What kind of tomatoes should I grow?

What a question, right, and why ask this in winter? Do you know how many varieties of tomatoes are out there?! It’s crazy! Winter is the best time for planning. You can't be outside, so you may as well be inside ordering from seed catalogs and working on your planting calendar.

When selecting your tomato varieties (nobody only plants one type of tomato), I recommend you consider what you are going to use your tomatoes for – just a good old tomato sandwich or to process and can for soups and sauces? How much time are you going to have for picking – just a few weeks to get what you need or do you want to have tomatoes available for as long as possible? Well, let me see if I can help to answer a few of your questions!

First, you need to decide between types of tomatoes – determinate or indeterminate.

Determinate tomatoes grow to a predetermined height (approximately four feet tall). The plant stops growing when fruit sets on the top bud, and all fruit ripens at or near the same time (usually over a two-week period), and then the plant stops producing fruit and dies.

Indeterminate tomatoes grow, flower, and produce fruit throughout the growing season until the first fall frost kills the plant. Given their long growing season, indeterminate tomatoes grow to be quite large and tall. Plants can reach heights of up to 12 feet although six feet is typical.

So, if you wish to pick and process your tomatoes over a shorter amount of time, you need determinate varieties. If you are a true “southerner” and want to have tomato sandwiches right up to the first frost – indeterminate tomato varieties are for you.

Now, how do you want to use your tomatoes? Sliced for sandwiches and burgers? Canned for soups? Made into sauces? Chopped for salads?  As a true southerner, let me share some of my favorite indeterminate tomatoes with you.

Big Beef – produces large fruit, juicy and meaty, perfect for slicing for sandwiches and burgers, matures mid-season.

Big Boy – another producer of large fruit, more seedy but with great flavor maturing in mid-season.

Parks Whopper – a good all around tomato, prolific, making medium to large slicing tomatoes up until first frost.

Brandywine – large, slightly sweet Heirloom variety, meatier than some of the available hybrids with rosy pink coloring at maturity.

Sweet Million – bright red, juicy cherry tomato, great for salads and prolific producing 200-300 tomatoes per plant (trust me!).

Early Girl – a hearty medium size producing variety that doesn’t mind a little cooler weather giving you a head start on the growing season, maturing in early summer.

Amish Paste – classic Roma type paste tomato, meaty with few seeds, great for those Italian sauces!

Yellow Pear – unique pear-shaped golden cherry tomato fruit, prolific, tasty and colorful, easy to grow in a pot or smaller spaces.

The ball, or the tomato, is now in your court. What kind of tomatoes are you going to plan to grow this year? 

Cherry, Pear, and Roma mix!