[JayG]

Although we encourage people to search the forums for information, having tried to discover recommendations for tomato varieties to grow next year I found the threads were scattered far and wide, so I thought a ranking list of member’s favourite varieties might be helpful to many of us.

There are literally hundreds of different types of tomato seeds to choose from, so rather than trying to set up ready-made polls for so many potential choices I would like to invite you to add a reply to this "sticky" nominating your choices.

Please make no more than two choices, which can be either cordon (indeterminate) or bush (determinate) and can be anything from large, plum-shaped and red, to tiny, round and yellow, but remember this is a survey of recommendations, not failures!

Against each choice, please give a rating out of 10 for yield and flavour so that they can be included in the final list.

Your entry should therefore look something like:

Red Firecracker; yield 8, flavour 10
Yellow fever; yield 10, flavour 7  

I will collate the results into a table after a few weeks, and will have a go at adding information such as fruit size, colour, shape, and whether cordon or bush.

If we get a good response I will ask Aunty to find a more permanent home for it on the forum.

Thanks!  




Thanks to all who have already posted, but we need MORE RESPONSES to make the results really meaningful (can there really be only about 30 tomato growers out of 15,000 members?)

Will let it run for another couple of weeks before collating the results.

JayG



Here are the results of the “Home-grown tomato survey"; thanks to all those who took the trouble to participate.

A few points about the results:

1) Only those varieties which received more than 2 votes have been included in the “top ten”; these are shown in red and have been listed in order of the overall combined average scores for yield and flavour. I was unable to find any information for “Italian plum” (generic?) or Lucibell.

2) The number of votes received was too low to make these results statistically significant, but they do give at least some indication of some of the varieties being grown “out there” and what you think of them.
I’ll leave you all to draw your own conclusions!  

3) I have done my best to classify the varieties according to whether they are bush/cordon (determinate/indeterminate) and also an indication as to fruit size, shape and colour. I will gladly correct any major errors, but please don’t split hairs when it comes to “pear-shape” versus “plum-shape”, or semi-bush versus semi-cordon (these terms are often used quite loosely by different websites!)

Hope the survey has been of some interest and possibly help to visitors and members.

JayG  (Jon)

Variety             No.of votes Av yield Av flavour Overall (y/f)   bush/cordon   Fruit type

Sungold F1           100's and 1000's Sweet Million F1 Moneymaker Shirley F1 Red Alert Black Cherry Gartenperle Brandywine Gardeners Delight Rio Grande Golden Sunrise Golden Cherry Russian Black Sprite Tommy Toe Tigerella Ildi Marmande Bambino Costoluto Fiorentino Costoluto Genovese Giant Belgium Matina Rosada F1 Saint Pierre Canestino di Lucca Sweet Olive Alicante Sioux Ailsa Craig San Marzano Gold nugget Purple Ukraine Roma Italian plum Lucibell

10             4 5 3 4 3 4 4 3 6 1 2 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

9.8           10.0 9.6 10.0 9.0 9.0 7.8 9.0 7.7 8.5 10.0 9.5 9.0 9.0 9.0 10.0 8.5 10.0 9.5 8.0 8.0 9.0 8.0 8.0 9.0 8.0 7.0 8.0 8.0 7.0 7.0 6.0 5.0 3.0 3.0

9.9                 9.0 8.8 8.3 9.0 8.7 9.5 8.3 9.3 8.3 10.0 10.0 10.0 10.0 10.0 9.0 10.0 8.0 8.5 10.0 10.0 9.0 10.0 10.0 9.0 10.0 10.0 9.0 8.0 9.0 8.0 9.0 8.0 10.0 7.0

9.9           9.5 9.2 9.2 9.0 8.8 8.6 8.6 8.5 8.4 10.0 9.8 9.5 9.5 9.5 9.5 9.3 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 8.5 8.5 8.0 8.0 7.5 7.5 6.5 6.5 5.0

cordon             bush cordon cordon cordon bush cordon bush cordon cordon bush cordon cordon cordon bush cordon cordon cordon semi-bush bush cordon cordon cordon cordon cordon bush cordon cordon cordon semi-bush cordon cordon cordon cordon semi-bush

medium gold cherry cherry medium round medium round small round cherry cherry beefsteak medium round pear medium yellow cherry golden medium round cherry cherry medium round mini pear yellow beefsteak cherry beefsteak beefsteak beefsteak medium round plum medium round pear medium round medium round medium round medium round plum cherry golden plum plum

[arugula]

How about I kick off with:

Gartenperle; yield 9, flavour 9
Golden Nugget; yield 5, flavour 8

[AndyRVTR]

Well for what it's worth....
Moneymaker: yield 10, flavour 8
Matina: yield 8, flavour 10

[cob nut]

Sweet Olive.....yield 8.....flavour 9

Sweet Millions.....yield 9.....flavour 9

[Ice]

Well it's hard to keep to just two but a couple deserve a mention.

Sungold F1, Flavour 10 yield 10
Black cherry, flavour 10 yield 6

These are the two I would grow year after year for flavour and colour if I get the growing conditions right.  There are others, but these are the two I would nominate as special.

[mumofstig]

Black Cherry flavour 10......... yield 8
San Marzano (only use cooked) flavour 9............ yield 6

Still try different ones as well each year in the hope of finding the 'perfect' one though 

[rem858]

sioux yield 7 flavour 9
lucibell yeild 8 flavour 8

[chimaera]

Gardener's delight ; yield 8, taste 7
Purple Ukraine; yield (ignoring end rot) 3, taste 10 (sharp, slightly unripe) and 10 (v sweet, well ripe)

Charlie

[Kleftiwallah]

Pasta tom' "Rio Grande"  yield - 10, flavour - 10.

Beefsteak tom'  "Brandywine"  Yield 7, flavour - 10.

[Nige2Plots]

Alicante                           Yield; 8     Flavour; 8
F1 Sweet Million               Yield; 10   Flavour; 8

[shokkyy]

Gartenperle - yield 10, flavour 9

Red Alert - yield 8, flavour 10

[Paul Plots]

Gardener's delight: yield 8, taste 7

Bambino: yield 8 taste 10!!!

[Jen]

Sungold :  yield 9  flavour 10

Shirley :     yield 10  flavour 9


these are my "stock"  varieties,
grow lots of others as well.

[bappelbe]

Brandywine: yield 7, flavour 10
Black cherry: yield 8, flavour 9

[Stoatus]

Costoluto Genovese: yield 9 flavour 9: beef tomato best for sauces but also ok in salads http://www.harvestwizard.com/2008/08/costoluto_genovese_tomato.html

Sweet Million: Yield 10 flavour 9: cherry tomato sweet and tasty