Best Tomato This Year



 

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I purchased and planted a variety of tomato plants this past May.  Most years I grow my own tomato plants from seed, but this year events overtook my seed starting plans and I opted to purchase plants from Evers Greenhouse in Genntown.

Evers always offers a large variety of tomato and other vegetable plants. My purchases included yellow, red and purple or chocolate sweet bell pepper plants and more than six different varieties of tomatoes.

German Johnson Tomato

I planted the tomatoes fairly close together in raised beds and staked them, and added some well rotted cow manure to the bed for richness.  Then the rains came. The plants grew very well but soon the rain and the heavy growth overcame the stakes and the plants collapsed on themselves, so now I have half staked tomatoes running riot over the bed.

The cool weather and rain has made all kinds of fruits  slow to ripen and the tomatoes are no exception.  I picked and ate the little grape tomatoes named St. Nick in early July. By mid July I was getting a tomato here and there, mostly Burpee Better Boys.                                                                        

Cherokee Purple tomatoes on the top right.

Now here in early August a variety of the plants are ripening fruit.  The picture to the left shows Cherokee purple, German Johnson, Carolina Gold, St. Nick, and a blocky ribbed tomato whose name I forget.


So far my clear favorite for flavor is German Johnson - large fruit,  dark pink/red colored flesh and very sweet and flavorful.  The Cherokee Purple is a close second but still not beating out German Johnson.  The Burpee Better Boy and the St. Nick are more acidic and taste more like standard tomatoes.