- Is there such a thing as the perfect lineup
of tomatoes to plant throughout an entire season?
I'm talking cherries, I'm talking heirlooms,
I'm talking weird, I'm talking slicers.
I think I have it, at least for this season.
So in this video, I'm gonna go
through every single one I'm planting and why.
We're gonna start off with the smallest tomatoes
and then go towards the largest size
and talk about all the different categories.
And I've got a couple options in each,
starting off with cherry tomatoes.
For a fresh eating cherry tomato,
something that probably isn't really gonna make it
into the kitchen, even if it does,
it's not going to last very long,
but the flavor's intense.
It is the Sun Gold Cherry.
If you have to grow one, grow the Sun Gold.
Of course, we carry it at our seed company,
Botanical Interests, but it's rare in grocery stores.
It's hard to find.
And the reason why is because
it does not have a long shelf life.
I found the skin is very prone to cracking or breaking,
especially if you over-water it
or harvest it at the wrong time, or just leave it
on the counter or in the sun for a little bit,
it will crack and break, but that's fine.
I'll pay that price all day because it is, to me,
one of the best tasting cherry tomatoes
you are ever going to find.
Now, you'll sometimes see it in these small little packs.
It's because, guys, this seed,
speaking now as someone who owns a seed company,
this is a very expensive seed,
and so you gotta be careful with it.
Cherish it when you buy it and treat it with respect.
But here we go, we're gonna go in with Sun Gold.
The thing that I think is so cool about them,
it's prolific, it's not that hard to grow,
and it really just has that flavor,
that sweet sort of classic, vibrant summer tomato flavor.
In this particular case, I'll do one per hole,
because, like I said, these are not cheap seeds.
So in I go, I'm gonna do six,
because I always have friends who want a Sun Gold tomato.
Yeah, you want to give these support,
because they are gonna grow pretty extensively.
Florida weave is a great way to grow these guys.
But if you have to grow one cherry,
I would say grow the Sun Gold.
The final tip I'll give you is
that, if you wanna make sure it doesn't crack,
you can pick it just a little bit early
and then just ripen it on the kitchen counter.
Gives you another buffer of like two days or so.
Next cherry and the last cherry I have for you,
going back to the classics,
this would be the Supersweet 100.
The name tells you everything you need to know.
I actually find it to be a little bit less sweet
than the Sun Gold, but I do find it to be a classic red
cherry tomato that is absolutely one
of the most prolific you will ever grow.
I mean, you can see the trusses on this plant.
They do not lie.
The name does not lie.
You can get upwards of a hundred tomatoes per truss,
and it's just a reliable, reliable plant that has a lot
of good disease resistance built into it.
So if you struggle with cerium wilts or some
of these soil-borne diseases, let's just say this,
you're gonna have an easier time with the Supersweet 100.
It's an F1 hybrid variety,
meaning that it is not an heirloom.
It is something that's been crossed and bred
by humans in a traditional way.
And that means that traditionally when you're breeding
you're gonna try to breed some disease resistance into it.
So, if you have trouble with diseases,
go with the Supersweet 100,
or if you just prefer a red cherry to the orange Sun Gold,
well, there you go.
And now we're done with cherries,
and it's on to grape tomatoes.
Okay, grape tomatoes, admittedly not a category
that I've grown a lot of,
mostly because I feel like I can get the job done
with the cherry, but sometimes you want that grape tomato
in a salad, or you just like the shape of it
or you have a different particular use for it.
And I can't open this flap.
So maybe even the universe itself is telling me,
don't grow this grape tomato.
But this one is Five Star Grape.
It's an F1 hybrid again.
I'm gonna have some heirlooms for you as well.
But yeah, I mean, guys,
it's a disease-resistant grape tomato
which is a little bit larger than your standard cherry.
Shape's a little bit more elongated.
The seed's actually quite a bit larger,
and it's just gonna have some quality disease resistance
and a reliable grow.
