Wednesday, May 23, 2007

And the winner is...

I wanted to quickly note the State of Tomatoes in my garden. On January 6, I planted three full-sized tomatoes:
-Tiffany (a VNFT hybrid from TGS)
-Better Boy (a VFN hybrid)
-Matina (from TGS)

Tiffany produced early (end of April) and prolifically. Smallish (4 oz), perfectly round, smooth (no shoulders). OK flavor, very good texture. Fair number of seeds. They look just like those "tomatoes on the vine" you get from the supermarket. Somewhat subjectively, I'd say these hang around on the vine for a long time while ripe without suffering for the delay. Good yield, and it's nice to have smallish tomatoes.

Matina has been very disappointing. Nice tomatoes, but they actually ripened later than Tiffany (I bought them because they're supposed to be very early), and the yield has been low.

Better Boy produced a large crop, a week or so later than Tiffany. Fewer in number than Tiffany, though the yield seems roughly the same in weight. Beautiful, flavorful, dense flesh, low in seeds. I weighed one today at exactly 16 oz. It deserves all the praise it gets. I'd like to sniff and say "well, it doesn't have the flavor of a Brandywine..." or some such, but let's face it: Perfectly ripe, homegrown tomatoes all taste really really good. Subtle differences in flavor shouldn't overshadow more important criteria. It makes sense to me to choose varietals that are prolific and disease resistant. Beyond that lies only snobbery parading as discernment.

1 comment:

LindaD said...

Your blog is always so informative. Its helpful to me, being in the same area - to know what ought to be happening...when.

Thanks for sharing..