Mark's choices for markets
 

Delicious and Chapman for large red beefsteaks, people gobble them up, Our own creation called Mat-Su Express is a favorite for medium size red beefsteaks.

Crnkovic Yugoslavian gets no complaints for a pink beefsteak.

Yellow- orange, Yellow BW and KBX always sells out, I get great production from them, the fruit does not crack either. Green Giant X Juanne Flammee threw these cute bright orange perfect round globes, people love them too.

I quit growing purple tomatoes for the markets, they lag behind the others. May do more Paul Robeson next year, but only a few, that way I have some dark tomatoes.

It's been a good year, I wish I could produce more, may have to throw up more greenhouses.

It's deeply rewarding to shape a business from a passion and make it work, congrats on another successful year.

Glad you are having another great year Mark. Showing us all how it`s done a way up North :) Good for you and you should build another greenhouse and expand.
Karen

It has really been cool to see how the markets in do in various parts of the country and world do. I am facisinated by the trends and various likes among people and markets. In my area, the typical markets have the R & R's and the upscale markets thrive on stripes, blacks and cool looking tomatoes.

I'm still impressed that you get commercial production out of yellow brandywine. I've tried both the "plain" one and the Platfoot Strain. They have always been a metaphor for low production when I grow them.

Mat-Su Express is the best tasting red tomato I have ever grown. I get a lot of cat-facing from weather extremes, but I don't care if they sell - I'll eat them myself. Bradley was a close second in flavor. Yield wasn't huge, but the fruit were attractive and uniform.

I grew a ruffled pink this year, a Russian variety called 100 Pudov. It might fit well into your lineup.

I was wondering if Mat-Su Express was pink from the Brandywine or the red from Bloody Butcher. And a potato leaf no doubt. Is it a stout plant Cole Robbie and did you prune? Thinking Mark took them to one or two stems.

It grew similarly to the rest of my indeterminates. I pruned early on, but then quit. I think most of my cat-facing came from cold May nights that dipped into the high 40's.

Rebel Yell is another one you might like to try, Mark.

Mat-Su Express
 

Ricky the largest part of the Mat-su line is red, but I did pull a pink selection out of the F2 and have been working on that version too. It is shaped like a smooth BW and taste is similar to BW , but it is a little smaller and quite a bit earlier.
I grew out a couple hundred plants to make good selections to get the line where it is currently. The project was originally meant to produce early smooth fruit BW types, but my main F2 selection was a very early mini red beefsteak that was mouth watering good/ exceptional, I did make a good choice it seems.
Another unique trait of the strain is many fruit tend to ripen at the same time on a truss, that was luck, but the trait seems to be captured. I have not had one complaint from people who have ate these, they are pretty complex tomatoes considering you get ripe tomatoes just a bit over 100 days from seed sprout, 102-108 to be exact.
I must add that AKSherry is responsible for helping with all of the crosses we are tinkering with, 15-20 or so. She is pretty good at doing the tiny flowers you find on many super early varieties, me, not as much patience. LOL.
Anyway, I will gift out as many F6 seeds as I can this fall for others to try in their areas.

The pic of the plants are not Mat-Su, I accidentally posted that one and don't know how to delete. It is Bloody Butcher X Dester, they are pretty good too. Sorry

Cole, I have grown RY for a couple of years, and do like them, am making a cross with them too. LOL

Yellow BW
 

Start with nice big starts, they just take awhile to get going Cole, but do produce well

You need a GWR or preferably a green zebra type (more chance to sell those than plain gwr). Store bought mystery zebra has been the best tomato I've had, so there's clearly serious taste potential in there, will have to trial more.
It's tough to find a black tomato that isn't overly soft (they taste just fine when soft but it's likely people will just think it's way overripe), indian stripe kinda fits here better than others.

