Quote:
Originally Posted by barkeater
If I decide to grow for market again in a few years, I need very productive early varieties with size and flavor. These are listed on Sandhill Preservation's website that look promising. Has anyone grown them before?
Early Rouge: 62 days. Semi-determinate, huge yields of top grade, uniform 6 to 8 oz. globe red tomatoes. Excellent choice for the market gardener.
Burpee Gloriana: 67 days. Determinate plants with 6 to 8 oz., globe-shaped fruit. Outstanding yields.
Burpee Sunnybrook Earliana: 58 days. Semi-determinate plants, flattened, 6 to 8 oz., red fruit. Very old Burpee selection. The 1920 Burpee Seed Catalog says the following about this tomato, "The entire crop can be gathered generally in about three weeks from the time the first fruit ripens. Sunnybrook Earliana is undoubtedly the very best, earliest, scarlet fruited tomato."
Sweetie: 63 days. Indeterminate plants. Large, 1 pound plus, pink beefsteak type that continues to be the earliest pink beefsteak.
Superbec: 55 days. Determinate plants, early, 8 oz. fruits, red globe from Quebec.
Ultrabec: 65 days. Determinate plants, 8 to 10 oz. globe-shaped fruit, from the Canadian plant breeding program.
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Old thread, I know, but yeah, I like it.
I've grown Early Rouge, Burpee Gloriana, and Burpee Sunnybrook Earliana (all in the same year along with many other earlies). It was a hot/dry year and many tomatoes experienced stunting from heat stress (we had black plastic, which made it even hotter).
Early Rouge didn't do much for me. The foliage looked fine, other than that there wasn't a lot of it, however.
Burpee gloriana got a wave or two of prolific, large (think 8 to 11oz tomatoes), round to oblate, heavily cracked, tangy, soft tomatoes. Then it stopped producing. It wasn't super early; maybe the early side of midseason.
Burpee Sunnybrook Earliana had small fruit (maybe 2 to 4oz). The fruits were kind of beefsteak-shaped—definitely not round. It wasn't early or late. It kept producing for the rest of the season. Flavor was good.
Since a lot of people have mentioned Bloody Butcher, I think I'll review it, too:
It's a soft, but very meaty, round, salad-sized tomato with decent flavor (not my personal favorite for flavor, but I can see how many people online would favor it). The fruits are a bit smaller than my Early Girl F1 fruit this year. The plant is PL and grows a normal length for an indeterminate, but isn't terribly bushy (in a cage, anyway). It's very productive. It seems to like drought more than Matina. Fruits don't spoil immediately, but they won't keep on the vine forever. You need to harvest them often or they'll get too soft. It's a good tomato, and it doesn't take a lot of real estate. If you really like Bloody Butcher, I suspect you'll like Marion, too. I suspect most people would like Marion, though. It's significantly different, but has some significant similarities that I like. (They're both prolific, early and of a similar shape.)
Someone mentioned Manitoba not having much flavor. Mine was very flavorful in 2017, in drought conditions.