First Time Gems and Duds
 

Thought it would be nice discuss new "gems" that did well for you this year as well as "duds" that shall not return to the rotation.

I'll go first:

Gems:
German Orange Strawberry- most robust plant and huge of 1-2 lb toms
Sunchocola- very prolific large size cherries that had a nice flavor. Prone to cracking
Esterina - yellow prolific large cherries
Grandma Chocolate - nice tasting well producing black tom

Duds:
Maglia Rosa - decent determinant grape cherry producer. Pretty, meaty with so-so flavor. Was really looking forward to this one since it has so many fabulous reviews.

Gems:

Maglia Rosa and Taste Patio, both grown in containers. Very similar, in flavour but Taste Patio tomatoes are a little bigger and rounder. These tasted fabulous early in the season. They have recently put on a big flush of fruit which is rather bland because I've been heavy-handed with the watering can.....

Super Snow White, slightly yellow when ripe. A big juicy cherry
Sweet Aperitif, small red cherry with lots of flavour
Garnet, tasty brown cherry
Blush, tasty yellow bullet
Lucky Tiger, tasty green/yellow bullet, but skimpy
Captain Lucky, delicious bi-coloured beefsteak
KARMA Apricot, tasty two-bite cherry
EM Champion, an early, compact red heart. Great flavour with a little acid kick
Lucky Agi F1 was healthy and tasty, bullet-shaped with thick skin
Madeira F1 also a healthy brown cherry with a complex taste

Green Bee F1, the tomato I expected to hate because I'm not a big fan of "crunchy". I grew it for its long-keeping ability. When it is perfectly ripe (with some red showing) the taste isn't bad at all :) It is a monster vine, very healthy and incredibly productive.


Duds so far:

Dr. Carolyn Pink (red). Vigorous and healthy
Galina, prolific, but subject to Septoria

Both taste bland, but are supposed to be fabulous later in the season. Drumming fingers impatiently. Meanwhile the dogs and chickens are enjoying these, not because they are so terrible, but because I like to share :).

Unfortunately, Blush 2 succumbed to BER in my garden and didn't recover. I didn't think it tasted better than Blush and I pulled it.

KARMA Miracle split badly, despite the drought. It must have been the dew that caused it because of its thin skin. It had good flavour.

Brandysweet Plum tasted good, but it split and was a disease magnet.

Linda

[QUOTE=Labradors2;759284]Gems:

Maglia Rosa and Taste Patio, both grown in containers. Very similar, in flavour but Taste Patio tomatoes are a little bigger and rounder. These tasted fabulous early in the season. They have recently put on a big flush of fruit which is rather bland because I've been heavy-handed with the watering can.....

Super Snow White, slightly yellow when ripe. A big juicy cherry
Sweet Aperitif, small red cherry with lots of flavour
Garnet, tasty brown cherry
Blush, tasty yellow bullet
Lucky Tiger, tasty green/yellow bullet, but skimpy
Captain Lucky, delicious bi-coloured beefsteak
KARMA Apricot, tasty two-bite cherry
EM Champion, an early, compact red heart. Great flavour with a little acid kick
Lucky Agi F1 was healthy and tasty, bullet-shaped with thick skin
Madeira F1 also a healthy brown cherry with a complex taste

Green Bee F1, the tomato I expected to hate because I'm not a big fan of "crunchy". I grew it for its long-keeping ability. When it is perfectly ripe (with some red showing) the taste isn't bad at all :) It is a monster vine, very healthy and incredibly productive.


Duds so far:

Dr. Carolyn Pink (red). Vigorous and healthy
Galina, prolific, but subject to Septoria

Both taste bland, but are supposed to be fabulous later in the season. Drumming fingers impatiently. Meanwhile the dogs and chickens are enjoying these, not because they are so terrible, but because I like to share :).

Unfortunately, Blush 2 succumbed to BER in my garden and didn't recover. I didn't think it tasted better than Blush and I pulled it.

KARMA Miracle split badly, despite the drought. It must have been the dew that caused it because of its thin skin. It had good flavour.

Brandysweet Plum tasted good, but it split and was a disease magnet.

Linda[/QUOTE]

SSW and Blush are both great cherries. I've tried many of the bi-colors and Big Rainbow has been the most consistent in terms of production and taste in my experience.

Hi smithmal,
I have had a look at a seed vendor and they only have these 3 varieties that have similar names but none quite exactly the same.
Do you know if yours would be one of these or yours is different?

German Red Strawberry
German Gold Strawberry
Orange Strawberry

Thanks for any information.

I grew Orange Strawberry last season. It was a gorgeous, very tasty, large heart. YUM :).

Linda

Two gems and one dud.
 

My gems:
Kardia Karpos. Wonderful huge pink heart-shaped tomatoes.
Sunspot. I really liked this large yellow cherry type.
My dud:
Santa Anna. This was a variety that appears to have been crossed hoping for longer shelf life. The result was plants with tomatoes that don't ripen.

[QUOTE=Master Shake;759290]Hi smithmal,
I have had a look at a seed vendor and they only have these 3 varieties that have similar names but none quite exactly the same.
Do you know if yours would be one of these or yours is different?