Appreciate this thread. Already looking for next year myself.
I have a potential buyer for next year that can move the volume I want to grow (I need to move at least 40 single layer boxes per week to achieve my monetary goals).
Therefore, grading and packing them by size and having uniformity will be very important. I can't just dump a bunch of different sizes and shapes into the box to be able to work with the buyer.
I am waiting on word back for color variety as well as the size.
A current chef I sell to only wants fruit that would probably weigh around 9-12 ounces. Roughly between a baseball and a softball in size. They slice them for sandwiches and were scared by the size of the delicious. Not sure about the new buyer. I know he supplies 20 something restaurants weekly in NYC. Will find out soon if that is the same for him.
I assume I will grow a red, pink, orange/yellow, and something striped. Not sure if purple/cherokee purple will be required, as they are well known.
I will update when I hear back and value your opinions.
Catfacing, fused fruit, and stinkbugs absolutely killed my marketable fruit this year (maybe a 50% loss).
I can solve the stinkbugs with screening.
Hope to solve the catfacing with variety selection along with having endwalls and roll up sides on my tunnels next year to keep things warmer early on.
Also, my produce stand buyer only wants non-red heirlooms, so that also made it tough to move the large reds.
All good though, this was an experimental year to figure these things out. I didn't quit my day job and did not make a huge jump in number of plants from 2015.
Next year will be a major step, and I am glad to have taken some lumps now, instead of next year when there is more on the line.
Thanks to all TVers that have helped along the way.

For heirloom, or OP varieties, Chapman and Crnkovic both threw nice fruit, no catafacing or cracks. YBW will catface in cooler weather, but the Platfoot strain is pretty smooth overall when it warms up. Look at Garden Treasure for a good hybrid that throws near perfect tomatoes. I grew one plant this year and they are good, and are round too.
Zipcode, I have grown Green Giant they taste great, but I can't sell that many, people want super tasty red, pink, or yellow-orange tomatoes up here, so I am done with those types. I want massive production of the above mentioned, or any super tasting, red, pink, orange that has nice fruit.

Mark, have you grown Bradley? It had excellent flavor and uniform fruit for me this year.

Indian Stripe is well known for its flavor and all of my fruit this year is uniform & no blemishes. Size is right as well 8-12 oz. although I had a few germination issues with Beauty King, I was able to get three plants in the ground and the fruit is wonderful. Cool looks, good flavor and few blemishes.

Cole I wrote down Bradley, will give it a try.
Indian Stripe was much like Cherokee Purple, the dark tomatoes only sell decent.
I will take a look at Beauty King, thanks for the suggestions.
I just harvested a Magnum, it has a massive yield, and the fruit looks great, pretty good taste too. If Mountain Fresh was indeterminate it would be great, super good taste, big yield, perfect tomatoes. I have a problem with disease on determinates in my greenhouses, so it has to go, and I am not so happy about that.

Thanks for the suggestions guys.
My buddy/broker said that I can mix various colors in one box. The more variety the better, but no specific color is required as long as there is a mix.
So, really, I can narrow down the list to most productive and if that means IS or CP gets knocked off, no big deal.
The buyer wants large and X-large fruit, graded separately in boxes. That would be the USDA definition of those sizes, which are probably different than what we would consider large and X-large in our minds.
Here is a good link on sizes/grading (Mark, what is the diameter of the Mat-Su?)
[URL="http://www.ipt.us.com/produce-inspection-resources/inspectors-blog/produce-defects-and-grade-standard-changes/tomatoes-sizing"]http://www.ipt.us.com/produce-inspection-resources/inspectors-blog/produce-defects-and-grade-standard-changes/tomatoes-sizing[/URL]

Mat-Su Express has such eye-appeal, it seems a natural for market growers.

I'm wondering about it being too small to be a "Large" tomato.

[QUOTE=AKmark;580020]Delicious and Chapman for large red beefsteaks, people gobble them up, Our own creation called Mat-Su Express is a favorite for medium size red beefsteaks. …[/QUOTE]

I definitely think Chapman looks, tastes and feels like a very marketable tomato (as long as customers like the large size). I grew it this year and it was awesome. They're beautiful tomatoes. One of my favorites, this year, for both looks and taste.

A few others I think might be good to investigate, if you haven't already, are these:
* Thessaloniki (nice, firm, round, decently large, red, productive, very-round, easy-to-find-and-pick, fruits with consistent fruit size and shape)
* Creole (fruit quality is very similar to Thessaloniki, but it was earlier for me; not sure on productivity, since it got smothered)

Anyway, out of the 100 or so varieties I grew this year those were the two (in addition to Chapman) that stuck out to me a lot as having great qualities for market.

