Despite my poor growing year, I do need to take the time to reflect on this past summer’s tomato harvest.  I had a few stars, a few that were a waste of time to grow, and still others who didn’t produce well for me, but did awesome in the garden in Minnesota.  I have a few that I need to try again because by the time they were all producing, they were at the very end of the season, and I didn’t keep track of what came off what plant.  So, here is my limited tomato report from the 2010 growing season.

I will not grow white tomatoes again.  The White Tomesol I planted was actually quite productive, but they didn’t taste like much of anything at all.  I think if I had space or did market gardening, I would consider it for the novelty.  But I have limited space, and this just wasn’t flavorful like so many other tomatoes.

Black Cherry tomatoes are by far the best cherry to date.  I think I am going to skip the Sungolds this next year and focus on Black Cherry, Reisentraube and find a green cherry as well.  If we can find an elusive sweet yellow pear, we might try that again as well.

A surprise hit for me was the Woodle Orange.  Such a pretty, vibrant orange color, with a TON of sweet tomato flavor.  This was a favorite, and quite productive- even in poor growing conditions.  This one’s a keeper.

The Black From Tula and the Black Krim both were quite productive as well.  However, I didn’t think the Black Krim were near as tasty as other purple varieties of tomato.  While mine didn’t do as well as Tomatobug’s , I really enjoyed the Vorlon and Carbon that I had from both his and my gardens.  The flavor is great, but I’m not crazy about all the green shoulders the purple tomatoes seem to have.  I wonder if that’s a regional growing thing, because when I would leave them to ripen further, they would go bad before any more colors changed.

For green tomatoes, Malakite and Green Zebra are just such reliable deliciousness, that I don’t see replacing them anytime soon.  The Malakite are also some of the first to ripen up.

My Brave General was a brave general indeed and put out a great effort towards the end.  The straight up red fruit was tasty and since the plant produced well in stressful conditions, I’d like to see how it does in a better environment.

The Coeur de Buie was a disappointment.  I was expecting a lot of flavor from this heirloom variety, and it really didn’t deliver.  I don’t expect I’ll be trying this one again.

My purple Gypsy tomato was also a good plant- the fruit it produced was very pretty to look at, and tasty.  Not very productive, but might be worth another shot.

Golden Sunray was an early producer and produced heavy fruit as well.

Those are the standouts from my garden this year.  My Grace Lahman’s had issues this year, so I plan to try a new batch of seed, because two years ago that one produced wonderful tomatoes.  The Arkansas Traveler’s did okay, and the Cosmonaut Volkov’s were good as well.

I’m on the fence about the Fox Cherry for next year.  I know I say that every year, and then I plant them and then I enjoy them.  But they’re only an okay tomato.  They’re bigger than a standard cherry, but not as flavorful as other cherries.  What keeps me planting it again and again is it’s productivity.  It does great and just keeps on putting out more fruit.

As I think about next year’s garden and scaling back…sigh… what an effort when every day there are new varieties of tomato to discover.  I’ve even been reading about the efforts to breed blue tomatoes- which are loaded with anthocyanin to produce a stunning looking true blue-purple tomato.  The seeds are not available commercially yet (thank goodness) but it just shows that there is always something new out there to try.

The rumor is on the street that Baker Creek’s catalog is in transit right now… I don’t know if I’ll be able to hold off reading that baby until after Christmas, which is what I try to do.

Next year I also want to do better with pepper production.  I would like to be able to make salsa without having to go get anything other than garlic and onions- and that’s only because I don’t want to devote precious garden space to plain old onions.  Leeks, scallions and chives yes.  Plain old cheap onions, no.  Ooh, the Allium Bed! How I can’t wait to give it attention.

Andy has started building my raised beds for next year, and I just can’t wait to see more of them put together.  He has a plan in mind to also be able to convert two of the beds into a hoophouse, so that I can get in the garden earlier in the season, or make it last longer into the fall.

I’m so excited!

And maybe now that I have put together my 2010 Tomato Report, we can all wait with baited breath for the report from Minnesota.  His report is going to be a good one.