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.

Part of Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2009

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.

The description from the company I got it from reads:

The oblong red fruits are 3″ wide and 5″ long with orange and yellow stripes/speckles and decorative enough to keep in a basket on your kitchen counter until you are ready to cook with them. But, you will appreciate the hefty, meaty fruit with few seeds the most for the excellent flavor it has in sauce. You can also use these tomatoes fresh and sliced for sandwiches and hors d’oeuvres.

The Beauty Pageant:

Size: Anywhere from as long as my hand to as long as my finger. Somewhere as thick as two fingers and three fingers.

Shape: Long and pointy. Think a butch witch’s finger.

Color: Bright red with orange striation. The inside is a solid red.

The inside: Very few seeds with thin walls, but a thick core. Almost no gel.

Texture: This is a very mealy tomato, but fortunately, it has all the characteristics of a good sauce tomato.

Tasting:

Off the Vine Tasting: The flavor is straight tomato, and neither a strong nor a weak tomato flavor. Not all that memorable.

Sliced and Salted Tasting: Salt makes this tomato tangier. Gives it a little personality, like a shot of tequila gives a suburban housewife a bit more personality.

Cooking Thoughts: I don’t think that the feel of this tomato lends itself to appetizers, as the description suggests and has not enough unique flavor to eat on its own. But, it is a grade A sauce tomato.

Growing Notes:
Fairly healthy, but not robust. To tell the truth, from the time this tomato plant was a seedling, it always looked unhealthy. The leaves on this plant are naturally droopy. Every one of them I gave away elicited questions on their health because of the droopiness. It is hard to say if the adult plant is unhealthy or if it simply is just a perpetually sickly looking plant.

Will Hanna grow this one again:
No. Interesting tomato, but not enough production to make it a good choice for a saucing tomato.

Part of Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2009

If tomatoes spoke, I imagine in my head that this one has a southern accent. Granted, according to its history, it would have a heavy Russian accent, but frankly, Tula does not sound like a cold Eastern Block city, but rather a warm and heavy aired US Southern city.

Regardless of where this tomato hails from, it is awful purrty. It even looks like a Southern Belle with all those ruffles. It even has ruffles on the inside. But the real question is if this tomato cupcake tastes as good as it looks.

The description from the company I got it from reads:

Russian heirloom that is a favorite black of many tomato aficionados. Unique, large 8-12 oz. dark tomato in a deep purplish-brown color.

The Beauty Pageant:

Size: Slightly smaller than the palm of my hand.

Shape: As mentioned, very rufflly. Ruffles on the shoulder which, when you cut it, are reflected on the inside. Makes for a pretty tomato on the plate.

Color: Brick red with green shoulders. The inside has dark red meat and dark green gel, which adds to the visual experience.

The inside: Medium size seeds with thin walls. Gel is juicy but solid.

Texture: The meat is mealy, but to be honest, the walls are so thin, there is very little meat to really ruin the mouth feel of the tomato. The smooth gel is really most of the bite.

Tasting:

Off the Vine Tasting: The initial flavor is strong. Very tangy and deep. It is the gel driving that. The meat is pretty bland next to the gel, but, again, there so little meat, that this is not an issue.

Sliced and Salted Tasting: Salt changes the flavor some by toning down the tang, but it is not by much. It does bring up the meats flavor a bit too, making it taste closer to the gel.

Cooking Thoughts: This would look pretty on a plate, but it is pretty small for a plated tomato. Defiantly good for salads, maybe a caprese salad. Not a saucing tomato as you need the gel to get the flavor.

Growing Notes:
Pretty healthy plant. Some lower leaf loss, but it is hard to tell if that was the plant itself or from raccoon damage.

Will Hanna grow this one again:
Maybe. The flavor is strong and nice. The only thing that is holding this back from a definite yes is not knowing exactly how to serve it regularly. I will have to think on that.

