2020 Tomato Garden Review: How the Jewels of Summer Fared

Another year, another opportunity to share our tomato garden review with you. I enjoyed another year of tomato exploration and the theme from last year continued to deepen for me as the seasons went on. 

Stick with what you love to eat. This is true for all vegetables, but especially for tomatoes. And often, what looks beautiful or grows well for someone in a different climate will behave differently in your garden. Even the same variety will perform different year over year. So sometimes the best thing to do is try it a few years in a row before deciding if it’s a permanent addition to your garden lineup. And grow enough diversity to ensure some of them will succeed no matter what Mother Nature throws at you.

Last August and our large heirlooms have mostly faded while the cherries and plum and saucing tomatoes are going strong.

It is all too easy to get swept up in beautiful photos of unusual fruit. One of the biggest aha moments for me has been tasting tomatoes that look pretty. And yes, my palate is bent toward the sungold, and prized cherry tomato in most home gardens because of its burst of sweetness. But I am happy to say that among the new and returning tomatoes I grew this year, I have a few new favorites and a few that I’ve tried a few times and am letting go with confidence. 

We grew about 35 tomato plants across all types of tomatoes, from cherry to plum to slicer to determinate saucing tomatoes. Without further adieu, let’s get into the details.

The nearly complete tomato lineup of 2020, labeled for reference. Plum Perfect may be my favorite tomato of this year. I just loved it’s shape and smoothness.

Heirloom Slicers

Our family is somewhat split on the merits of large tomatoes. Someone who will remain anonymous considers them too wet, though often I notice them consuming them between slices of bread for lunch. I have grown to love several new slicing tomatoes this summer, largely due to their productivity and flavor.

Paul Robeson

These tomato seeds were gifted to me, and it was the single most named tomato whenever I query my instagram community for tomato recommendations. It is a stunning specimen and the flavor was superb, peppery and slightly floral too. However, it was not a very vigorous plant and only produce about 4 or 5 fruits for us. I will try growing it again next year to see if I can produce a more vigorous vine and enjoy more fruits.

The most anticipated heirloom slicer in my garden this summer was this beauty, Paul Robeson.

Berkeley and Pink Berkeley Tie Dye

These tomatoes are closely related. One is a green-fleshed tomato and the other a burgundy. I found these tomatoes a little temperamental in that as soon as I noticed color on the bottom of hte tomatoes they were very soft and overripe — but only partly. And often when I tried to harvest them at this stage they were so soft they didn’t hold well. So I have started to harvest them about 25% ripe, when color just starts. They ripen indoors within the next 24-48 hours. I enjoyed them both, and am not sure which one I’ll grow again, but it probably won’t be both. Space is a premium.

Brandywine

Well, this was the winner of my new tomatoes this year. And yes, while we’ve enjoyed these tomatoes from other people’s gardens, we had never taken the time to grow them ourselves until this year. And it was a coincidentally significant year to do that because these are my late mother-in-law’s favorite tomato. And because we truly loved them and will grow them again, her memory and love of Brandywine will be with us for the rest of our days.

Black Beauty

The second year growing this tomato, I gave it space because I enjoyed its flavor last summer despite the fungal challenges that is anthracnose. I also chose to grow it again in spite of this challenge, to see if it would repeat itself. And, it did. And I have heard from many growers in more humid climates that black-shouldered tomatoes like this one have been more susceptible to these sad, sunken spots on their tomatoes. It’s a soil-borne disease that persists for year.

I gave this one a good few years, and now I’m bidding it adieu.

Piroka

This was a star of the garden last summer. She performed well while her neighbors caved to anthracnose and I loved her old-timey simplicity. This year was another story. Like with the Paul Robeson, it produced very little, undoubtedly impacted by early onset of Septoria Leaf Spot, which was my disease of the year and will be discussing in an upcoming blog post.

Big Rainbow

Despite having survived a late frost, the plant has not yet produced any fruit. So, I have to say, I have not been impressed with this plant in my garden. And based on the tomatoes I know and love, I will probably not even try to grow this one again next year.

The Ones that Got Away

I had a handful of varieties I was growing for the second year in a row, but I lost them to a late frost. They include Costuloto Genovese, Afternoon Delight, and Solar Flare. All three of these were new for me last summer and I like them all well enough to grow again. Despite having lost them to the persnickety May freeze, I will definitely bring these three back to our garden in a future summer.