It kind of gets to, you know, back in the day
I used to grow really unique crazy varieties of tomatoes.
You know, things like the Atomic Grape
and some of these really wild colored ones.
I was growing more for the aesthetic.
These days, and this might change,
but these days I am growing more for performance.
I want delicious tomatoes.
I want things that aren't gonna cause me a lot of problems.
I don't have to babysit them in the garden.
And to me, something like the Five Star Grape F1
does the job for me.
But that's it for the small tomatoes.
Now we're going into what I call the salad
or the sandwich slicer category.
The first one is Mountain Magic.
So, again, trying to go for those performers,
something that's just going to reliably work in the garden.
It's nothing too fancy,
it is a about one to three-inch red tomato,
nice size, nice performance.
It just works, guys.
It just works.
It's disease resistant to a few of the more common ones.
Again, this one's a hybrid.
We carry this one at Botanical, but I've grown this.
I grew this last year.
It does really, really well.
And if you want, I think if you're a gardener
who's just looking for success,
get these sort of classics, do them really well,
and then maybe throw another one in the mix
that's a little bit out there.
Maybe it's orange, maybe it's striped, et cetera.
And then you know you have one that's gonna work
for you, and then you can experiment with one
that's maybe gonna be a little bit more
visually appealing or a little bit more fun.
And if you are in an area of the country
that has inclement weather right now, like myself,
honestly, I'm starting tomatoes later
than I've ever started them in my gardening career.
Well, then this one's for you.
This one's called Glacier.
This is one that I've grown for many, many years.
It really enjoys a early start to the season.
Hence the name.
It is a, let's see, 55-day variety,
and it is extremely cold-tolerant.
The variety is out of Sweden originally.
So, as the name implies,
you think they can handle these colder temps.
So if you're in an area that's just not been kicking off
as quickly as it has in prior years, which honestly is us.
I've gotten about 10 inches of rain here in San Diego.
And last year alone, I only got about six.
So I'm over, I'm almost double what I got last year
in the first three months of this year,
which is pretty wild.
So this is an early-season tomato.
If you are in a season, you know,
just an uncommonly short season,
like you're in a zone two or three or four,
you can pull this one off 'cause you got 55 days.
You can still grow this.
So it works really, really well.
So that is my last slicer category tomato.
Many of us just love tomatoes in sauce,
pasta sauce, pizza sauce, et cetera.
And if you do, I've got two paste-style tomatoes for you.
These are tomatoes that are much more suited
to be broken down into a tomato sauce.
And there's no better one truly
in the world than the San Marzano.
Now, there's some debate,
obviously what counts as a San Marzano tomato.
It's sort of one of those DOP type of things
where, you know, you can't call it champagne
unless it's grown in a champagne type of thing.
I don't know exactly where I quite stand on that.
I think genetically if you're looking at the same seed,
yes, there's some difference in the terroir of the soil.
But look, it's a paste tomato.
It's from the same genetic line as the original San Marzano.
That's good enough for me here in San Diego, California.
And I'm sure it's probably good enough
for you wherever you're watching this video.
So as I've started to bake and cook more,
I've been making pasta, I've been making homemade pizza,
a paste tomato or a processing style sauce tomato
has been really, really important for me to grow.
And I grew them in the past,
but I just wasn't processing them that much.
So I kind of ate them as normal.
So a San Marzano,
and then I have another one for you,
if you either can't get your hands on San Marzano
or you want to grow something just a little bit different,
and that would be the Amish Paste.
Really, when you're looking at a sauce tomato
you wanna look for those paste-style tomatoes.
They are thick, they are meaty, they are deep red,
and they're sort of big.
So you can kind of process them and you actually get a lot
of bang for your buck on each of the fruits.
Amish Paste is another one that we've grown
that we've had a lot of success with.
It's very, very productive.
And again, you just get a huge amount
of delicious fruit that you can then just process down.