Part of Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2009

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 did as many generations did before me, I went to my local nursery and bought a few tomato plants. In my basket were the normal hybrids, Better Boy, Early Girl, Beef, Big Boy; all cute and clustered in the 4 count cell packs. And that was when I noticed the lone Cherokee standing across the way. He was in his own pot, tall and sturdy. A loner if I ever saw one. And I was filled with a desperate need to find out more about him. So I grasped his ½ gallon container and home he came with me.

To say my first taste of this Cherokee was life changing was an understatement. Never had it occurred to that a tomato could taste like anything other than a tomato. I fell in love and it was a love that has brought me to this place.

It was a fleeting summer love, as summer loves tend to be. And oddly, I never grew Cherokee Purple in my garden again… Until this year. I decided that I would re-visit my first heirloom love and see if my inexperience led me to believe it was so great or if the memory was as true then as it seems now.

The description from the company I got it from reads:

This old heirloom variety from Tennessee, rumored to have come from the Cherokees, has a very rich tomato flavor and unique coloring. The medium-sized 10-12 ounce fruits have a rose/purple skin with a brick red interior. With intense tomato taste and just the right level of sweetness, you will be shocked at how special this variety is. Cherokee Purple tomatoes have a thin skin and soft flesh.

The Beauty Pageant:

Size: Baseball size.

Shape: A nice round tomato. It does seem just a smidge prone to cracking.

Color: Dark, dark red on the bottom with dark, dark green shoulders. The interior is the same dark red and the exterior.

The inside: Largish seeds and loose gel. The core is rather thick and the walls, while not thick, are not thin either

Texture: Smooth and soft. Nearly melt in your mouth. The texture stops just shy of being silky, but is not bad at all.

Tasting:

Off the Vine Tasting: Nice, smoky flavor. You can taste the tomato, but there is just more to this. The meat is defiantly weaker in flavor than the gel and sweeter too, but the meat is not bad on its own. The gel is very concentrated and tangy. It bursts in your mouth.

Sliced and Salted Tasting: Salt is no friend to this tomato. It really mutes all the nice flavors in it.

Cooking Thoughts: Again, not a tomato you can sauce with. You lose half the fun if you de-seed it. This is a suburb BLT tomato. There will be no tug of war to contend with than might pull the slice of the tomato out of the sandwich. It will just melt when you bite into it.

Growing Notes:
Healthy plant that is producing nicely. I can see why this tomato ends up in so many newbie heirloom tomato grower’s gardens. Easy to grow with good taste. You can’t beat that for a beginner or a sure fire standard in the garden.

Will Hanna grow this one again:
Most likely. Memory did not betray me on this one. It is a good tomato. Have I had better? Yes (experience does that) – but this is certainly a solid performer.

Part of Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2009

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.

But, I am hopeful for this one. First, it was recommended by my tomato plant supplier. She knows her tomatoes and she generally makes great suggestions. After all, she found a cherry tomato that I could like and before this, I had never tried a cherry tomato I liked.

And, I have found others who speak highly of it. So, I will leave my white tomato prejudices behind and see if we can’t lift the segregation in my vegetable garden.

The description from the company I got it from reads:

Our fruits were smooth, flattened, oblate beefsteaks and weighing in around 8 oz. They were of the palest yellow….well, almost white….with light pink striping on the outside. Slices were the palest yellow with a pink trim, very pretty. Very unique and very pleasant tasting.

The Beauty Pageant:

Size: About as wide as my palm, and a few inches tall.

Shape: A flatish tomato with a slightly lumpy top.

Color: Very, very pale yellow. It was interesting watching this tomato ripen. Because it is so pale, it was like watching a ball of green water drain the water out.

The inside: There are many, many chambers . It looks like a beefsteak inside. The inner walls are thicker than the outer walls. Medium number of seeds.

Texture: Soft texture but firm give to the meat. Not mealy, but not silky either. I am not really fond of the texture, but it is not really bad either. There is not too much gel and what is there is pretty firm.

