Row By Row Episode 110: Taste Testing Our FAVORITE Tomato Varieties This Year
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Tomato Taste Test
This year we decided to grow over eight different tomato varieties, and they are finally slowing down on production. Hoss Tools is always looking for ways to improve and making sure we are offering the best seeds to our customers. After this extensive trial, we learned many different things about our tomatoes with one of those being none of our varieties are losers. We compared everything from heirlooms, Open-pollinated, and paste tomatoes.
With a blindfold around his eyes, Mr.Hoss himself taste-tested every tomato. Based just on taste, he gave our Black Krim tomato the best score. The Black Krim is an heirloom tomato, and though it is not a dependable plant because of its lack of resistant characteristics, it is still one of the best-tasting tomatoes.
Red Snapper, Summer Pick, and Homestead follow closely behind Black Krim when it comes to taste. Where they lack bold flavors, they make up for it with their beneficial characteristics. The Red Snapper is an all-time favorite for Travis, but one Greg has never grown before. The Red Snapper makes a meaty tomato with a significant disease-resistant package and is one vigorous plant.
The Summer Pick Tomato is another seed that makes one big tomato. This variety is known for its high productivity as it made the second-largest harvest out of all the tomatoes. Our Homestead Tomato is our most vigorous plant and can withstand many things and taste pretty dang good.
Ranking Our Tomato Varieties
Though in Greg's eyes, those were the four best tasting tomatoes, we still have many varieties that give you excellent flavor and useful characteristics. One of those being the Chef's Choice Orange Tomato, this is an orange tomato that is rather large and is perfect for those BLT's.
Bella Rosa is a remarkable all-around plant. On a scale based just on taste, Greg gave it a 3.9 out of 5, but where it doesn't compare to the others is its productivity. The Bella Rosa is our most productive tomato, with its plant staying at a manageable height. For our gardeners that enjoy growing tomatoes in a container, this one is for you!!
The Brickyard tomato is one of our new varieties, but one we will grow again. This plant produced a large size tomato following behind the Red Snapper.
Show and Tell Segment
This South Georgia heat may be getting too hot to garden, but our crops are still producing. This week there is plenty to snack on between our okra, tomatoes, and figs. One of the things we trialed in the garden this year was the Jambalaya Okra right next to the Heavy Hitter.
The Jambalaya is one of our tried and true varieties, but we are always wanting to compare it to other types making sure we can offer the best seeds to our customers. The Jambalaya is one of our most expensive seeds, but it proved itself once again. This Heavy Hitter is an open-pollinated variety many of our customers enjoy growing. Still, compared to the Jambalaya, it just didn't hold a light when it came to productivity, the size of the pod, or how fast it germinated.
Also, don't forget Hoss Tools is looking for customer testimonial videos to use, and we would love to hear from you about how you enjoy our products or videos! Another thing you can do to help us out is to submit recipes to see if they make the cut for the Hoss Tools recipe book, which is in the making. You can send those recipes to our e-mail or mail them in!
Question and Answer Segment
As always, we are here to answer your questions, and today we were asked some good ones. The first question one of our viewers asked was about something we just started doing this year. Succession planting sweet corn, he asked if it was too late to do one more crop? Though we are waiting until late August for another crop, the guys at Hoss Tools believe you can plant sweet corn throughout the summer as long as you have adequate irrigation and fertilizer.
Back to tomatoes, we had someone ask about leaf curl and what could be the cause of it. Leaf Curl is ubiquitous on tomatoes and usually has to do with the environment, including heat, insect pressure, or anytime the plant is stressed. A virus could also cause leaf curl, and if that is the case, there is not much you can do but plant different seeds. Our Red Snapper tomato is one we suggest planting if you are struggling with this because it has this disease resistance in its seed.
Another common problem we see is Pickle Worm. We haven't dealt with it much this year, but we have in the past, and we know how aggravating it can be. The main thing we suggest to get pickle worms out of your garden is to pick these vegetables out of the garden as soon as you see a hole in the crop. Also, a spray such as Spinosad or BT will tremendously help.
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