And I've done really simple tomato sauces.
I've done more involved tomato sauces.
Probably the simplest one I did
was I actually even included the skins.
I didn't even boil it, blanch off the skin
and then sort of process it and then simmer it down.
I just put all the tomatoes in a pot
and sort of simmered them all the way down,
and it worked really, really fine.
So Amish Paste and San Marzano make my top two
for a sauce-style tomato.
It's getting hot in the greenhouse.
I'm gonna take my jacket off.
It is toasty in here as we move
into the more heirloom or beef steak tomatoes.
These are some of the ones you really think about
when you think about growing tomatoes yourself.
And why don't we start out with one of our own here?
This is the Cherokee Carbon.
I'm gonna read you the back of the packet
because this really encapsulates
what this tomato's all about.
"What do you get when you cross the two tomato favorites,
Cherokee Purple."
We all know that one.
"And then carbon?
"A tomato lover's dream
with heirloom flavor earlier in the season."
Important.
"Increased production, less cracks, less blemishes."
It is a huge tomato, 10 to 12 ounces, purple.
It's a beef-steak style, and it's literally award-winning.
It has won many, many awards.
So, if you want sort of an heirloom,
but without some of the potential weaknesses
of the heirloom,
which would be the Cherokee Purple,
get the Cherokee Carbon.
It's a cross, it's a hybridized cross.
It's a little bit more resistant
to a couple different things,
a little bit more vigor going to it,
but it still looks and tastes very, very good.
Some might even say better than the Cherokee Purple,
but I'll leave that up to you as you go ahead
and grow it this year in the garden.
So when you get into these style of tomatoes,
these are the ones where you can have the most fun,
in my opinion.
There's a lot of different sizes, shapes, colors,
striping, flavor profiles.
But I'm trying to go again this year with some classics.
And this is just a little bit of an updated version
on arguably one of the most classic heirloom tomatoes
of all time, which would be Cherokee Purple.
Next one I have for you
in the beef-steak world is possibly one
of the most beautiful ones and it's aptly named.
That would be Beauty King.
This one's out of Wild Boar Farms.
Many of you might know Wild Boar
because of the Atomic Grape, Brad's Atomic Grape,
one of his more famous varieties.
Personally, that one is not one of my favorites,
but what is one of my favorites is Beauty King.
Let me just make sure I've done this right, I have.
Beauty King is hands down one
of the prettiest beef steaks that I've ever grown.
I've grown it for two years now.
The flavor's amazing.
It's a red and yellow striped bicolor tomato
with really delicious, juicy, juicy flesh.
And it can get up to 20 ounces,
so you can get over a pound on this guy.
You'll be very pleased
if you're trying to grow a large tomato.
And we grew, you know, a few years back,
I would say about 16 different types of beef steaks
in a Florida weave system here
in the backyard of the homestead.
And this one far and away was in the top one or two
of those beef steaks.
So, tried a lot, really expanded,
and then contracted down to some varieties
that I really liked.
And Beauty King is one of those.
It's a cross between, I believe, a Rainbow Star
and then a classic heirloom, the Green Zebra.
So you have a hybridized cross
of two other gorgeous beef steaks with this one.
The final beef steak that I have for you is one
of the most beautifully shaped ones
with a very pleasing name.
It is Costoluto Genovese, obviously an Italian variety.
Now, this one just looks spectacular.
It sort of has these fluted sides,
which I have not showcased yet in this collection.
And it really is a gorgeous, gorgeous tomato.
And I would say the flavor is good to great,
but it is not absolutely stellar.
The reason I put this in the mix
is because I already have some really delicious beef steaks
in Cherokee Carbon and in Beauty King.
I wanted something that is still top tier in flavor
but does not necessarily blow you away,
but does when it comes to the look, appearance and color.
It is this beautiful deep red.
You can slice it thinly,
you can lay it down on a plate with some mozzarella
or something like that,
and it absolutely looks like you made it
at a Michelin-Star restaurant.
