Tanja's Top Twelve Tomatoes 2021
Well.... What a tomato year it was, eh?
The first three weeks of June were so cold and grey, I was beyond worried for my tomatoes, thought we were getting a repeat of the cool, grey Summer of 2020.
But nope... instead, we then went straight into a massive heat dome, followed by several heatwaves and extreme drought conditions for the entire summer. Holy doodle! Such a challenging growing year.
Some of you have told me that you had a really great year while others were a total bust. Let's see if we can't help you get a better crop next year.. because tomatoes really are the very best thing.
Here are the tomatoes that did best for me in the crazy, hot, dry summer of '21, in no particular order. They were chosen mainly on how well they produced and fared in the heat, plus taste is always a factor.
*Note that I only grow heirloom and open pollinated varieties.
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| All sizes, shapes, and colours |
Slicer Type Tomatoes
The mid-sized tomatoes we grow for every day, all-purpose use, the ones most often sold in grocery stores.
1) Early Annie - This one has been on my must-grow list for about a decade now and on the top ten list a few times over the years... but this year, she really did out shine the others.
While Early Annie is small tomato, not much bigger than a golf ball, it is a good, steady, reliable variety. She was the earliest tomato to fruit and kept on producing through till September. Annie is a nice, short, compact bush type tomato (more info below about determinates versus indeterminates).
If you are looking for a tomato that is early, reliable, and tasty, this is the one for you. It is my go to for the one that has me eating tomatoes early in the season as I wait on the others to ripen. Everyone needs an early bird type.
2) World's Earliest - Also called the Sub-Arctic Plenty. This tomato is larger, is baseball sized, and produces in clusters. Super productive, compact determinant (bush) tomato.
I really like this tomato, will definitely grow it again for it's good sized fruits, great tangy taste, and early producing. I tend to prefer the black or green tomatoes for flavour but every so often, I find a nice red one to add to my list of must grows.
3) Gill's All-Purpose - Yet another red tomato for the list! Not as big as the World's Earliest but still a really good size. This tomato started later than the other two but still had about a dozen ripe tomatoes on it in mid September. So, it produced well, even in this year's incredible heat, did not have the blossoms go sterile, kept on steadily chugging along.
This tomato is called an all-purpose as it works just as well for canning as it does for fresh eating. Really good yields from this tidy, compact semi-determinate tomato. Has a rich flavour and is crack resistant, which was handy when the rains finally came ; )
4) Long Keeper - Wow, wow, wow! The keeper-type tomatoes are my new favourites to grow. They produce later in the year, ripen from the inside out, and will keep well in storage throughout the fall and into winter. Rumor has it that they can last until Easter! I never have any left that late in the year, but maybe if I grew 3 or 4 of these guys, they would.
Take these tomatoes and place in a box, not touching each other so that they do not go mouldy. A canning-jar box works like a charm as it has the dividers but a beer flat holds more tomatoes. Some people wrap them in newsprint but I just make sure to leave a few centimeters in between them.
They are quite tangy, very yummy tasting, and the size of a nice, big apple, a bit bigger than the the Mystery Keepers (yes, that is the actual name) but that might just be fluke. Need to grow them both a few more years to know for sure. I will be leaving these tomato vines up in the hoophouse as long as possible to see how long it keeps on producing.
Others slicers... In my garden, the Black Krim did just fine, as always, not spectacular, but fine, and none of the others did anything worthy of note. My Dwarf Purple Heart was just okay this year but according to feedback from my fellow tomato growers, it was a really good one in their gardens. Also most everyone said that they loved Thorburn's Terra Cotta, said it was amazing, a definite keeper.
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| Unknown variety ... but thinking maybe a Yellow Brandywine. Was not the Oxheart tomato that I thought I had purchased but is an amazing tasting & looking tomato nevertheless. |
Beefsteaks
The big guys, 1 to 2 lbs beauties.
Beefsteaks are my all time favourites to grow for fresh eating. I absolutely love that one thick slice covers the entire surface of the bun, makes a great tomato sandwich. I also like to use beefsteaks for fresh salsas and bruschetta. Yum!