Tasting:

Off the Vine Tasting: Very tangy for a white tomato. The gel is very strong on flavor. Not so much a normal tomato flavor, though there is plenty of tomato flavor in it. It is like a tomato with lemon flavor to it to. Like a tomato lemonade. The meat is pretty flavorful as well. Still lemony but weaker and a bit sweeter. But, even on its own, the meat tastes pretty good.

Sliced and Salted Tasting: Salt tones down the tomato flavor and really kicks up the lemon flavor.

Cooking Thoughts: This would make a nice “conversation piece” tomato. Is it the best tomato you could offer company, no. But it is the best white tomato that I have tried. So, because it is interesting looking and not bad tasting, your guests will marvel if they see this on their plate. The lemon flavor would also play well with basil for a caprese salad.

Growing Notes:
The plant is in pretty poor shape. This was a plant that was particularly ravaged by the bandits. They did not do any obvious damage to the plant, but I wonder if them pulling tomatoes off the plant opened up the plant to a virus or disease. I will be lucky to get 1 more tomato off this plant before it is gone.

Will Hanna grow this one again:
Maybe. Not bad but I have had better.  I will keepit in the back of my mind if I ever am looking for an interesting tomato to fill a spot.

Part of Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2009

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.

I have been able to harvest this one due to the fact that it was planted in the front yard, away from my tomato bandits. Since it was described as an excellent container plant, I planted it in a wine barrel in the front yard.

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.
The description from the company I got it from reads:

The bush type plants are a compact 24” tall and have silvery ferny foliage and round red fruit that dangles like Christmas ornaments. You can put it on display in an attractive container or in a hanging basket. The 3” – 3 ½” tomatoes have slightly tart, classic tomato flavor. A determinate type tomato, the fruit will set and ripen at the same time.

The Beauty Pageant:

Size: Somewhat smaller than a baseball..

Shape: Lumpy, bumpy on top and smooth and shiny on the bottom.

Color: Weak orange-ish-red. You know, if it were not for the fact that they were literally falling off the plant and they squeezed like they were ripe, I would swear from the appearance they were not ripe. Pics of other tomatoes online do show the fruit ranging from brilliant red to the same weak watery red these are.

The inside: Very thin walls. Multiple chambers with small seeds packed inside. Meat seems washed out.

Texture: Mealy but juicy. The gel is loose but does not make a mess.

Tasting:

Off the Vine Tasting: Well, I was not expecting a great tomato and, by golly, it has delivered. The gel is very tangy and tasty, but the meat is as bland as a store bought tomato. There is a weak echo of sweetness in the meat, but just a faint bit. You really have to pay attention to even realize the meat has any flavor.

Sliced and Salted Tasting: The salt sweetens the gel just a bit without affecting the tang, which makes for a nice balance in flavor. But salt in no way helps that bland meat.

Cooking Thoughts: About the only thing that I can think to use this tomato for is in a salad. If you were to de-seed it, you would be taking the only chance for flavor this tomato has.

Growing Notes:
Grew very well until 3 weeks ago when the whole plant started to turn yellow. It may be that the extra rain and the good drainage has leeched the nutrients from the soil, but frankly, that is common in any container. There is a pepper and basil plants in the same container and they are not showing signs of yellowing. Which leads me to believe that the tomato is just extra susceptible to the perils of life in a container. As this is touted as a good container plant, the fact that it is extra sensitive to normal container problems is not good.

Will Hanna grow this one again:
No. Well, at least not for tomatoes. This was a fun tomato to grow and is visually very pretty. It got lots of compliments from people who saw it. But, the fruit themselves were pretty lack-luster.

This year has been terrible for tomatoes. Thanks to all this rain, the vines are strong and tall, but much like harem guards and eternally soprano choir boys, the reproductive point (or perhaps that should be round) of the species is sorely lacking.

Oh, certainly there are blossoms and a few hard, green fruit, but much like in the human world, tomatoes need a little heat to create ready offspring (unless of course you bring in a little science, but making babies with science is just about as fun as eating tomatoes ripened by science.)

