Suggestions for...

[D.J. Wolf]

Ok everyone, I'm back to asking for advise again lol. What I'm looking for is a highly productive, fairly early paste/sauce tomato. I want to find something I can make sauce, paste, salsa, and maybe juice out of that is HIGHLY productive, fairly few disease or other growing issues, and decent shelf life (as it make take several days for me to get stuff processed). These will be used, as I said, for juice, salsa, paste, and sauce, all canned. I've looked at a lot of seed sellers, etc. but I value and trust the opinions and experience of my fellow Tomatoville members more that I do a picture and brief description on a sellers website.

For this part of my garden this year, I'm not as concerned if these are a OP variety or a hybrid, as everything will be cooked and processed, then canned.

My plan right now is to put in 15-20 plants specifically for paste and sauce, etc. Would like to be able to put up as much finished product as I physically can off of this number of plants, I seem to maybe have tapped into a small market for this type of stuff, and I love my tomato juice and homemade sauces anyway.

Anyway, any help any of you can give would be great!

[MissS]

Work Release Paste and Cuostralee are productive and great for sauce.

[KarenO]

Marzano fire is my favourite paste now.
Very productive and great flavour. Much better in both features than any old fashioned paste I’ve grown.
Determinate hybrids may be more productive but if flavour has any importance which it does for me, I recommend Marzano fire.
KarenO

[Tormato]

Can one variety do it all?

For maximum product, it seems like you will need a very juicy tomato for juice. That same tomato will need a lot of flesh for paste and sauce. Will the juice, paste, sauce, and salsa all taste great from that one tomato?

At a minimum, I recommend that you trial two varieties, one for juice and one for the rest.

And, if it were me, I'd trial 15 to 20 different varieties next year, and select the best one(s) for the following year.

[D.J. Wolf]

Thanks for the info and advice everyone! Tormato, if I had the time and space, I'd agree, trialing more varieties would be better. That said, the extra space needed, plus extra expense of 15-20 different packs of seeds would about kill me.

Karen, I did decide to go with the San Marzano Fire this year and see how they do. Ordered from Fred Hemple's wonderful site, and they're on the way already. Also ordered a couple different beefsteaks from his site that I wanted to try, Rainbow Jazz Heart and Captain Lucky.

[KarenO]

That’s great Kevin, I’m sure you will love all of them, definitely some of my personal favourites
Have a great season!
KarenO

[D.J. Wolf]

Thanks Karen. I've still got a long way to go before spring, but trying to get a jump on it. In addition to the above, I'll be ordering seeds for Sunsugar, Sun Gold, Cherokee Purple, Mortgage Lifter, and at least one or two more. Would like to try a blue/black cherry at least