Many of you had lumpy and bumpy beefsteaks tomatoes with cat-facing (see the top picture of this post) this year. This lumpiness is caused by environmental factors and has nothing to do with the variety at all. Blame Mother Nature, not the poor tomato : )
Beefsteaks get the most impressive looking cat-facing but slicers, cherries, and pastes can also get some sort of lumpiness.
Cat-facing usually happen if we have cool, hot, or wet weather early in the season during pollination time or blossom set. It usually only affects the first tomatoes and later ones are just fine. The reason you don't notice it until sometime in July is because beefsteaks take a long time to go from blossom to fruit.
5) Berkeley Tie- Dye - The Tie-Dye is an amazing tomato. This guy did not crack or split in the rain, nor have any cat-facing. Hmm, that is interesting to note, will have to keep track of this over time.
There is also a Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye, both are relatively new (2008) open-pollinated tomatoes bred at Wild Boar Farms. These guys are sure to become heirlooms for the future generations, they really are that good. I have yet to meet someone who does not love them.
The flavour is sweet, yet tangy, the taste is just superb, they are nice, big, meaty yet juicy tomatoes. Berkeley aces the taste tests at all the markets, beats out the heirlooms for flavour! You should definitely put this on your grow list for next year.
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6) Dr Wyche's Yellow - While I'm not usually a yellow tomato fan, this year the Dr was amazing, and totally deserves to be on this list.
It produced really well, lots of big yellow tomatoes on the indeterminate vine, and again, little to no cat-facing, cracking or splitting. It out-produced my other beefs (except that crazy unknown golden one in the picture above).
I like to make yellow tomatoes into fresh salsas or simple salads, adding a bit of herbs and spices to really bring out the sweet flavour. This big beefy tomato would also make for a lovely golden sauce or cooked salsa, if you were so inclined.
I look at my other notes and see that I describe the flavour as lively and robust. Going to stick with that description, it is a super tasty tomato. The blacks tend to be my favourites for flavour, make the best tasting tomato sandwich of them all ; )
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| Sweet Tumbler is a compact trailing cherry tomato, perfect for hanging baskets |
Cherry Tomatoes
The wee ones that we all like to snack on...
These guys are called cherry-romas or mini-romas, due to their elongated shape. The Tigers are also not heirloom tomatoes but are newer, open-pollinated seeds from Fred Hempel at Artisan Seeds. He also bred the super yummy, round, Bumblebee cherry tomatoes : )
The Tigers all have thin skins, have a bit of crunch to them, are so sweet, and juicy. I have tried them all and really like them all. They produce lots! Are super hardy, happy, healthy vining tomatoes.
There are two drawbacks with the Tigers... they tend to split easily with over-watering or heavy rains, so you need to be careful not to over-do it, and they are fairly late to ripen (for a cherry tomato).
I found that this Blush Tiger was not splitting as much as the others have in years previous but am not sure if that is due to the hot, dry summer or the tomato itself. Will grow them again next year and see.
They are super pretty looking tomatoes, too, labelled as jewel toned. The looks, the amount of tomatoes they produce, plus the amazing, yummy flavour means that there will be one or more Tiger in my garden forever more. You really need to grow a Tiger or a Bumblebee in your potager, too!
9) Red Fig- This super cute, oddly shaped tomato was a surprise hit for me. I trialed a couple of different cherry tomatoes this year and really thought one of the others would be the best tasting as they are all super well-known heirlooms... lo and behold, the taste of this one won the spot on the list this year. The others were equally prolific but just did not have the sweetness that this Fig has.
The vine was loaded with these lovely clusters of pear shaped tomatoes, not fazed by the heat at all. The skins were thin, the tomatoes were sweet, by far the best tasting cherry tomato I have had in years!
It is said to make a wonderful chutney and tasty tomato salad. I just ate them out in the garden, never made it into the house. Highly recommend this one.
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| Nothing better than a wheelbarrow full of paste tomatoes with a bit of basil on the side! |
Paste Tomatoes
Also known as Roma style tomatoes, these ones are the best ones for canning/saucing.
They are meatier, with less seeds and pulp, so thicken up faster for a good rich sauce.