But Hanna will persevere. There will be tomato tastings this year. After all, this is Cleveland and we have a few saying around here regarding the weather. Most of them cannot be repeated in front of children and church going women, but in a nut shell, they all boil down to “If you don’t like the weather in Cleveland, just wait five minutes. It will change.” August is coming and I have never been through a Cleveland summer where August was not as hot and miserable as Jennifer Aniston’s love life.

So here we have it. The final list for Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2009:

• White Current
• White Tomesol
• Early Giant
• Red Velvet
• Blue
• Kellogg’s Breakfast
• Omar’s Lebanese
• Speckled Roman
• Cherokee Purple
• Celebrity
• Winsall
• Red Siberian
• Kimberly
• Russian 117
• Dad’s Sunset
• Black
• Mexico
• Chocolate Amazon
• Tim’s Black Ruffles
• Yellow Perfection
• Green Zebra
• Black Krim
• Aunt Ruby’s German Green
• Ernie’s Plimp
• Green Giant
• Black From Tula
• Black Prince
• Silvery Fir

Many, many tomatoes and I am looking forward to trying them all.

And, while we all twiddle our thumbs waiting for summer to take its recommended dosage of weather Viagra and get things moving, feel free to read the reviews found in previous years’ tastings:

Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2006
Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2007
Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2008

Part of Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2008

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.

They are the red cousins of the White Currant that I reviewed very first this year. I enjoyed those tomatoes but was disappointed that I would not be able to have more than in a taste due to the ill health of the plant. But, the Matt’s Wild Cherry more than made up for it. This tomato has produced hundreds of little tomatoes and is a simply massive plant.

I will say that this is the ultimate tomato plant for a gardener with children, grandchildren or even moderately rude neighborhood children who wander through your yard. I had a hard time keeping my kids from these tomatoes, which is impressive considering my kids are not fans of raw tomatoes (yet… their tastebuds are still developing). But with these tomatoes, they would literally snitch them. My original review date had to be set back due to the fact that my kids and their friends had stripped the plant of ripe tomatoes.

The description from the company I got it from reads:

This is a small red mini-marble cherry is so incredibly tasty. Everyone I know agrees that this tomato has “real tomato flavor”. You just have to try it to believe it. Grows extremely tall and/or wide. Ind. 65 days

The Beauty Pageant:

Size: A perfectly round currant size tomato.

Shape: You could use them to play marbles.

Color: Bright red.

The inside: Thin walls full of seeds, but what can you really expect from a tomato this small?

Texture: It pops. I mean literally. You put them in your mouth, bite down and there is a good pop as you bite down. This is a good sign for a cherry tomato.

Tasting:

Off the Vine Tasting: This one has a strong tomato flavor with a very sweet backbone. This is probably why the kids like them so much. They are much like candy.

Sliced and Salted Tasting: The salt brings the tomato up some and reduces the sweet. But to be honest, this tomato is better without salt, and let’s face it, how many of us wander around the garden with a salt shaker in hand… except for when we are hunting slugs, that is.

Cooking Thoughts: These are best as a snack while you work. You could use them in salad though. Your kids will love them in their lunches, but I suspect that they will eat more of them if they feel they are snitching them from the garden.

Growing Notes:
Massive, healthy plant. This one was huge!

Will Hanna grow this one again:
I think regardless of my answer, I will be growing this one again. I fully expect to see plenty of volunteers popping up next spring from this. But, all that aside, my kids loved it. I am not a huge cherry tomato fan, but I enjoyed snacking on it and if my kids love this one enough to strip it clean on a regular basis, it will be welcome in my garden.

Part of Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2008

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.

But one cannot come to judge a tomato by its looks, be them good, bad or pretty.

