Every Tomato Variety I'm Growing: The MOST HELPFUL TOMATO GUIDE Online – Transcript

00:00What's growing on, gardeners? It's Saturday, January 1st and it is a gorgeous summer-like New Year's Day here on the southeastern coast of North Carolina and I am so excited to share with you all today's video. I will be showing you every single variety of tomato that I'm growing in my garden this upcoming growing season. I have 30 varieties in all to share with you. If you're new to the channel, please consider subscribing and hitting the bell to receive new video notifications and check out our Amazon storefront and

00:26spread shop in the video description for a list of the gardening products I use and awesome custom-designed apparel and other gear, your support is greatly appreciated. Last spring I shared with you all a video where I showed you every single one of my tomato plants that I was growing in all of the different varieties, probably over two dozen varieties in all, and I showed you how they were progressing and how productive each individual variety was come last May when they were starting to get large and set a ton of fruit. And I was absolutely blown away by

00:56how many of you commented on that video and how many of you viewed that video and said how helpful that video was because you were able to see every single tomato and how they were performing and what they can expect in terms of fruit set and productivity. And I will make sure to link that video above so you can cross-reference it throughout this video because it will help you make some decisions. Now while that video got great feedback from all of you it did have one problem and that was because I shot it in mid to late spring

01:26and at that point if you saw a variety that you really loved it was too late to order seeds and start transplants for the year. So this year I'm going to get out ahead of things and I'm going to show you all of the amazing tomato varieties I'm growing and describe to you why I'm growing them. That way you'll be able to take this information cross-reference it with last year's video and come away with a huge list of seeds that you want to purchase and now is the prime time to purchase the seed so you'll have plenty of time to

01:55start your transplants and it can benefit you this season. The majority of the tomatoes that I'm growing this year are varieties that have grown in previous years because of how well they performed. So make sure to keep that old video open in another browser tab so you can cross-reference them with the plants from last year. However I also have a handful of new varieties that I'm really excited to try as well as a handful of varieties that I chose just because of your feedback that you told me I absolutely must

02:23grow and I can't wait to share them with you too. I'm going to begin this video with the determinate tomato varieties that I'm growing this season and I first want to start off by saying for reasons unknown determinate varieties of tomatoes seem to have some kind of bad reputation online and most gardeners are not growing determinate varieties and for the overwhelming majority of people that is a tremendous mistake. I'm going to link to a video above that I made last year that tells you five

02:51different reasons why determinate tomatoes are superior to indeterminate tomatoes and while determinate tomato varieties don't have quite the wide selection that indeterminate tomatoes have there are reasons why you should be growing these as the foundation of your harvests and just to keep things short determinate tomatoes ripen their crop much faster than indeterminate tomatoes. They are much more disease resistant and they are much more productive per square foot. So they should be your foundational tomatoes because

03:20they ripen so quickly that generally they're able to ripen their entire crop before the disease comes in. So for me and the humid southeast they perform much better than indeterminates I get far better yields and if you ever want to do things like canned tomato puree or or jar salsa you have to grow determinates because they produce so much better. Now I'm going to show you the varieties that I'm growing. I've been growing salets for years as an early tomato and it is one of the

03:47best flavored early tomatoes that you are going to find. They're one of the earliest varieties of tomatoes that you'll find. It's listed as 70 days on this printout right here but I think it's more like in the 50s maybe early 60s and they ripen very well in the Pacific Northwest and areas that don't get very warm summers. So these are a must have for growing early tomatoes or in cool season climates. Then I'm growing Bella Rosa which is a new determinant hybrid that is very

04:15similar to celebrity. It gives you 10 to 12 ounce almost crackproof perfect looking large softball sized tomatoes with excellent flavor. I had a horrible year last year with terrible rains in June. We got about 15 inches of rain in June and it destroyed so many of my tomatoes but the Bella Rosa was basically impervious to the cracking and they held up where almost all my others failed then I'm growing a new variety called Margarita VF hybrid and I'm