We grew two beds of just paste tomatoes this year, 40 plants in each bed. One held just Martino's Roma for our own saucing and the other was planted up with a few different types for me to trial.
We usually get a good 300 lbs from one bed of 40 plants, we process about 200 lbs worth and sell the rest off. However, this year some of the blossoms went sterile in all that heat, so we only got about 200 lbs per bed, a bit less in the trial one. So very glad I grew that extra bed of tomatoes! It allowed me to do my trial plus gave me extra tomatoes to put a bit of moolah in the coffers.
So, here to round out the top twelve are my favourite paste tomatoes of the year. Tomatoes that you can count on to give you great results, even in a heatwave summer.
10) Heinz 2653 - I absolutely love this cute, little, pumpkin-shaped paste tomato! Right from the get-go, this one was making loads of tomatoes on compact determinate plants. This is the one they grew in Ontario for making 'you-know-what-brand' of ketchup.
The tomatoes are not big in size but man, they were loaded with lots and lots of tomatoes. It has become one of my all time new favourites and will definitely be on the list again next year. It is a bit juicier than the oblong paste varieties though, so needs to be cooked down for a while longer to thicken the sauce.
I think this one would also make a super tasty tomato juice so save the juices when you do your canning!
We grew one entire bed of just these tomatoes, 40 plants in total, and they were all perfect, just like you see in the picture above. Not a blemish on them. We will always grow this variety as it never fails to impress.
To make the sauce, hubby just cuts off the stem end, slices it in half, squishes out the juices and tosses the 'meat' into the pot to go through the press. We have an electric passata press/passata maker that takes off the skins and seeds, leaving us with just the yummy pulp to cook down. Highly recommended if you process a lot of tomatoes.
12) Marzano's Fire - I wasn't sure which tomato would end up in this last position, am super surprised to find myself going with Marzano's Fire. It really was the ugliest looking tomato plant that I have ever seen, or grown. The foliage was very wispy and sparse, sort of all wilted looking on the lanky semi-determinate vines.
I know that this is not the normal look as I saw it at someone else's house when I went for a garden coaching session. Her plant looked nice and normal, not at all ugly like every single one of my 8 plants were. All I can figure is that it must have been due to location, heat, and wind. My potager is very hot, faces due south with no shade till late afternoon, and the wind blows right over all the plants at that end of the garden. I guess that just set them up for a case of the uglies.
That said, the tomatoes themselves are very beautiful, and there were loads of them. These lovely striped tomatoes are bigger and longer than the others, and very, very meaty. Not much juice in these guys at all. That makes them an instant hit with hubby as it means they cook down faster.
So, I will actually grow this one again!... but maybe on the other side of the garden where there is less wind. That may help.
The others..... not on the list and why...
The Ropreco were great, absolutely still like this tomato and would grow it again and again. It looks very similar to the Martino's Roma in shape and size but was a bit less productive for me.
The Saucey was more of a plum tomato, round with a bit of a pointed tip, nice and big, produced super well, thought for sure it would make the list... until the rains came. After the first rain, it started to crack and split. So, it went off the list for me as a staple tomato.
Maybe it was just the year that we had. I loved it before the rains came. If you can harvest it before the fall rains start, it is very much worth growing. Oh, another negative is that it also was the only one with green shoulders, the top part of the tomato goes hard and yellow/green due to high heat or high winds, they do not ever soften up so have to be cut off. This is again, just a condition from the heat so is not going to happen every year... but that said.. the others in the trial did not have that issue.
The Roi Humbert (aka King Humbert) and the Striped Roman, I have grown before so only grew two of each to trial this year. The Striped Romans were amazing, I would grow that one again for sure. Not as prolific as the Marzano's fire, but just as pretty and much bigger. The Roi's, did not do much of anything at all. Probably not going to grow that one again.
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| Determinate tomatoes and basil growing in the raised bed. |
A bit of this & that about growing tomatoes...
There are three categories of tomatoes - determinate (bush), indeterminate (vining), and semi-determinate (pretty much just a shorter version of the vining kind). This is how I choose which ones to grow....
