Quote:
Originally Posted by cdcox
I love tomatoes, but can't grow them.
I'm curious about why so many varieties? I think I'd plant my favorite 2 or 3 varieties and leave it at that. Surely some of those you planted you consider inferior to others?
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Tomatoes, at least for me, are the easiest thing to grow. (I've never grown a corn plant worth a shit for 20 years.) But they are also what I concentrate the most on in my garden.
I like trying several new varieties every year in addition to the standards. The DX-52-12 is the defacto standard here in the mountain west. It's an improved version of the Moscow (which, in itself, was a hybrid lab variety) developed for the higher elevations, sandy soil and shortened growing seasons here in the Rocky Mountain region.
I do save seeds from the better plants and put into the ground several from the best of the seed starts. I also order a few new varieties of heirloom seed packs every year. You never know which one ends up being your favorite. Might as well try as many as you can in order to get that end of the rainbow, pot of gold if you can. So far, for me, the Green Zebra has been my favorite. Doesn't can for shit, so you have to eat them fresh, but holy mother of all things tasty, they are good.
I'm trying Mortgage Lifters this year based on the favorable comments that this strain has received here, although from what I hear, they don't have the acidity to preserve properly. Sounds like a good fresh mater though.
I like trying a lot of varieties simply because they are so different in terms of taste, acidity, etc. They all cook different, can different, etc. I make a ton of salsa every year (I'll make five or six batches in a season using 100+ tomatoes in each batch), make my own BBQ sauce from scratch, and just through using tomatoes in everyday cooking. I try to can an immense amount of tomatoes just by themselves so I can have that taste in cooking deep into the winter months.
I hate mass produced hydro store bought tomatoes. Bad scotch, bad tequila, bad tomatoes. It's easy to tell the difference between bad and good with such things.