Planning the Garden: First things first

Cherry tomatoes

There’s really only one use for cherry tomatoes: fresh eating. When I was a young girl my grandmother would grow 3-4 different shapes and colors of cherry tomatoes and set them on the kitchen counter in a bowl. It looked like a colorful bowl of candy and I loved picking through them for my favorites. So, in honor of my grandmother I plant at least two, sometimes as many as four, different cherry tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes really aren’t the taste

treat that full-sized tomatoes are, but since they ripen so early, they are a lovely promise of things to come.

Here are some of the cherry varieties we’ve tried:
Golden sun is a standard yellow variety that produces faithfully every year. Usually the first to produce and produces late into fall.
Red Cherry, Yellow and Red Pear are all standard cherry tomatoes. All have good flavor and produce well. The pears allow me to have a nice variety of shapes in my bowl of tomatoes.
Reisenstraub is an oval, mini-Roma-type cherry that produces well.
White ice is a smaller cherry, pale, almost white tomato. It has sweet, sort of lemony flavor.
Another white cherry is Italian Ice. The taste was bland. It appears that all the white cherries are weak on flavor.
Brownberry is our favorite cherry. Like its grown-up cousin Black Krim, it has a rich, complex tomato flavor. It produces about a week before regular tomatoes and is the last cherry to produce in the fall.

Tomatoes for canning

Paste or Roma tomatoes are the backbone of canning. They have less liquid and meatier flesh, so they make a thicker salsa or sauce. As far as I’m concerned there’s only one paste tomato worthy of my precious garden space: Amish Paste. These tomatoes are big—I mean really big. Not puny little Roma varieties that the garden center offers. The Amish paste average ½ pound each and many weigh close to a pound.

They are meaty and have a great tomato taste. If you live in the midwest, you may want to try the Dakota Amish Paste. It was developed here in North Dakota. Last year was a stressful year for gardens and in my garden the Dakota Amish produced better than its traditional Amish cousin.

Slicing

When choosing a slicing tomato, I look for color, flavor and reliable production. Besides serving them at every summer meal, I also can my slicers. I will can the small tomatoes whole and chop the big ones.

I love the color that yellow tomatoes add to soups and stews. Unfortunately, I am still in search of an outstanding yellow tomato. Don’t get me wrong, they all taste good, just not stunningly good. So far, the Dr. Wyche’s has been the best producer. It is a darker, almost orange-yellow and the fruits are large—usually a pound or larger.

Black Krim is our family’s favorite. It turned my teenage tomato-hating son into a tomato lover. It has a dark brown, almost black color inside and out and rich, complex tomato taste. We’ve also tried Black Russian and Black Prince. All the blacks have a wonderful flavor.

Purple Prudens is my husband’s favorite. It’s a beefsteak tomato with pronounced lobes. The fruits are about one pound. Last summer I had a couple that weighed two pounds!

Brandywine is considered the heirloom gardener’s all-star, but I’m not too impressed. Production is unreliable and the taste is good but not remarkable. Now, don’t let that stop you from trying it at least once. Your soil and climate may produce the Brandywine that everyone else raves about. There’s also a Yellow Brandywine that you might want to try. Next to the Dr. Wyche’s I think the Yellow Brandywine has been my favorite yellow.

Dakota Sport lived up to its advertisement. It produced beautiful, flawless medium-sized fruits with shiny skin. Despite erratic rain and temperatures, not a single fruit was blemished. The flavor is not in the top ten, but definitely above average. If you want to impress people with a pretty tomato, this is the one.

Wapsipinicon Peach and Indigo Rose are both unique small heirloom tomatoes. These “lunchbox” tomatoes are not as small as cherries, but smaller than your average slicer. They are the perfect size for canning whole. The Wapsipinicon has a a peach color and slightly fuzzy skin. I did not care for the flavor—it was too sweet and not enough of that tomato-y kick that I like. The skin was a little too thick and it did not produce well. That was a bad year for all my tomatoes that year, but the Wapsipinicon was an especially poor producer.

The Indigo Rose, on the other hand, was a superb producer. The fruits were a beautiful blue/purple color, almost black, on the sun-ward side of the fruit, and a pale, pinkish red on the backside. Absolutely beautiful fruit. But they were the absolute last plant to ripen last year. The flavor was not remarkable. It was an OK flavor, but not truly enjoyable.