I have been growing Better Boy hybrid tomatoes for over 30 years. They are reliable and always produce a good harvest. Last year I decided to add some heirloom plants to my tomato garden. I already knew that heirlooms don’t have the disease resistant qualities that hybrids do, but in my search for a sweeter tomato, I decided to give them a try anyway. I ordered the seed from a company specializing in traditional seeds and started the plants in my own greenhouse. After the plants were a good size, I moved them to my garden.
I planted 7 Mr. Stripey, 7 Djena Lee’s Golden Girl, 7 Striped German, 6 Delicious, and 4 First Pick heirloom tomatoes. I also planted 10 Better Boy hybrids, for a total of 41 plants. I only grew indeterminate varieties that are supposed to keep producing until frost. This number of plants should have produced enough tomatoes for all the sauces he had planned to can. He didn’t even come close.
Although I didn’t grow Rutgers and Marglobe tomatoes last year, I have grown them many times before. If you are interested in growing heirlooms, you may also find your results helpful. The only reason I didn’t grow them last year was lack of garden space.
mr stripey It was something of a disappointment for me. I had read good things about this tomato variety, so I had high hopes. The medium sized fruits tasted very good, but the production was poor. Each plant produced a handful of tomatoes, but after the first pick, they produced very little additional fruit.
Djena Lee’s Golden Girl grew the best of all hybrids. The tomatoes were large and the plants produced the most tomatoes. The taste was mild and sweet, as a yellow tomato should be. The walls were quite thick, so the seed cavity was smaller than average, which is a plus. They also continued to put longer tomatoes than any of the other heirlooms. I’ll be back to farming Gold Girls by Djena Lee.
scratched german The plants turned out to be a failure for me. I suspect that they sold me seed that was not true to variety. It may have been cross pollinated. The tomatoes were a medium sized yellow with no streaks at all.
They tasted good, but produced very poorly. I was very disappointed. I have eaten delicious German striped tomatoes grown by a friend in the past, but they were very large pink tomatoes with red stripes. Mine were nothing like them.
Delicious It produced nice medium sized red tomatoes, but again, they didn’t continue to produce very well after the first flush. The tomatoes were perfectly round with a good flavor.
first selection It was a waste of garden space. The plants were small and lanky. I didn’t expect to produce much then, as they are an early tomato variety, but I certainly expected more than I got. You may have picked a total of 8 tomatoes from all four plants combined. After the first harvest, they did not put any more tomatoes.
rutgers they have always grown well and produced good crops for me. They are a round red tomato of medium size and good flavor. They have also produced fairly good crops until frost.
Marglobe has always done a pretty good job of producing good sized crops. They are red, flat tomatoes with thicker-than-average walls, making them a good substitute for paste-type varieties. They taste good, but they’re not exactly a sliced tomato. They generally continue to produce until frost, although they have failed to do so once or twice.
Fortunately I had the good sense to plant some Better Boy hybrids, or I wouldn’t have had hardly any tomatoes last year. They are always dependent and produce even frost. I will continue my search for the perfect family heirloom, but in the meantime, I will continue to grow Better Boys for a sure harvest. I will be growing Djena Lee’s Golden Girl, Rutgers and Marglobe hybrids again, but will only try a couple of new varieties next year. I can try growing Brandywines. I’ve heard good things about the Brandywine heirloom tomato.