I ordered some new varieties of tomatoes for this year.  I ordered varieties called Tumbling Tom, Bush Champion, and Italian Heirloom.  Two are regular size and one is a cherry size.  I thought maybe these would be a nice change from the Beefsteak, Better Boy and Early Girl I usually buy.  What are you planting this year?  Any favorites I might want to try? 

http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?_adv_prop=image&fr=yfp-t-701-s&va=big+rainbow+tomato

http://www.burpee.com/vegetables/tomatoes/tomato-heirloom-taste-collection-prod000959.html?catId=2271&trail=

ww.reimerseeds.com/evergreen-tomato.aspx

http://www.reimerseeds.com/garden-peach-tomato-yellow.aspx

I haven't decided on what varieties this year but I usually order them from Burpee.  I have had good luck with tomatoes but each year I get that nasty green horned tomato worm.  If I can catch it fairly early on then it doesn't do too much damage. 

I will post what varieties I order later on.  Gotta go find my catalog now.

I love Napa Grape tomatoes! I've planted them 3 years and they always go crazy. I end up pruning the plant down so it doesn't take over the garden. Last year I tried a different grape tomato and it was pitiful compared to the Napa. Two years ago my DH brought an ice cream pail full of them to work to get rid of some of them and we still had way too many.

Are you going to start yours from seed? Or did you order plants? I've tried starting from seed a few times but only had luck the first year.

I usually get a Beefsteak, Early Girl and some variety of cherry tomatoes.

Last year we had a terrible drought and unprecedented high temperature. Early Girl continued to produce, but tomatoes were undersized (all kinds were). Better Boy was similar, but cracks badly for me. Celebrity  and Parks Whopper are about equal as my best producers. Jetstar is under-rated. (I just don't like hardly any beefsteak types, as they crack badly on top and will spoil before they get fully ripe). My wife likes all the Brandywines, and I find them pretty good, too.

I am starting all from seed this year for a change.  I usually just get seedlings from my local nursery. 

I do not order from Burpee, they are overpriced and their shipping charges are outrageous.  I started an order from Burpee last year for about six seed packets and their shipping charge was $18!!!  I canceled the order.

I always buy tomato plants since seeds take too much time here to mature and fruit.  There is a variety called Willamette something which is a gorgeous, large tomato that is pretty tasty.  Usually we grow the grape, cherry and plum tomatoes; I buy plants of whatever is available and they have turned out well.  The Willamette variety is a large tomato which everyone prizes.  So when they come out for sale, they get picked first and sell out quickly.

I had mentioned earlier in another topic here about my one experience with tomatoes and frost.  We planted them about the end of April which is a bit early for here and then got hit with a frost.  Well, I thought they were goners but I trimmed back the growth and hoped for the best.  Lo and behold, we got lots of the  best tasting tomatoes ever.  Perhaps the stress threatened them so they felt they better produce or die.  Anyone else have this happen to them?

My neighbor started her tomatoes from seed but they took so long to mature that she got very few tomatoes.  Once that happened, she vowed to never try growing tomatoes from seed again and she has gotten much better results with buying the plants.

We had a volunteer tomato plant that started in the rocky landscaping next to our house. I have no idea how a seed would have got there to get it started. It looked pretty tacky there, but we just let it go because we thought it was funny. In the fall we had to cover it up with a sheet, but we got lots and lots of tomatoes off of it. We had an unusually late fall here last year so I had to bring a lot of green tomatoes into the house about the end of October. We were getting nice ripe tomatoes into November. Very unusual for us in Minnesota.

One year my street reflectors broke so I took out the yellow and red disks.  Just for fun, I put the red ones in the pot of tomatoes.  Well, they did ripen faster.  The sun was hitting the reflectors and bouncing up onto the plants.  Then hubby threw them away after we took the leftover stalks out of the pot.  I had read somewhere about this, using red to ripen tomatoes faster.  They tasted fine and juicy, too. 

That's an interesting trick Priscilla. I may try that in the early spring or fall.  They ripen pretty fast here in the summer w/ no help. :-)

If so we could trade.

Aunt Ruby's German green http://www.reimerseeds.com/aunt-rubys-german-green-tomato.aspx 

Not from this company but they have great pictures.

I love Sun Gold(an orange cherry) even though they split easily their flavor makes them well worth growing and they are VERY productive.  I find First Lady to be much better than Early Girl.  Striped Germans are good and Brandywine.   I usually try some new ones every year.

to grow in the greenhouse for early tomatoes then a little later I will start more for use outdoors.

I plant Jersey tomatoes, Roma Tomatoes and cherry tomatoes.  We are going to be planting a ton of Roma's this year so I can make tomato sauce, puree and diced tomatoes to can.

Tomato leather (dehydrated tomato sauce) I have made it with yellow tomatoes before and I really like the flavor. It intensifies the  flavor like drying fruit does. Also want to try tomato soup with other colored tomatoes. I also dry small tomatoes in halves. We also do salsa and tomato sauce.

OK, friends, here is a dumb mistake I made with my seeds that will result in me probably having zero success this year.

Last  year we went off to my Granddaughter's high school graduation in May. I had 40 healthy plants in two grow-domes, just about ready to transplant into 3 inch peat pots. I asked my wife's sister to care for them, telling her all she had to do was water them every 3-4 days and be sure they did not dry out. Meing the way she is, she looked at them and decided they were getting too much water. So she never watered them and I cam home to 80 dead plants.

And I just took the gro0dome with 80 dead plants, cleaned it up a little, and replanted in it. dumb dumb dumb I know better.

All of my plants germinated slowly. Half of the ones that did come up damped off. 1.4 of them died from something. Everything that did come up is languishing badly.  This re-using might/probably have worked had I cooked eerything about 8 hours at 275 degrees. Still, compare how little the expense would have been using brand new plugs that I have a couple hundred of.

Dont do what I did, good friends. Never re=use the plugs. The potential loss is so far more than whatever you might gain.

Don,t  mix water in potting soil bag to moisten soil. I did not use the whole bag then planted a flat of peppers  found out a few days later the whole bag was moldy . Had to waste some seeds but found out in time to plant more before it was to late. I mix  a small amound in a pan if soil is to dry. If you use to dry of a soil the water just runs off and it is impossible to get moist.