04:44growing this as a substitute for San Marzano because I want to be able to can tomato puree and while San Marzano has great flavors it's an indeterminate so the vines only ripen a few tomatoes at a time. I'll be able to get big yields off of these very disease resistant early hybrid tomatoes so I'll be able to jar sauce much more efficiently. So that's why I am growing all of these varieties to get my season started. Now I'm going to discuss all of the indeterminate

05:12tomatoes that I'm growing in my garden this year that I have already grown. These are all leftover seed packets that I've had in stock from previous years that I've had very good luck with in my climate. Now before I discuss these varieties you have to understand that I live 9 miles from the ocean on the southeastern coast of North Carolina. So our summers are riddled with heavy thunderstorms and extreme humidity unlike what most of the country gets in a given summer. Tomatoes grow very poorly

05:41and persistently hot and humid conditions. We have horrible disease pressure, horrible pest pressure and our our rains just crack the living daylights out of tomatoes and we have massive fertility issues because it's so warm and humid at night. So for those reasons over the years I've learned that I need to move away from large slicers and beefsteak tomatoes especially heirloom types because they just don't work here in my climate. So please understand this. Once the days get above 90 degrees

06:10Fahrenheit and the nights get above 70 degrees Fahrenheit with dew points in the 60s and 70s beefsteak and slicing tomatoes generally become infertile. The pollen in the flowers becomes clumpy and they will not set. You will get close to 100% flower drop. So I can only grow beefsteak tomatoes that flower in April and May. Once we get into June it is just too warm and humid for large type tomatoes to pollinate and set fruit. It's not

06:38because of anything I'm doing. It's because of the environment and you just can't get around that. It's a limitation to the tomatoes. So every single thing that I'm showing you are years of hard work and research that I've put in trialing 100 different varieties to find some larger tomatoes that can perform reasonably well in my horrible conditions. So for all of you southern gardeners and people that have terribly hot humid summers this video will be very helpful for you. And I'm going to start off

07:06with the Brandywine yellow platfoot strain. Brandywine yellow is one of the worst producing tomatoes that I've ever grown in my entire life. It has terrible yields and it's highly susceptible to disease. So why am I growing it? Because it's one of the best tasting tomatoes on the face of the earth. It is absolutely incredible and this platfoot strain does definitely have better yields than the other more commonly sold yellow Brandywine strain. It's

07:35so good that I'm just willing to deal with the issues and I've just reconciled the fact that I'm going to get 6-12 tomatoes off of my plant and half of them are going to split or have bad spots in them because it's that good to get 3-6 tomatoes off the plant. Now my next tomato here is the Brandy Boy hybrid and I've been growing this for probably 6 or 7 years now. It's a hybridized version of Brandywine's sodath. It has larger fruit and it has better yields and

08:01about 90-95% of the same heirloom Brandywine flavor. It performs much better in the heat and humidity and handles pests better so that's why I'm growing that. I'm also growing big Brandy hybrid which is another hybridized Brandywine sodath strain. I grew that one for the first time last year and it seemed to be really good. It was performing well and that's why I'm going to grow that again. Very similar to the Brandy Boy so I want to be able to trial that a little bit more and

08:30hope that I have a little bit more of a dry summer because the original Brandywine sodath just doesn't work out well for me. Next up Arkansas Traveler. Arkansas Traveler is an old heirloom variety that's been grown in the south for generations and while it doesn't have the most incredible flavor on the face of the earth what it does have is incredible yields that will set in the worst humid wet conditions and they never crack or split ever. They are perfect

08:57looking heirloom tomatoes so again mediocre in flavor but they will produce and give me fresh homegrown tomatoes where almost every other variety will fail. Most tomatoes are going to be anywhere from three to eight ounces probably with an average of six ounces so if you struggle growing tomatoes in hot humid climates and you want to grow an heirloom with incredible native disease resistance and that's virtually rain proof this is your ticket. Then I'm growing big beef

