- Is there such a thing
as the perfect lineup of tomatoes to plant
throughout an entire season? I'm talking cherries,
I'm talking heirlooms, I'm talking weird, I'm talking slicers. I think I have it, at
least for this season. So in this video, I'm gonna go through every single one
I'm planting and why. We're gonna start off
with the smallest tomatoes and then go towards the largest size and talk about all the
different categories. And I've got a couple options in each, starting off with cherry tomatoes. For a fresh eating cherry tomato, something that probably
isn't really gonna make it into the kitchen, even if it does, it's not going to last very long, but the flavor's intense. It is the Sun Gold Cherry. If you have to grow
one, grow the Sun Gold. Of course, we carry it
at our seed company, Botanical Interests, but
it's rare in grocery stores. It's hard to find. And the reason why is because it does not have a long shelf life. I found the skin is very
prone to cracking or breaking, especially if you over-water it or harvest it at the wrong
time, or just leave it on the counter or in the
sun for a little bit, it will crack and break, but that's fine. I'll pay that price all
day because it is, to me, one of the best tasting cherry tomatoes you are ever going to find. Now, you'll sometimes see it
in these small little packs. It's because, guys, this seed, speaking now as someone
who owns a seed company, this is a very expensive seed, and so you gotta be careful with it. Cherish it when you buy it
and treat it with respect. But here we go, we're
gonna go in with Sun Gold. The thing that I think
is so cool about them, it's prolific, it's not that hard to grow, and it really just has that flavor, that sweet sort of classic,
vibrant summer tomato flavor. In this particular case,
I'll do one per hole, because, like I said,
these are not cheap seeds. So in I go, I'm gonna do six, because I always have friends
who want a Sun Gold tomato. Yeah, you want to give these support, because they are gonna
grow pretty extensively. Florida weave is a great
way to grow these guys. But if you have to grow one cherry, I would say grow the Sun Gold. The final tip I'll give you is that, if you wanna make
sure it doesn't crack, you can pick it just a little bit early and then just ripen it
on the kitchen counter. Gives you another buffer
of like two days or so. Next cherry and the last
cherry I have for you, going back to the classics, this would be the Supersweet 100. The name tells you
everything you need to know. I actually find it to be
a little bit less sweet than the Sun Gold, but I do
find it to be a classic red cherry tomato that is absolutely one of the most prolific you will ever grow. I mean, you can see the
trusses on this plant. They do not lie. The name does not lie. You can get upwards of a
hundred tomatoes per truss, and it's just a reliable,
reliable plant that has a lot of good disease resistance built into it. So if you struggle with
cerium wilts or some of these soil-borne diseases,
let's just say this, you're gonna have an easier
time with the Supersweet 100. It's an F1 hybrid variety, meaning that it is not an heirloom. It is something that's
been crossed and bred by humans in a traditional way. And that means that traditionally
when you're breeding you're gonna try to breed some
disease resistance into it. So, if you have trouble with diseases, go with the Supersweet 100, or if you just prefer a red
cherry to the orange Sun Gold, well, there you go. And now we're done with cherries, and it's on to grape tomatoes. Okay, grape tomatoes,
admittedly not a category that I've grown a lot of, mostly because I feel like
I can get the job done with the cherry, but sometimes
you want that grape tomato in a salad, or you just
like the shape of it or you have a different
particular use for it. And I can't open this flap. So maybe even the universe
itself is telling me, don't grow this grape tomato. But this one is Five Star Grape. It's an F1 hybrid again. I'm gonna have some
heirlooms for you as well. But yeah, I mean, guys, it's a disease-resistant grape tomato which is a little bit larger
than your standard cherry. Shape's a little bit more elongated. The seed's actually quite a bit larger, and it's just gonna have some
quality disease resistance and a reliable grow. It kind of gets to, you
know, back in the day I used to grow really unique
crazy varieties of tomatoes. You know, things like the Atomic Grape and some of these really
wild colored ones. I was growing more for the aesthetic. These days, and this might change, but these days I am growing
more for performance. I want delicious tomatoes. I want things that aren't gonna
cause me a lot of problems. I don't have to babysit
them in the garden. And to me, something like
the Five Star Grape F1 does the job for me. But that's it for the small tomatoes. Now we're going into what I call the salad or the sandwich slicer category. The first one is Mountain Magic. So, again, trying to go
for those performers, something that's just going to
reliably work in the garden. It's nothing too fancy, it is a about one to
three-inch red tomato, nice size, nice performance. It just works, guys. It just works. It's disease resistant to a
few of the more common ones. Again, this one's a hybrid. We carry this one at
Botanical, but I've grown this. I grew this last year. It does really, really well. And if you want, I think
if you're a gardener who's just looking for success, get these sort of classics,
do them really well, and then maybe throw
another one in the mix that's a little bit out there. Maybe it's orange, maybe
it's striped, et cetera. And then you know you
have one that's gonna work for you, and then you
can experiment with one that's maybe gonna be a little bit more visually appealing or
a little bit more fun. And if you are in an area of the country that has inclement weather
right now, like myself, honestly, I'm starting tomatoes later than I've ever started them
in my gardening career. Well, then this one's for you. This one's called Glacier. This is one that I've
grown for many, many years. It really enjoys a early
start to the season. Hence the name. It is a, let's see, 55-day variety, and it is extremely cold-tolerant. The variety is out of Sweden originally. So, as the name implies, you think they can handle
these colder temps. So if you're in an area that's
just not been kicking off as quickly as it has in prior
years, which honestly is us. I've gotten about 10 inches
of rain here in San Diego. And last year alone, I only got about six. So I'm over, I'm almost
double what I got last year in the first three months of this year, which is pretty wild. So this is an early-season tomato. If you are in a season, you know, just an uncommonly short season, like you're in a zone
