Still, there are some things that are just must-grow, for various reasons. Here are a few of the tomatoes that I am looking forward to the most for this season.
Berkeley Tie Dye - wild name, wild colors. I want to see it, taste it, document it with pictures - and save some fresh seed, since so few germinated!
Pink Berkeley Tie Dye - ditto! Both of these were found/created by Brad Gates of Wild Boar Farm in California.
Green Doctors - named after my friend, Carolyn Male, this supposedly is a really good green cherry tomato - much better than the short-growing (and not particularly delicious to my palate) Green Grape. We shall see!
Kosovo - People at Garden Web and Tomatoville rave about this large pink heart shaped variety that seemed to originate with Glenn Parker in Australia. I did taste a fruit that my friend Lee brought back from the Cincinnati tomato tasting (CHOPTAG) a few years ago and found it delicious.
Buckeye State - from my friend Mike at Victory Seeds, this is one of the lost Livingston Seed Company varieties that was recently (supposedly!) found. We shall see if it matches the catalog description. It is one of the very first large pink tomatoes sold in seed catalogs in the late 1800s.
Newly developed heart shaped varieties from my German tomato friend, Reinhard Kraft - in yellow, red, brown, purple and green. Perhaps not quite stable yet, but will be fun to see what I get.
Of course, I always eagerly anticipate old favorites - for eating as well as saving some fresh seed. This year tomatoes in that category I plan to grow are Andrew Rahart's Jumbo Red, Nepal, Tiger Tom, Little Lucky, Lucky Cross, the three Cherokees (purple, chocolate the green), Yellow Brandywine, and Speckled Roman.
Finally, our garden would not be complete without Sungold and Mexico Midget.
Soon I will provide an update on the various Dwarf project varieties I plan to grow - as well as hot and sweet peppers, and eggplant.