Part of Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2009
As far as yellow tomatoes go, well for me they are hit or miss. I have tried some really great yellow tomatoes, and others, well, not so much. The reason yellow tomatoes are so ambiguous on the flavor scale is the fact that yellow tomatoes are either full flavored or “mild” flavored (read no flavor). Hearing that a tomato is mild flavored is like hearing your blind date has a mild personality. That’s the first sign that your evening will end early and that you should probably check your local TV listings for something more scintillating to spice up the rest of the night, like golf. So it goes with yellow tomatoes. Mild is not a word I like to hear associated with a tomato.
The description from the company I got it from reads:
This potato leaf heirloom originally from an old British seed company produces bright yellow golf ball sized, thin skinned, tangy, and delicious fruits. They are very unique in taste! Indeterminate. 75 days.
The Beauty Pageant:
Size: About the size of a golf ball is right. Bigger than a cherry tomato, but not by too much.
Shape: Very round.
Color: Bright, bright yellow. Like highlighter yellow.
The inside: Medium walls for this size tomato. Rather large seeds with juicy gel. There is a core that is also medium sized.
Texture: Rather on the soft and mealy side.
Tasting:
Off the Vine Tasting: As I feared, this is a “mild” tomato. Low acid in it makes for weak tomato flavor.
Sliced and Salted Tasting: Salt gives this tomato a little more personality (kind of like a shot of tequila does for that blind date) but you can only work with what you have.
Cooking Thoughts: This is a salad tomato if I ever saw one. Too small for anything else, really. It would be good on salads and used for appetizers. But, I would not pair it with any flavors that it would have to compete with. Otherwise it would just get lost.
Growing Notes:
Rather large plant and produces well. It looks like it may have late blight (judging by the bottom leaves) but it seems to keep going like a trooper.
Will Hanna grow this one again:
No. Just not my style of tomato. If you are looking for something “mild” (and there are lots of people who are) this is a good tomato, but I like a tomato with a little more force.



This would be my freaky-deaky tomato of the season. It is a tomato that really, really wants people to think it is part of the very in hot pepper crowd. If you were not looking closely, you might mistake it for one. But even confused tomatoes can’t change who and what they are.
Size: Anywhere from as long as my hand to as long as my finger. Somewhere as thick as two fingers and three fingers.
If tomatoes spoke, I imagine in my head that this one has a southern accent. Granted,
This is the tomato that took my heirloom virginity. Many years ago, when I was but a sparkling, wet new home owner, I planted a vegetable garden. Sure, I had kept container gardens before. Grew an odd tomato here or there, had watched my own mother grow tomatoes in her garden, but now I had a vegetable plot and I was going to plant tomatoes.
I am not a white tomato fan. They tend to be bland because they tend to low acid. Great for people with acid reflux issues but not so much for my particular palet.
Size: About as wide as my palm, and a few inches tall.
There is one self evident truth about vegetables. If someone has worked really, really hard to make one that looks extra pretty, chances are it will taste pretty blech. Tomatoes especially. So, when I read the description of this tomato, I was pretty sure it would not taste all that spectacular. Super model tomatoes are just like the human kinds. Better if admired from afar.
And it is truly a pretty plant. Full and feathery, at least until the yellowing happened. It has been an extraordinarily rainy summer. I know this barrel has not been dry, but I also know the drainage is good. The entire plant started to turn yellow all in one week. No reason for it to. It had water, it had fertilizer. I am not sure if the tomatoes would normally look like this, or if the mysterious yellowing affected them.
This is the last tomato tasting of the year. These were picked just a few days ago, right before the killing frost that finally came to Cleveland. That in itself is a testament to the growing power of these little cherry tomatoes, they were one of the first to produce and have produced all summer long.
This is yet another pretty tomato. To be honest, I am really starting to mistrust pretty tomatoes. If it looks good enough to be used in a Food Channel commercial, my historical experience indicates that it will not work in my food kitchen.
While the better part of the tomatoes I grow are heirlooms, I don’t specifically have anything against hybrid tomatoes. This year, I thought it would be fun to grow one of the tomatoes I talked about in “