Just added morning of August 3 (HOW can it be August already?!)
Here is a link to my friend Dean's impressions of Tomatopalooza - including some great pictures (Sue and I vote the pic of Dean's daughter with the tomato balloons as best of show!)
I've discussed the various miracles in tomato supplies and superb organization and support. So let's get down to it and discuss the true stars of the show - the tomatoes!
I am going to refer to Brian's lovely, labeled pictures to jog my memory of what I tasted. But first....at a general level, we had lots of reds and pinks, a pretty good supply of "blacks" (the unusual purple or brown tomatoes), yellows, oranges and bicolors. For whatever reason, we were really short on white and green fruited varieties. Though a much smaller representation than the past few years, the Dwarf tomato project table was an interesting place to taste and hang around, and showed once again the promise that the project holds.
So, on to what I tasted and what I thought about it (and I am pretty ruthless when tasting tomatoes!). Alphabetically (again, following Brian's pics):
Aussie - bland - 5/10
Banksia Queen F4 - a pleasant surprise - 7.5
Beefywine - not bad, a bit crunchy - underripe? - 6
Beryl Beauty F6 - nice, I've had better, though - 7
Blazing Beauty F4 - very nice, Tim! - promising - 7.5 (not quite as orange as what the F3 showed, still segregating)
Bloody Butcher - YUCK! a spitter....1
Brandywine OTV - one of the best of the day - superb - 8
Brandywine Sudduth - superb - 8.5 (always one of my favorites)
Chapman - dry, crunchy - underripe? - 4
Cherokee Green - I love that tomato - 8
Cuostralee - the pink one from Heirloom Seeds - nothing there! - 4
Dr Carolyn's Pink - had a musky, cooked flavor - 5
Druzba - bland - 5.5
Eva Purple Ball - average to pleasant - 6
German Johnson - typical - mild, sweet, a bit lacking - 6.5
Granny Cantrell - pretty good - a bit too mild - 6.5
Green Doctors - better than Green Grape, but still....5.5
Green Grape - just don't like it very much - 5
KBX - a really nice tomato - balanced, flavorful - 7.5
Kelly Green - one of the better advanced dwarfs - 7.5
Little Lucky - tasty, a bit hollow - I've had better - 6.5
Mortgage Lifter Pale Leaf - mild and sweet - 7
Mr. Snow - one of the best of the tasting - great dwarf! - 8
Nepal -interesting! Fruit I brought - superb - 8; fruit others brought - watery, bland - 5. A lesson here.
Perth Pride - another best in tasting - bright, tart, complex - 7.5
Plentiful F2 - great competitor to Tasmanian chocolate- tasty! - 7.5
Porky F3 - a bit dry, mealy, bland - nice size purple heart for a dwarf - 5.5
Purple Haze - intense, but a bit of a cooked flavor - 6.5
Purple Haze X P20 - weird! more fruit (berry) like - 4 (nearly a spitter!)
Red Brandywine - again, interesting - one sample bland, 5; another sample (different source) balanced and flavorful, 7
Rosella Crimson - two different fruit - 6 and 7 (one overripe, one underripe?)
Rosella Purple - very nice, and it can even be better - 7.5
Rosy indeterminate - pretty nice - 6.5
Rosy, orange fruit - very nice, great potential - 7.5
Rosy pink - two different fruit, similar flavors - fair - 6
Rosy purple fruit - very nice! - 7
Sarandipity - two fruit (two plants) - both average in flavor - 5.5
Snowy F2 from red - four different fruits - none of them stood out, one was awful - ranked from 2 to 6
Summertime Green - a bit overripe, can show much better - 6
Sunny F2 - three different fruit, I liked the orange one best - 5-6 range for all three
Sungold - interesting! Tasted from two different bowls. One was the real deal - 9! - the other must have been from saved seed - good but lacked the punch - 6.5
Sweet Sue - my F6 plant isn't the choice selection - good but not great - 6.5
Tasmanian Chocolate - I really liked it, best I've tasted - 7.5
Variegated - average tomato flavor - 6
Wild Fred - flavor just wasn't there in this selection - 6
Williams Striped- one of the better bicolors I've tasted - 7
Winsall - nice pink tomato, well balanced - 7.5
Witty - not as good as what I tasted at Lee's - 6
Yellow Brandywine - outstanding tomato - 8
So as I look through this list, somehow I managed to taste 60 varieties - and was ready to start eating tomatoes again the very next day!
Best tomatoes I tasted - Perth Pride, Dwarf Mr. Snow, Banksia Queen, Brandywine OTV, Brandywine Sudduth, Yellow Brandywine, Sungold, Cherokee Green (8 varieties stood out for me)
Worst tomatoes I tasted - Snowy from Red hybrid, white cherry; Purple Haze X P20; Bloody Butcher, Aussie, Chapman, imposter Nepal, imposter Red Brandywine. (7 varieties scraped the bottom).
OK, blog readers who attended Tomatopalooza - send me your lists to post!
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