a couple of year's ago. It was good...very much like one of it's parents, Pink Berkeley Tie Dye. I also tried Tazmanian Chocolate one year, which was also very good. The thing I liked about both of those was even though they grew fairly tall (about 4.5-5 ft), they're width was much less than most big indeterminates. So it got me thinking with my limited space, if I can find more dwarf varieties I like, it may allow me to squeeze in a few more without overcrowding.

Lee

I have Tiny Tim plants started, the only dwarf I’m doing.

Fourth of July

Tiny Tim

Heidi

Mountain Magic

Bella Rosa

Super Tasty

Bucks County

Amelia

Porter

Dixie Red

Early Goliath

Patio

Baxters Bush Cherry

Baby Boomer Cherry

Sungold

Juliet

Speak up if you want anything!

Rebecca, I'll take a Heidi. I would like to give her another try. I picked up one last year at the SF, planted it and then a hornworm damaged it pretty badly. Just as it was finally "coming back" and making blossoms, we had that mid October freeze. :(

I think I will switch some out and get a few more dwarf varieties. Thanks for the idea!

Jennifer, I’ll have a few extra Heidi if all goes well.

Nancy, I have some dwarfs, don't buy any till I see what I have.

Oh, and I like Fred's tie dye, too.

Bumping this up for "the short list" of presumably must grows from 2020.

Thanks for bumping. This is nice to read.