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Anyone a tomato 🍅 expert? Grow tomatoes successfully?
Does anyone know of an heirloom tomato with similar tastes as big boy?
I’m 7a zone, it gets very hot and humid. I’m researching heirloom tomatoes vs hybrid. I’m either buying live plants or seeds. So far the only advantage I see to heirloom plants is the ability to save seeds. (Maybe important considering who’s buying seed companies, Gates)
My issue is I love Big Boy tomatoes. I don’t like the taste of a sweet tomato.
My favorite way to eat tomatoes is sliced with S&P so taste is important. Why grow an heirloom? Let me count the ways: 1. the ability to propagate from seed, 2. improvement from season to season (hopefully) by propagating plants with greater fitness, 3. escape from the establishment seeking to control us via enslavement to their hybrids....4. on and on. Having a bit of fun with #3, but....well, maybe some truth there. OK, the truth is my wife likes the acidity of Better Boy. I agree [with her] that some heirlooms lean toward sweetness with less acidity.
While researching I ran across this comment on Houzz.com forum from 14 years ago. Love it! They were awake way back then.
Why grow an heirloom? Let me count the ways:
OK, the truth is my wife likes the acidity of Better Boy. I agree [with her] that some heirlooms lean toward sweetness with less acidity.
I go with Brandywines and Paul Robeson , Beefstakes. for big ones. Problems I have uo North are not ones you will have, but we have been hit hard by blight, late blight usually because it takes so darn long to ripen them up here and we often start to get cool in August. Paul Robeson is less acid, both Brandywines and Beefstakes are loaded with that true tomato flavor.
Just checked the brandywine tomato characteristics. I don’t like a sweet tomato. I want to taste the bite. Same with liquor when I drink occasionally, I want to taste the alcohol and less fillers. I’m probably going to have to get at least one hybrid to get the taste I’m looking for.
I’ve heard of brandywine, not sure about the taste. I wish I knew what my grandfather grew. We didn’t cook fancy with them. My grandma canned just about every tomato he grew. I spent many moments with her doing that. Other ways we ate them was soup, sliced and sandwiches. I don’t know if this regional, we always put fresh cut up tomatoes in corn & butter beans. So much that it’s hard for me to eat them with out tomatoes. I put them on collards. Maybe this will help your situation, just a thought. My grandfather started his tomato seeds in the garden. He made a greenhouse with wire and plastic. Probably the plastic people put over windows decades ago. If warm enough he took off the plastic every morning and replaced at night. I think he used something to hold plastic down, maybe bricks. Took dedication but his tomatoes were great. He grew up in farming so he knew what to do. Unlike me watching videos and reading blogs. Clearly I didn’t learn enough. But I know how to pick, peel, shuck everything.
Years ago I watched a video with an old man talking about the tomatoes in stores. As he said and I agree, Refrigeration ruins a tomato a greenhouse tomato lacks the flavor of grown in nature. If I buy tomatoes I only buy those grown in Mexico. They have a better flavor and it gets you through the winter. I noticed there are certain varieties of tomatoes and vegetable that are for the greenhouse.
Break up your plot and grow a few varieties and taste them. The f1 seeds will be all over the place and maybe not to your taste. When you find one you like, plant that one exclusively the next season. You can play Father Mendel for characteristics you want after that. Ironically, I learned my botany and elementary genetics from the Augustinian fathers (Gregor Mendel was an Augustinian).
What’s an f1 seed?
I’m planning on growing a few new to me. It’s great you had that experience with the Father’s. On top of that you learned something you can use forever.
Sounds familiar to Brunswick Stew, which is a regional dish, with corn, beans, tomatos, spies, and chicken or pulled pork, and, downright traditional, rabbit. It's the one meat I have never had, in my entire life! Theres a farm stand not far from me and they always have a sign out that they have rabbit. Thats how I stumbled across the Brunswick Stew recipe, I guess it will be on my bucket list, keep meaning to stop by there and pick up some rabbit meat. I used to start my own tomatos indoors, for decades, but there is a fine farm near me with big greenhouses that I can buy the starts, and they have heirlooms too. I can and freeze my tomatos for cooking, and eat them fresh, nothing like a tomato sandwich with mayo and salt and pepper, fresh picked and still warm from the sun.
Dang I wish I had a pic of the butter beans with fresh tomatoes. We add non cooked cut up tomatoes to butter beans and corn or when just eating one vegetable. Most people don’t want the juice for the veggies but we do. I’ve never seen anyone but my mom’s family do this.
I know all about Brunswick stew. I grew up on it and still eat it sometimes. I’ve never seen anything comparable in the soup or chili category. The local volunteer fire departments have at least one cook a year. It’s cooked outside in big metal pots. My school also cooked it for fund raising and we had it for lunch occasionally. I refused to eat my grandparents Brunswick stew. They cooked it in what we call a wash pot, big old cast iron pot outside over a fire. They put chopped cabbage in it. Didn’t taste or look right to me.
Our stew looks like the picture in the link. It has three recipes. Our stew has whole chicken, diced tomatoes, butter (Lima) beans, potatoes, corn and spices (probably canine pepper, S&P (some batches are hotter). That comes from who is doing spices. If hands are bigger it’s hotter. When cooking huge pots they add handfuls of spices instead of using measuring cups. You can cook it with any meat you desire. Deer meat is a popular option. I don’t remember anyone using a ham hock or butter.
If I had a place to buy non gmo tomato plants I would. I don’t trust the farmers here. It’s very few farms switching to organic and non GMO. Love tomato sandwiches. My husband just started eating raw tomatoes about a decade ago. He will eat tomato sandwich with bacon. Recently I told him we need to find a local farmer selling pork if he wanted those sandwiches. Bacon prices are outrageous (like everything).
Brandywine is my favorite heirloom. Big flavor, firm "meat."
Also, I have had plenty of volunteers from hybrids.
I find it interesting there’s so many different types of tomatoes exist. I like classic tart tomato flavor or the mild yellow tomatoes. I can’t get into the sweet tomato.
From what I’m reading you can save seeds from hybrid but you won’t get the same plant characteristics as the original plant. I’d like to begin saving seeds for multiple reasons. Mainly I don’t know the future of seeds and plants. They are probably going to corrupt it like the food industry. Or worse control it.
Tried to grow cherry tomato plants - unsuccessfully - from seeds from the best tasting cherry tomatoes I've ever had, these from a university's research growing fields (many years ago), was told that any individual seeds from the fruit might be reflective of one or another of the plants used in producing the hybrid, but not necessarily the delicious end product that I was trying to replicate. Go for organic seed vendors and try several until you find an outstanding version.
Thanks for your advice.