I also think Matina is a great one, although the fruits can be a little on the soft side (so, that's the only reason I don't include it with the others)—the earliest fruits weren't soft at all, though (but they didn't have as much taste as the softer, larger fruits that came later; although the tomatoes did change after the initial first ones, they stayed pretty consistent after that). People do like it a lot, and notwithstanding the softness, it might keep just fine (as in, about average or so); so, it might be okay there. Anyway, it's very productive, early, and tangy. It's not large (maybe about the size of Early Girl F1, if not a little bigger). A lot of people who visited seemed drawn to Matina for some reason (more than my other tomatoes), and more people favored it most than any other variety they tried.

I'm not sure how any of these do in a greenhouse.

I would personally love to see a cross between Thessaloniki and Matina. Chapman, Creole, Cuostralee and George Detsikas Italian Red might be good ones to cross with Matina, too.

Because some sources that sell Thessaloniki seem to have different sizes, I'll note that [URL="http://timeless-tomatoes.com/thessaloniki.html"]this is where I got mine[/URL]. They were maybe softball sized for me, and later than the stated DTM. I got Creole and Matina there, too.

Shule interesting you mentioned Matina. I have grown it for several years and we made some great crosses with it too. M X YBW, M X Delicious, M x Chapman, M X BW Sudduth's.
I will try Thessalonki, have not tried that one.

[QUOTE=AKmark;599985]Shule interesting you mentioned Matina. I have grown it for several years and we made some great crosses with it too. M X YBW, M X Delicious, M x Chapman, M X BW Sudduth's.
I will try Thessalonki, have not tried that one.[/QUOTE]

Awesome! :D:yes:

Are they available, yet, by chance? Matina x Chapman and Matina x YBW are of particular interest to me (although the others sound pretty cool, too).

Matina has a nice smaller size and round and deep red. It's probably popular with older people who can't eat a huge tomato at once. Wasn't very productive for me though, definitely doesn't respond well to one stem pruning.
I always thought that Neves Azorean Red should have big market appeal with huge no catface fruits, very red and sort of shiny. I wasn't quite convinced with the taste.
I think I need to try Chapman, I still haven't found a big red that I really like, Druzba is the only one that comes close but is a rather poor producer.

Matina and BB
 

Here is a pic of Matina and Bloody Butcher, our go to plants for crosses. Our goal is a larger tomato than these, that is as early, and has a strong tomato taste.
Shule, I will send some out when they are mostly stabilized. The F1's showed promise.

Mark,

Always love your threads! The pictures and setup are breathtaking and making me want to do what you do!

Any chance you'll be making the F6 mini red beefsteaks available? If you say the taste is exceptional, you've got my attention!

Send me your address, I have a few left to spare. Yes, most plants are producing very good tasting tomatoes, and they are much earlier than many really good tasting tomatoes. Some people are sending me some very good reports. They average 6-12 oz or so, I got a little variation in the F5, and of course only selected seed from the earliest best tasting plants for F6 seed.
Just send me a few seeds back from your favorite, for F7's. I do think these should work good in your area.

Shule I will send you some at the end of this coming season, I will have the Chapman cross at F4. I can send some Mat-Su Express though.
Mark

Thank you very much for your offer.

That sounds great about the Chapman cross. :)

Cole_Robbie already gave me some Mat-Su Express—otherwise I would love some.

Mark,
Have you or anybody tried the beefsteak variety called "Foronti"? I've read many good reviews about the excellent performance of this variety, specially under GH conditions. I'm starting a hydroponic farm for commercial purposes and i'm inclined towards this variety.

I have not tried it, but did notice it is supposed to have some resistance to powdery mildew. I would have to taste it before I based my market crops on it.

Alright, that's a good point. So what's your Goto beefsteak variety which is good in taste and excellent in yield? There are so many varieties that my head starts spinning. Can't decide what to select. I was more inclined towards Foronti bcz of its excellent yield, but i really don't know about its taste.