Keeping it Simple

I really pared down our cherry tomato grow list this year, and grew fewer total plants. We grew Sungold, Sweetie, Midnight Pear, and Blush, the latter of which is more of a plum but I swear in my mind it was more a cherry. I blame my winter daydreaming on that oversight.

Sungold

Tried and true. This one is my “if I only had space for a single tomato variety, it would be this”. You can roast and sauce them, pop them as candy, use them on toast, salads, and the like. They are a versatile tomato and I love their big burst of flavor in my mouth. We have 3 or 4 Sungold plants and they are still producing well for us.

The little garden queen herself, a bowl of Sungold tomatoes. If there’s one tomato you should try growing next summer, it’s this one.

Midnight Pear

I was so very excited about this tomato. It was going to take my garden bowl to the next level. It purported wonderful flavor too. And it splits. I’d say 80% of the fruit has split for me, and this is in a droughty year. I don’t know if it is perhaps better suited for greenhouse conditions, but this one is a no-grow for me. I wanted it to be a forever tomato. I won’t even try again next summer and will instead replace it with a different dark colored tomato or perhaps a green variety like Green Zebra.

Sweetie

This tomato clings to the vine, similar to the hang time on the Sweet Millions from last summer. I liked the productivity and vigor of this variety even though the flavor was mild — though honestly it’s impossible to compete with the Sungold. This tomato is simply a keeper for me and I’ll grow it again next summer for sure.

Blush

This was another tomato with lofty expectations. It took forever to ripen and only a few did fully ripen on the vine. The majority of them were consumed underripe, I’m convinced, because I just couldn’t wait that long. I waited longer for these tomatoes to ripen than my Brandywines. It was a test of my patience and I definitely lost. I really wanted to love this tomato because it’s a beauty, and it’s one of those examples of how beauty doesn’t always translate to functionality in each of our gardens. I don’t think I’ll grow this one again.

Juliet

Ironically, this is another very beloved workhorse in the garden and I just wasn’t feeling it this year. It was not nearly as productive as last year and that might be because we only grew two plants instead of four. However, this tomato tastes great, roasts well, and was disease resistant last year (though not this year). It’s a coin toss whether this will be given much square footage for next year or not. Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe best of 3 is the way to gauge this tomato and I should give it one more summer before I cut it permanently. You’ll see why I’m less committed to this one as you keep reading.

A bowl of cherry and plum tomatoes immersed in saucing tomatoes. I strategically turn over the Midnight Pear tomatoes so the splits aren’t as obvious. The Blush are the yellow tomatoes and the Sweetie are a red cherry.

Getting Saucy

Our focus this year has been on paste and saucing tomatoes. While last year we grew 26 tomatoes, I canned only about 14 jars of salsa and maybe 10 pints of tomatoes. While the salsa lasted most of the year, the canned tomatoes were hoarded between store-bought organic canned tomatoes because we simply didn’t have enough. 

Our three saucing tomatoes cross-sectioned, clockwise from top: Plum Perfect, Paisano, and Italian Roma.

This was the year of tomato processing, so we allocated an entire large bed just to paste and saucing tomatoes. We grew three types of saucing tomatoes: Italian Roma, Paisano, and Plum Perfect. Each of these varieties are determinate tomatoes, meaning they grow to a determined height and life cycle and thus produce their fruit over a more concentrated window of time. They each crop within a few weeks of one another and we have harvested close to if not more than 150 pounds of tomatoes off the plants.

This was a major shift in our tomato growing mindset. Moving from indeterminate paste tomatoes the likes of San Marzano and Amish Paste to Roma and hybrid plum and paste tomatoes. It was definitely a one-way street. I am only looking ahead to more food security and productivity as we continue to focus on putting food by for the year.

The other remarkable thing this summer was that despite the heat and dry summer not a single roma or paste tomato suffered blossom end rot. Not a one! This is in stark contrast to my normal San Marzano drama and another reason I’m hooked on these determinate tomatoes as our new path forward to tomato independence all year round.

Go with Your Gut

The biggest lesson I’ve learned this summer is that year to year variability between even the same types of tomatoes is high. So even when planting our dependable producers from years past, there’s just no guarantee of continued success. Plant as much diversity as you can with your tomatoes, consider determinate paste and plum tomatoes for a saucing garden, and be sure to try a few new tomatoes annually because your next favorite tomato could be the one you haven’t grown yet.