Tomatoes: Who Gets Voted Off?

The major harvesting seems to be over, which is kind of early, I think.  We have fruits and veggies still to harvest, but more of a small stream than a tsunami.    Regular tsunamis are bad, but tomato tsunamis are exhilarating!  Ah well.  Now is a good time start evaluating what we grew, before I forget.

Weird tomato

Tomatoes (14 plants total): It seemed like we didn't have very many tomatoes for 14 plants.  However, 2 plants were for drying (and there were lots of them!), one was a cherry, three were slicing tomatoes and only 6 were for sauce.  Of those 6, 3 got some kind of illness but still valiantly produced tomatoes.  They were also determinate, and so made only so many tomatoes, then stopped.  So all things considered, we did OK getting  5 quarts and 5 pints of crushed tomatoes and 1 quart and 5 pints of nice, thick sauce.  There will be enough for another batch of sauce, as well.

• Principe Borghese (2 plants) - Great!  Fruit was smaller than described (1/2 oz - 1 oz instead of 1 oz - 2 oz) but the two plants together produced over 600 tomatoes!  A determinant plant, so the fruit ripened over a relatively short time.  Spacing was fine as it was (3'x3').  I would grow 3 or 4 next year, space allowing.
• Black Cherry (1 plants) - A gift from a friend.  Very vigorous and didn't get whatever illness its neighbor had.  Indeterminate, so it is still producing very cool-looking dark purple fruits that are tasty and didn't crack (well, maybe a very few did) with all the rain we've had.  Needs more space, though, or should be pruned, because it will grow everywhere!  I'd grow it again.
• Viva Italia (3 plants) - These plants got sick first and worst.  They were VFFNA hybrids and supposed to be resistant to bacterial speck, but something something got to them and then spread to other plants.  Boo.  The fruit that was set was good but not abundant.  It is a determinate tomato.   Maybe this year's wet growing season did it in, but I'm not inclined to try this again.
• Super Marzano (3 plants) - The Marzano took a long time to start ripening, but had clumps of 3 to 5 pointed fruits as long as my hand (which isn't a long hand, though).  The fruit tends to ripen from the  bottom and fall off if bumped.  This means we had a lot of fruit that finished ripening in the kitchen.  No biggie, just info.  The fruit was meaty and dry, as befits a paste tomato, with just a little thick gel and a few seeds inside.  It got a little crowded out by the over-achieving Brandywine on one side, but produced well enough.  I would grow it again, maybe with additional plants.
• Brandywine (1 plant) - As mentioned above, it is an over-achieving plant.  It needs more space and a taller, stronger cage.  The fruit has been OK, but malformed.  I don't know what causes this.  Its first ripe fruit came about 2 weeks ago, so it is not an early producer.  I'm not sure if I would grow it again, mainly because of its size and exuberance.
• Early Wonder (1 plant) - Again, it just started ripening in the last couple of weeks, despite the name.  The fruit is pink and have been well-formed.  Not sure I would grow it again, but not for any particular reason except that nothing about it really stands out.  Sounds harsh, doesn't it?
• Big Beef (1 plant) - This is next to the Brandywine and might be a great plant, but it is hard to tell.  (Note to self: don't plant 2 different round tomatoes next to each other.)  Like its cousins, it was late ripening.  maybe it was all our rain.  This didn't jump out as special, so I probably won't grow it either.

So that's the rundown on the tomatoes.  I would like to be able to put up more tomatoes whole/crushed and as sauce and salsa next year.  Over the winter I will research varieties to add to the San Marzano, Principe Borghese and Black Cherry.  Probably another paste or two and one or two slicing varieties.


Tomatillos (5 plants plus 2 or more volunteer strays):

• Cisneros (5 plants) - Several years ago, I planted tomatillos from a grocery store seed packet.  They were straggly and unkempt, produced a ton of tomatillos and came back next Spring.  What a find!  Since then, they have come back each year.  I was afraid they would get weak from inbreeding, so ordered these Cisneros seeds.  Now, the Cisneros was described as having huge fruit, but it turns out that my original tomatillos had fruit just as big, so maybe they were Cisneros, as well.  Anyway, these plants have done just fine.  They aren't producing as abundantly as the volunteers last year, but all the tomato-type fruits have the same problem.  So far, they have produced upwards of 20 pounds.   We will be harvesting tomatillos until frost and making salsa after frost!  We will grow again, but maybe as volunteer plants.
• Tomatillo volunteers (2 plus plants) - The volunteer tomatillos are behind the Cisneros in fruit maturity, since their early life was harder, what with tilling and landscape cloth, but are setting fruit.   I don't actually see any weakening of the plants, so maybe my fears of in-breeding were ungrounded.

Alas, this post has gotten long enough.  Evaluation of other parts of the garden will have to wait until tomorrow.