This year I planted a few of my favourites and a single plant of 5 others. Here is how they are progressing. Whether a sample size of one means anything I'll leave it to you.
Father Tom
This variety was strongly touted as being disease resistant, yet it diseased up first and to the greatest extent. However after pulling the fungally bottom leaves off it soldiered on. The leaves continue to skank up at the bottom, but the plant is beating that by its rapid growth.
The bottom truss of tomatoes were broken off in a teenage basketball accident. No worries I thought. Just wait a little while and more flowers will appear. Well I waited and waited and waited. The plant went through a growth spurt (now at 2 metres), and set some fruit set, but overall it still appears somewhat shy in the bearing stakes given its size. However, the fruit is of a good size. Ok it’s hard to tell as tomatoes can yellow up at a moments notice and don’t grow much if at all after that.
It is a very lean plant, upright without wanting to send out many side shoots. As such it has a very open canopy. Perhaps this is the reason for its alleged superior disease resistance. But at this stage I’d have to say that compared tom most of the others it’s a bit tomato resistant as well.
Planted: 15cm single plant
Position: North east corner (so should have an advantage re disease because of good airflow and a proximity to only two other plants). The plan is below
Growth: 8/10
Early disease resistance: 3/10
Flowering and fruit set: 4/10
Overall at this stage: 5/10
Comment: Note the openness of its canopy, with a small number of good looking matas.
Improved Bragger
I planted this one on the advice of JenkoBianco, on the basis of how well it went last year. With a name like that how could one resist! But they should have mentioned on the label that it was a bloody ornamental! It’s a big healthy plant that side shooted quite a bit. However it barely flowered and when it did and set fruit, many of them broke off half way up the rachis. I’ve seen this a lot before in other varieties in other years. But this year, only this variety has had this problem.
So at this stage it has very little to brag about. Perhaps it’s a later variety that needs a little more heat. It’s been cool in November with most days in the low 20’s so I’ll give it some more time.
Planted: 15cm single plant
Position: Outer eastern row.
Growth: 7/10
Early disease resistance: 7/10
Flowering and fruit set: 1/10
Overall at this stage: 2/10
Comment: Look hard and you'll see..... bugger all.
Money Maker
Fruit everywhere on this one. It set early set and continued thereafter for a while. The top end of the plant doesn’t seem as prolific but it’s still acceptable. The bush grew like the clappers but it continued to side shoot. So much so that I now have 3 stakes holding the plant up. My only concern is that the fruit might come in rather small. Perhaps this should be expected due to the number of fruit. It also appears to be pretty disease resistant.
Planted: 15cm single plant
Position: outer eastern row
Growth: 7/10
Early disease resistance: 7/10
Flowering and fruit set: 8/10
Overall at this stage: 8/10
Comment: Hard to see, but there's lots of bunches there. On all sides too.
Reggae Roma
I normally don’t plant the Roma varieties. Now I know why. This thing is pathetic. It is about 1/3 the size of the others despite being planted at the same time. The plant has an annoying habit of sending off thin weasally shoots from just about every orifice and in every direction but up. The shoots grow about 2 inches and then they shoot again. The end result is that I've ended up with a hedge rather than a tomato. It did produce a nice bunch of tomatoes on the very bottom truss, but other than that it appears to be a waste of space.
Planted: 15cm single plant
Position: outer eastern row
Growth: 1/10
Early disease resistance: 7/10
Flowering and fruit set: 2/10
Overall at this stage: 2/10
Comment: Reggae Roma is centre of picture nestled between Mighty Red (left) and Money Maker (right).
Mighty Red
In these them parts, this variety is the one by which the others are judged. From my experience, it produces large crops of flavoursome tomatoes that don’t have the thick skins normally encountered in shop bought swill. It also has excellent disease resistance. For these reasons it is easily the most popular backyard tomato in Australia.
I planted 5 this year - the fewest that I’ve ever done. In previous years I’ve allocated 2/3rds or more of my tomato space to the “Mighty One”. I planted these as small punnet plants. After a little bit of a slow start they have hit their straps and are setting well on good sized bushes. In fact I planted the runt of the litter from the punnet in the next to the Waste of Space Roma and in the same row as Improved Bragger and Money Maker. It’s looking good in comparison to most of them. I think in the variety competition stakes, Mighty Red will be hard to beat.
Planted: Small plants from a 6 plant punnet
Position: 1 corner, outer western row.
Growth: 6/10
Early disease resistance: 8/10
Flowering and fruit set: 8/10
Overall at this stage: 7/10
Comment: On its way.
Improved Apollo
For years this has been a favourite of mine. It produces a very good crop of albeit only medium sized tasty fruit, and it’s early. I’ll have a few ripe sweet tomatoes by next week, with piles by Christmas. However, this variety despite being touted as an improved disease resistant variety does seem to fall over with vercillium wilt not long into January when the searing hot weather hits Adelaide. But that’s not my worry this year. I planted this variety in the middle row which puts it at a disadvantage when it comes to disease as the lower airflow and makes it more conducive to problems. However, some of this years inner row plants appear to have a viral infection (the leaves look like tobacco leaf virus). I hope not, as my two patches (that I can’t rotate frequently enough) have enough types of pox already.
Planted: Small plants from a 6 plant punnet
Position: Middle row
Growth: 7/10
Early disease resistance: 3-8/10 (some look good others not)
Flowering and fruit set: 8/10
Overall at this stage: 7/10
Comment: A better one at the front. The red tomato is another IA behind it.
First Prize
I planted a few of these last year. It is a strange tomato appearance wise – short, bushy and with dark green leathery leaves. It cropped reasonably well and for a long time. The tomatoes were medium to big with good flavour. Personally I think it would make a very good tub/potted variety due to its short bushy growth habit. But I accidentally partly ringbarked one of my Improved Apollo’s by roughly pulling off a side shoot when it was small. It looked pretty sick thereafter, so I pulled it and shoved in a First Prize in its place. Given that it is amongst a bunch of far more advanced bushes, it is advancing well and has set fruit.
Early days but overall rating 7/10
Comment: Planted many weeks later, it still has a really good crop on it.
Pink Pearl
I’m not much of a cherry guy, but after seeing JenkoBianco’s last year I just had to have one. My faith in it was not misplaced. Genetically this is a marvel. It has leaves about 3 times larger than the average tomato, it grew 3 times faster, set fruit time after time (and is still doing so), and no sign of disease. It has already ripened on the bottom trusses. It has 4 stakes and has reached the top of all of them. If tomatoes had a master race, this would be a strong candidate. As its name suggests it has strange looking pinky hued fruit, but they do continue to the usual bright red stage. While I believe that you can eat them at the pink stage, I tried and found that they were a bit tart and flavourless. In any case I strongly believe that tomatoes should be red!
However, even when red I found them to only have average flavour, and they seemed to lack the juiciness expected. But it’s early days. It will be interesting to see if the latter setting fruit will be any better.
Position: North Eastern corner
Planted: 15cm single plant.
Growth: 10/10
Early disease resistance: 10/10
Flowering and fruit set: 10/10
Flavour: 5/10
Overall at this stage: 9/10
Comment: Just insane!
Here is a map of my tomato patch
FT=Father Tom
IB=Improved Bragger
MM=Money Maker
RR=Reggae Roma
MR=Mighty Red
IA=Improved Apollo
FP=First Prize
PP=Pink Pearl