Without a doubt, one of the best tomatoes
that you will ever grow
in the heirloom or beef steak category.
And that does conclude the heirloom or beef steak category.
And now I want to get into some weird tomatoes.
In this little packet right here
I have some might say the original tomato species.
This is the Solanum pimpinellifolium,
or the currant tomato.
The seeds are tiny.
They're sometimes a little bit difficult to find.
Hopefully we can bring them
to you guys at Botanical Interests pretty soon.
But for now,
let's just say I source these through interesting methods.
But the currant tomato is the smallest tomato in the world.
It is absolutely tiny.
It sort of has a more wild,
sort of bushy kind of overgrowth look
to the actual vegetation.
But when it comes to the plants or the fruit,
the fruit is tiny, almost like little,
I don't know, little candies.
They're like the size of a Skittle perhaps.
And why do I find this so interesting
is that I simply want an oddball tomato.
You can pick tons of these.
They'll grow almost like a wild tomato,
and you can just pick 'em and pop 'em into your mouth,
or you can collect a bunch of them.
You can throw 'em as almost
like a jeweled tomato on top of a salad.
They taste decently acidic,
a little pop of sweet,
but certainly not as sweet as some
of these other varieties,
oftentimes described sort of as like a wine type of taste.
So to me, a really unique one,
a conversation starter for sure,
and if you do like to experiment in the kitchen,
it is one that you could have a lot of fun with.
So this is Solanum pimpinellifolium,
also known as the currant tomato.
The next weird one I have for you is weird
because you actually don't want the tomatoes
off of this plant, off of this tomato plant.
You don't want the tomatoes.
How could that be?
Well, that's because I'm talking
about the Fortamino Rootstock variety.
Now, rootstock, when you hear about that,
you're talking mostly about the world
of orcharding, when you're growing an apple
and grafting an M-111 rootstock on it or something
like that, maybe citrus.
Most citrus these days, of course, is grafted.
Avocados, grafted.
Well, what is grafting?
Well, what you're doing is you're saying, I like the roots
of this variety and I like the fruits of this variety.
So I'm gonna take these roots and these fruits,
put them together, and there you go.
I have this sort of Frankenstein plant
that gives me benefits both above and below ground.
And so that's what I'm talking about here
with the Fortamino Rootstock.
It's grown for its root system.
Just realized I ran outta space,
but what you want to do is plant as many of these
as you have tomato varieties, as you have tomato plants.
And then what you'll do is as these ones grow
and as these ones grow, you will take the top of this one
and graft it to the bottom of the Fortamino Rootstock.
We'll do a full video on this,
but this gets into some more advanced techniques,
certainly, and you don't have to do it.
Like I mentioned, these tomatoes that I've selected,
they all have improved disease resistance, vigor, et cetera.
But if you really want to go crazy with this,
you're gonna get more flowers,
more vigor on the truss, or the area
of the tomato that is throwing out all those flowers.
You're gonna get improved disease resistance.
There's also going to be more leaves
around the entire plant itself to prevent sun scald
in the heat of the summer.
So the Fortamino Rootstock is almost
like a cheat code for tomatoes.
You can say, hey, I want this flavor,
but it doesn't have all these nice features.
I'm gonna go ahead and put it in the Fortamino,
and there you go.
You have this sort of Frankenstein beautiful superhero
of a tomato plant.
These are my tomato varieties that I think make
up the perfect 2023 tomato lineup.
Where do you think I missed the boat?
Do you think I'm spot on?
Let me know down in the comments.
Roast my selection.
And remember, you can always grab our seeds
at Botanical Interests,
which is now a company that we own here at Epic Gardening.
So, incredible honor to own that company
and take it forward and appreciate your guys' support,
'cause that's the only reason that we're able
to do this type of work.
So until next time, good luck in the garden,
and keep on growing.