Determinate aka bush type tomatoes, grow short and compact, only to a determined size. They also only fruit for a determined amount of time so you are able to harvest a lot of tomatoes all at once, which makes them great for canning purposes. These are the ones that I grow as my staple when it comes to canning. They produce a whole lot of tomatoes, all ready at about the same time, makes quick work of the canning job. They tend to be smaller and juicier than the indeterminates so you need more of them and they have a longer cooking down time to make a thick sauce.
Most all of the red slicers that I grow are determinates. I choose the ones with the shortest maturity dates so that I am eating tomato sandwiches early in the season while I wait on the others (like Costoluto Fiorentino) to start producing.
Indeterminates will fruit from early summer to late summer but not all all at one time. The harvest is spread out over the months. Indeterminate paste tomatoes are bigger and meatier, so if you have a lot of room, grow a couple of rows of these guys and make more smaller batches of sauce throughout the summer instead of one big batch. They make a nice thick sauce, cook down much faster than the determinates.
Most all of the cherries and all of the beefsteaks that I grow are indeterminates. I like having the cherries to snack on throughout the entire season instead of over just a few short weeks, and the beefs just grow that way (there are very few determinate beefsteaks). I love everything about growing beefsteak tomatoes, adore the tall vines covered with great big monsters.
Semi-determinates grow on vines but they tend to max out at about 4 feet tall. In the paste tomatoes, they are also bigger and meatier than the determinates, produce more tomatoes at one time than the indeterminates do, but not as many as the determinates. They are kind of the best of both worlds.. are meatier, bigger, and have a determined life span. I happily grow the semis, you can fit a whole lot of these guys in your potager in nice, sturdy, tomato cages and enjoy the fruits of your labours, literally, throughout the entire season.
My grow list changes from year to year but these are the parameters that I use when choosing which ones to grow. Maybe I will be doing less canning in a few years, then it would change again. When deciding which tomatoes to grow, consider what you want from your harvest.
Tomato issues & how to avoid them next year....
The main issues this year seemed to be BER, tough skins, green shoulders, sterile blossoms, splitting, cracking, and late ripening.
As you probably guessed, most of those were due to the high temps that we had this summer.
If you had tough, thick skins on your tomatoes (mostly affects cherries) that was due to the excessive heat and too much sun. It is how they protect themselves against sunburn. If you can offer your tomatoes some shade, that will reduce the chances of this happening. Maybe grow something tall in front to offer some shade? Like sunflowers, maybe? In a perfect world, this would have been a good year to grow tomatoes with just 5 or 6 hours of direct sunshine.
Sterile blossoms were also caused by the high temps. Often happens in greenhouses unless they can be cooled down with shade cloth, but this year it also happened to blossoms that were on top of the bushes or on the south side.
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| Tomatoes that had fallen off the plant are placed on a table in the potager to ripen. |
Late ripening was likely from the high heat but can also occur from over-watering or over-feeding the plants.
The splitting and cracking mostly happened after that first good rainfall we had. If you had it earlier, you may have over watered your garden bed.
Bland, watery tasting tomatoes and/or grainy tomatoes are also due to over-watering.
Paste tomatoes are the most susceptible to Blossom End Rot (BER). The best way to prevent BER is to water less. Really! Erratic watering, mostly over-watering, is the most common cause.
I turned on my weeping hoses every 3rd day this summer and left them on for 30 to 40 minutes. That was longer than I have had to leave them on in the past but it took that long to soak the entire bed. I had zero BER in the potager, not even one tomato.
Get to know your soil, your beds, keep an eye on things ... and most importantly, stick your finger into the soil to check for moisture. If the soil is wet an inch or two down, you are good for at least another day. Your beds may require water more often than mine, or even less often. Depends on the hours of sunshine, the soil, how windy it is, the watering system you use... so many factors.
Oh, and make sure to plant them deep so that they develop really great root systems deep down in the bed.
Still having BER and tired of it? Here are some BER-resistant varieties to try.
Here is a blog post about common tomato issues and how to deal with them.
Hoping you had a really great tomato year.
If not, I am sure that next year will be better ; )
Tanja
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