The description from the company I got it from reads:

A beautiful, drought tolerant variety producing small to medium (21/2 to 3 inch), flat, deeply ruffled, chocolate-brown to deep purple fruit. (Mine were u-shaped, boat shaped and large, but very, very tasty) Intensely rich, almost wine-like flavor. Crack resistant and stores well. Indeterminate. 85 days.

The Beauty Pageant:

Size: Smallish medium. The one pictured was on the large side for this tomato.

Shape: Ruffled like a debutant dress.

Color: Brick red.

The inside: Slightly loose gel, but overall it holds up well to slicing. The seeds are rather large for the size of the tomato and I am willing to bet that is by design. This tomato was made to be turned into sauces and condiments, so large seeds would make it easier to mesh them out. Thick core with thin walls.

Texture: The ruffles are chambers, each with a thick wall and a small open area with the gel and seeds. The core is thick.

Tasting:

Off the Vine Tasting: This is a strong flavored tomato. Very sour with a strong tomato backbone. The sour is reminiscent of lemons.

Sliced and Salted Tasting: The salt really reduces the sour flavor and leaves it tasting pretty bland.

Cooking Thoughts: I think this would work best for a salad or a bruchetta. The sour flavor lends itself to a gourmet kind of dish, where the odd flavor will not be a surprise.

Growing Notes:
Tall plant, but it produces sporadically.

Will Hanna grow this one again:
Probably not. Not a bad tomato, but not one that I could find many uses for in my home. The smallish, multi-chambered nature does not make it good for too many things and the strong flavor makes it even less usable.

Part of Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2008

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 “Corporate Tomatoes, Company Peppers”. A tomato developed specifically for the food industry.

As mentioned in the article, these tomatoes are nothing like the tomatoes you find in the grocery store. Just like your home garden, the manufacturing giants have the luxury of being able to pick fruit at the peak of ripeness and process it quickly. So, can food science produce a better tomato? What exactly does corporate perfection taste like? It cannot hurt to find out.

The description from the company I got it from reads:

(VFA) This is a determinate hybrid variety. It is a bit generic sounding for most heirloom tomato growers. However, this is going to be a trial for 2008 to try a commercial type tomato grown by Heinz Company. Maybe we should have also tried a Campbell’s type? Let’s find out if this type is very tasty or like some of our tasteless winter commercial purchases from our local grocery. Seed company states that it was “developed especially for the best ketchup, purees, and sauces”. Smooth, slightly flattened 6 oz. globes. Good resistance to disease and cracking/splitting. DETERMINATE, 80 days.

The Beauty Pageant:

Size: Medium. Every fruit is pretty much the size of a baseball.

Shape: Round and just a smidge wobbly shaped.

Color: Red. While I hope it does not taste like a grocery store tomato, it sure does look like one.

The inside: Slightly loose gel, but overall it holds up well to slicing. The seeds are rather large for the size of the tomato and I am willing to bet that is by design. This tomato was made to be turned into sauces and condiments, so large seeds would make it easier to mesh them out.  Thick core with thin walls.

Texture: Very smooth, but the skin is a bit tough. Again, I would be willing to bet that is by design as the skins would need to stand up to a little additional processing to be removed.

Tasting:

Off the Vine Tasting: Tangy, very tangy and very full tomato flavor, especially in the gel. The meat is not as full flavored but still nice and has a sweet undertone to it.

Sliced and Salted Tasting: Salt really cranks the flavor and tang up. Once again, I would not be surprised if this was by design as this would be beneficial to a processed product.

Cooking Thoughts: While of course this would make a wonderful sauce (after all, I don’t think that a company would spend tens of thousands of dollars producing a sauce tomato that is no good for sauce) the strong tomato flavor of this tomato lends itself to all kinds of tomato-y things like bruschetta, salsa, salads, etc.

Growing Notes:
Very prolific plant. Well contained as well.

Will Hanna grow this one again:
Probably not. This is a very good tomato, but not one you will find on the trading lists (due to it being a hybrid) so I would have to buy it each year. It is just not that much of a wowsa tomato to go out of my way for it.