Dona: Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2007
Published by Hanna | Filed Under: Tomato Tastings
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Part of Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2007
I bought the Dona tomato plant because I had heard so much about it in the tomato underground. Supposedly, seeds for this plant are a bit hard to get a hold of. Not so much because they are not sold anywhere, but it is because the places that sell them tend to sell out quickly. And they sell out quickly, not because this is an overly popular tomato, but because seed dealers tend to keep only little on hand. This probably means this is a hit or miss tomato in that some years, everybody wnats it and other years, nobody wants it. Hmmm… I don’t know if that bodes well or not.
The description from the company I bought it from reads:
Open pollinated version of the wonderful French gourmet hybrid tomato “Dona”. Heavy crop of beautiful, smooth 4-6 oz. globes. Perfectly balanced flavor. Good disease resistance. Indeterminate, 70 days.
The Beauty Pageant:
Size: Cute. Nice medium small tomato.
Shape: Almost baseball round. Looks alot like the average tomato in a grocery store (let’s hope it doesn’t taste like it).
The inside: Red, but not brilliant red. Good, thick walls and the gelatin is pretty stiff but wet.
Texture: Somewhat mealy. The gel feels odd since it is stiff but wet. Kind of feels like frog eggs in your mouth. Not that I have ever had frog eggs in my mouth, but.. oh nevermind…
Tasting:
Off the Vine Tasting: Not something I am going to write home about. The meat is sweet, but in the sense of an out of season melon (same texture too). The gel is tomato tangy but not kick you in the mouth so.
Sliced and Salted Tasting: Salt improves the flavor. It teases out some more of the melon sweetness from the meat and makes the flavor nicely balanced between sweet and tangy.
Cooking Thoughts: I would probably use this for a sauce tomato. Because the gel is firm, it will deseed easily, but I think you would be better off, flavor wise, not to deseed this tomato as you lose the tangy flavor of the gel, which gives this a tomato flavor rather than a melon flavor.
Growing Notes:
This was a rather small plant. Reading other reviews of it, I had heard that this was a heavy producer and technically, it did have alot of blossoms. It looks like not too many of those blossoms got pollinated though. There are empty bracts all over the plant where a tomato should be but there is none. I don’t know if this is a problem with the blossoms in that they just don’t pollinate well, or if it is a problem with a lack of pollinators. I have been seeing bees in my garden pretty regularly, but perhaps they were just not regular enough.
Will Hanna grow this one again:
No. While it is not a bad tomato it is not a ‘good’ tomato. There is nothing special about it. It is really just a girl next door tomato. Why bother when there are so many others to choose from?
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August 8th, 2007
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August 9th, 2007 at 5:18 am
So, sounds like it tasted like it looked then, a grocery store tomato?
August 9th, 2007 at 11:36 am
I love it that someone else does formal tomato tasting notes like I do! It really is like a nice wine or cheese, there are all kinds of subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) differences.
August 9th, 2007 at 11:37 am
I love it that someone else does formal tomato tasting notes like I do! It really is like a nice wine or cheese, there are all kinds of subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) differences.
August 9th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
I really enjoy your tomato tastings ……Most of the tomatos I will never lay hands on …but that doesnt diminish my interest in reading about them …who knows ..maybe one day .
August 9th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Ellie - It was better than a gracery store tomato because there was some flavor. Grocery store tomatoes are no more than cardboard really. It just was not a spectacular tomato, is all.
Meryl - Do you publish yours? Let me know the link and I will be happy to refrence them on the Tastings page. The more tastings the better!
melissa - Oh, I don’t know. There might be some nice American garden blogger whose not afraid to break the law a little who might be willing to send you some seeds of what ever your would like.
Drop me a line if you would like some seeds from any of these. I would be more than happy to send them.
August 10th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
I enjoyed your tomatoes notes. I have a question where taste is concerned, why are my tomatoes so sour, did I do that? Or is it just the tomatoes fault.
August 11th, 2007 at 8:51 am
evelyn - What variety of tomato are you growing? That does make a difference in the taste.
August 16th, 2007 at 6:06 am
I don’t really know. Do you think it was viriety that made them sour not me? I wanted and thought that I was growing tumbling tom. What grew was a very short bushy plant with plum size red round tomatoes. I live in New York, and this was my year of vegetables. I am unable to contain my excitement and wait for the store to get in the plants. Do you have any ideas of what seeds I should “try” to grow next year?
August 16th, 2007 at 6:08 am
opps. My first year of growing vegetables.
August 16th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
I would be willing to bet money that the variety was what made them sour.
Gosh, what to plant for next year? That is such a preference thing. I am a big fan of black and purple tomatoes. A “purple cherokee” would probably be avaliable at a nursery near you and certainly you could order or trade for the seeds if you were up to growing them from seed.
If you are up to growing seeds - I just did a tasting this year on a yellow one called “persimmon” that was excellent. My husband is a big fan of “black etheopian” tomatoes. I like them too, but I like the purple cherokee better.
August 17th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
Thanks I will see what I can do about tracking them down.
January 23rd, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Maybe you should try the actual hybrid, not some ‘open pollinated’ semi-version. They are two different tomatoes.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I live in Northeast Ohio. After over 20 years of growing over 50 varieties of tomatoes, I would like to tell you that of the available varieties that I have tasted, the Dona hybrid (bought through Shepherd’s Seed, currently out of business) was the top tomato that I have grown - exceptional in all counts - plant size, very heavy yielding, good size, deep red color, juicy, firm, and above all, fantastic flavor. By the sound of your review, you may not have gotten the real thing. I have had disappointing results from buying from second tier seed companies after my primary sources were sold out. Also, the open pollinater varieties of Dona are a sorry example of the true Dona, even though they are sold as “having all of the same qualities of the hybrid”. What makes me confident that you were sold a counterfeit were the desriptions that you gave - baseball round, where the Dona is somewhat flattened; the size is medium to large until you get to the top of the plant; then the flavor being nothing to write home about nailed it - the Dona is one of the top 3 tomatoes I have ever grown for flavor. Yield can fluctuate depending on soil, fertilizer, etc. but on average I was getting 50 to 60 tomatoes per plant with the best plants producing 80 on heavily branched 6 to 6.5 foot plants. I will add that I don’t trim the bottom branches off the plant, instead I put each plant in the middle of a 6′ tripod made of 1″x1″ wood poles. Sorry to go on and on but I wanted you to know that the Dona hybrid is a premier tomato, really tops in flavor. If you get a chance to retry this variety, and are sure of the seed, you will appreciate the qualities of this fine variety.