09:25hybrid. Big beef hybrid is one that I grew last season and the yields were absolutely incredible for a beef steak. Everything that they say about this tomato is true. Perfect looking fruit extremely crack and rain resistant very pest resistant very disease resistant. So if you live in the south or if you live in a location where tomatoes are hard to grow big beef is a must if you want a good mid-season slicer it's

09:53also pretty early and fast to ripen despite how large the fruit is so again highly recommended. Next up I have four different chef's choice varieties and these chef choice varieties were the ones I tried growing for the first time ever last year and they all had absolutely incredible yields highly disease resistant plants. The problem is our rains came in in June and they were so bad that a lot of my chef's choice varieties were destroyed in the

10:21rain so I'm rolling the dice I want to grow them again give them a fairer shake and hope that our June will have less than 15 inches of rain as of last year. We normally get about half that so I'm going to give these another shot. Now chef's choice purple is very very similar to Cherokee purple so much so that I think growing both is redundant and Cherokee purple struggles here but the yields on chef's choice purple are far better so I'm going to grow that instead. Then we have chef's choice

10:50pink. This is almost a dead ringer to Brandywine's Soda. So I'm growing three different Brandywine's Soda hybrids. We have the chef's choice pink hybrid the big brandy hybrid and the brandy boy hybrid and from what I tasted I think the chef's choice pink probably had the largest most delicious fruit. In fact I picked a tomato off this plant that may have been one of the top five tomatoes I've ever tasted in my entire life. Absolutely incredible and monster monster size fruit. Then we

11:18have the chef's choice bi-color hybrid. That is another one that had incredible yields. The fruit was looking amazing and then the range just destroyed them. They did not hold up to the horrible rains but the yields were so good I want to give it another shot. Same thing with the chef's choice red I'm going to give that another shot. It's supposed to be very similar to the Brandywine red but our terrible rains kind of destroyed the plants. The next plant that I will be growing is indigo blue beauty and I

11:47grew it last year but a cut worm or something got to it and knocked it over. I was able to root the cutting that fell to the ground but it never really grew properly so I'm going to give this another shot because I wasn't really able to harvest any fruits off of the damaged and injured plant. Next up is the Jersey Devil indeterminate tomato.

12:07Now this is an old heirloom and very strange fruit. They almost look like demon talons. Very funny looking and I had a lot of issues with the plants. The plants were some of the most disease susceptible plants that I've ever grown and I had a lot of trouble with them. So why am I growing this tomato again? Because it was one of the most delicious tomatoes I've ever tasted my entire life. They absolutely blew me away and while they look like a plum tomato they taste better than

12:35almost any heirloom beef steak I've ever grown. So again while they were hard to grow they were so darn good that it's worth the trouble. And then I have my two cherry tomatoes. Now I made a video on my cherry tomatoes last year because I always thought I didn't like them despite growing tomatoes most of my life I've never grown cherry tomato varieties. But both of these were so darn good and so productive that I have to grow them again and they were almost impervious to disease and it doesn't matter how hot or humid it gets they

13:05will still set fruit. So if you live in a place that has high pest disease pressure or infertility issues due to the humidity you must grow a wide variety of cherry types because they will produce all season long. In fact these were the only two plants that I've ever grown in my entire life down here in the four or five summers I live down here where I planted these in the ground in March and I was picking fruit off of those same plants all the way until mid to late November. They were

13:34still alive and thriving I could not believe it. So that is why you must grow cherry tomatoes and by the way the sun gold hybrid is one of the best tasting tomatoes I've ever had my entire life. It is true what they say you can eat them right off the vine like candy as funny as that sounds for tomatoes. I swear you really can do it with this tomato it's just like eating fresh table grapes off a vine. Next up are all of the dwarf tomato project varieties that I will be growing in my