German Red Strawberry
German Gold Strawberry
Orange Strawberry

Thanks for any information.[/QUOTE]

German Orange Strawberry is a different variety again Master Shake, although Oange Strawberry is a maybe. May I ask which Vendor

Gems: Madera, Pervaya Lyubov, Galahad F1 (so far).

Duds: Banana Toes and Bundaberg Rumball (dwarfs). BT has been a Septoria magnet for me. BR is a pretty tomato, but a tiny plant and low-yielding here.

[QUOTE=Master Shake;759290]Hi smithmal,
I have had a look at a seed vendor and they only have these 3 varieties that have similar names but none quite exactly the same.
Do you know if yours would be one of these or yours is different?

German Red Strawberry
German Gold Strawberry
Orange Strawberry

Thanks for any information.[/QUOTE]

Got my seeds feom here: [url]https://croatianseeds-store.com/index.php/croatian-seeds-store/427/25/tomatoes/yellow-tomatoes/orange-tomato-german-orange-strawberry-1-detail[/url]

Forgot to mention that Dr. Carolyn's takes a while for the flavor to show up (bright flavor with a hint of citrus). It's one of the most prolific cherries I've ever grown. Matt's Wild Cherry, Magic Mountain F1 and Black Cherry being the others.

First time gems:

Babywine (!)
Black and Brown Boar
Butter Apple (great production)

First-time duds


Red Boar (went down fast to diseases)

[QUOTE=Whwoz;759295]German Orange Strawberry is a different variety again Master Shake, although Oange Strawberry is a maybe. May I ask which Vendor[/QUOTE]

Upon a little research i have found that German Orange Strawberry is actually (apparently) just Orange Strawberry, that got renamed mistakenly, somewhere along the way.
Vendor is Tomatofest.

Here is the details i found at Victory seeds-

[I]It should be noted that many seed suppliers have incorrectly or inadvertently renamed this variety as "German Orange Strawberry." This error was brought to our attention by our friend and mentor, Dr. Carolyn Male, who features the variety in her book, "100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden."[1] Each packet contains approximately 20 seeds.[/I]

My wife came home from a trip to the mall with a packet of cherry tomato seeds; it turned out to be labelled " very cherry mix" including all colors.

No way to tell what is going to grow, I planted 12 seeds, got 11 plants. One is a pretty standard-issue cherry like Camp Joy, two look to be Isis Candy (which is good, because I have never grown it) and 5 are a yellow determinate dwarf like yellow tumblin' tom. One is very much like Matt's Wild Cherry in flavor, but the clusters are smaller and the cherries larger. One is a big yellow indeterminate covered in fruit, and one might be a green....or very late.

The one like Matt's wild cherry is right alongside the gate, and I find myself mauling it mercilessly as I go past. It seems worth keeping even if I don't know the name.

The little yellow ones I have so many of are going in the compost; when they are all that's ripe, they're fine, but they crack if the weatherman reports rain by the end of the week.

I had saved seeds for a variety I got as "Chet's Italian Black" from a Wisconsin gardener. My seeds were labelled 2007, after originally recieving some in 2004...so apparently I grew them out once, but didn't keep my notes. 3/24 came up; I gave one to my daughter and kept two.

It's not a black. It COULD be tigerella, but it's just slightly larger and tastier than I remember Tigerella...and the gel stays green even as they ripen past the best eating stage.

We grew a couple of hybrids: "Fantastic" has always filled canning jars, and "Mountain Magic", which wasn't really magical.

The rest of my growing is dominated by old commercial varieties like Faribo Gold and Wisconsin 55.

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Gems:
Purple Brandy, grown from decade-old seed, just as good as I remembered
Pruden's Purple, an old favorite
KARMA Apricot, good-tasting and has pretty good foliage even though I've been watering only every 2 weeks or so, and minimal LFB (leaf-footed bug) damage
Rose de Berne, consistent producer
Green Bee F1, thick skin so the LFBs can't do much damage
Inzhir Rozovye, a beautiful fluted red fig-shaped with good flavor
Agi Red F1, currently my favorite for taste

Duds:
Some of my early-season favorites have been demolished by LFBs so won't return!
Most cherry tomatoes, especially Rose Quartz Multiflora and Medovaya Kaplya, because they seem to be the prime feeding ground for LFBs
Arkansas Traveler, lots of LFB damage
Schokolodnaja Sosulka, not much fruit, and LFBs have damaged most of it
Romovaya Baba, a GWR that has more of a sour flavor (I prefer sweeter)

I planted my tomatoes late, so production is very late. So far:

First Time Gem:

Rosella - pretty dusty rosy-purple color, wonderful tasting cherry, tons of blossoms,

Dud (so far):

Medovaya Kaplya - early producer but surprisingly bland taste, tends to fall off the vine so find them on the ground a lot (even green). I'm hoping the flavor improves later in the season b/c I was really looking forward to this. Last year Galina was a "dud" too, very productive but bland taste. Same for Sweet Treats, just blah.

But then, lots of yellow/orange tomatoes seem blah to me. Only one year was Chef's Choice Orange super tasty, since then so blah I didn't grow it. Kellogg's Breakfast and KBX, both blah. Growing Dad's Sunset this year, in hopes of finding an orange I like.

I do love Lillian's Yellow Heirloom.