two or three or four, you can pull this one off
'cause you got 55 days. You can still grow this. So it works really, really well. So that is my last slicer category tomato. Many of us just love tomatoes in sauce, pasta sauce, pizza sauce, et cetera. And if you do, I've got two
paste-style tomatoes for you. These are tomatoes that
are much more suited to be broken down into a tomato sauce. And there's no better one truly in the world than the San Marzano. Now, there's some debate, obviously what counts
as a San Marzano tomato. It's sort of one of
those DOP type of things where, you know, you
can't call it champagne unless it's grown in a
champagne type of thing. I don't know exactly where
I quite stand on that. I think genetically if you're
looking at the same seed, yes, there's some difference
in the terroir of the soil. But look, it's a paste tomato. It's from the same genetic line
as the original San Marzano. That's good enough for me
here in San Diego, California. And I'm sure it's probably good enough for you wherever you're
watching this video. So as I've started to bake and cook more, I've been making pasta, I've
been making homemade pizza, a paste tomato or a
processing style sauce tomato has been really, really
important for me to grow. And I grew them in the past, but I just wasn't
processing them that much. So I kind of ate them as normal. So a San Marzano, and then I have another one for you, if you either can't get
your hands on San Marzano or you want to grow something
just a little bit different, and that would be the Amish Paste. Really, when you're
looking at a sauce tomato you wanna look for those
paste-style tomatoes. They are thick, they are
meaty, they are deep red, and they're sort of big. So you can kind of process
them and you actually get a lot of bang for your buck
on each of the fruits. Amish Paste is another
one that we've grown that we've had a lot of success with. It's very, very productive. And again, you just get a huge amount of delicious fruit that you
can then just process down. And I've done really simple tomato sauces. I've done more involved tomato sauces. Probably the simplest one I did was I actually even included the skins. I didn't even boil it, blanch off the skin and then sort of process
it and then simmer it down. I just put all the tomatoes in a pot and sort of simmered
them all the way down, and it worked really, really fine. So Amish Paste and San
Marzano make my top two for a sauce-style tomato. It's getting hot in the greenhouse. I'm gonna take my jacket off. It is toasty in here as we move into the more heirloom
or beef steak tomatoes. These are some of the ones
you really think about when you think about
growing tomatoes yourself. And why don't we start out
with one of our own here? This is the Cherokee Carbon. I'm gonna read you the back of the packet because this really encapsulates what this tomato's all about. "What do you get when you
cross the two tomato favorites, Cherokee Purple." We all know that one. "And then carbon? "A tomato lover's dream with heirloom flavor
earlier in the season." Important. "Increased production, less
cracks, less blemishes." It is a huge tomato, 10
to 12 ounces, purple. It's a beef-steak style, and
it's literally award-winning. It has won many, many awards. So, if you want sort of an heirloom, but without some of the
potential weaknesses of the heirloom, which would be the Cherokee Purple, get the Cherokee Carbon. It's a cross, it's a hybridized cross. It's a little bit more resistant to a couple different things, a little bit more vigor going to it, but it still looks and
tastes very, very good. Some might even say better
than the Cherokee Purple, but I'll leave that up
to you as you go ahead and grow it this year in the garden. So when you get into
these style of tomatoes, these are the ones where
you can have the most fun, in my opinion. There's a lot of different
sizes, shapes, colors, striping, flavor profiles. But I'm trying to go again
this year with some classics. And this is just a little
bit of an updated version on arguably one of the most
classic heirloom tomatoes of all time, which would
be Cherokee Purple. Next one I have for you in the beef-steak world is possibly one of the most beautiful
ones and it's aptly named. That would be Beauty King. This one's out of Wild Boar Farms. Many of you might know Wild Boar because of the Atomic
Grape, Brad's Atomic Grape, one of his more famous varieties. Personally, that one is
not one of my favorites, but what is one of my
favorites is Beauty King. Let me just make sure I've
done this right, I have. Beauty King is hands down one of the prettiest beef
steaks that I've ever grown. I've grown it for two years now. The flavor's amazing. It's a red and yellow
striped bicolor tomato with really delicious, juicy, juicy flesh. And it can get up to 20 ounces, so you can get over a pound on this guy. You'll be very pleased if you're trying to grow a large tomato. And we grew, you know, a few years back, I would say about 16
different types of beef steaks in a Florida weave system here in the backyard of the homestead. And this one far and away
was in the top one or two of those beef steaks. So, tried a lot, really expanded, and then contracted down to some varieties that I really liked. And Beauty King is one of those. It's a cross between, I
believe, a Rainbow Star and then a classic
heirloom, the Green Zebra. So you have a hybridized cross of two other gorgeous
beef steaks with this one. The final beef steak that
I have for you is one of the most beautifully shaped ones with a very pleasing name. It is Costoluto Genovese,
obviously an Italian variety. Now, this one just looks spectacular. It sort of has these fluted sides, which I have not showcased
yet in this collection. And it really is a
gorgeous, gorgeous tomato. And I would say the
flavor is good to great, but it is not absolutely stellar. The reason I put this in the mix is because I already have some
really delicious beef steaks in Cherokee Carbon and in Beauty King. I wanted something that is
still top tier in flavor but does not necessarily blow you away, but does when it comes to the
look, appearance and color. It is this beautiful deep red. You can slice it thinly, you can lay it down on a
plate with some mozzarella or something like that, and it absolutely looks like you made it at a Michelin-Star restaurant. Without a doubt, one of the best tomatoes that you will ever grow in the heirloom or beef steak category. And that does conclude the
heirloom or beef steak category. And now I want to get
into some weird tomatoes. In this little packet right here I have some might say the
original tomato species. This is the Solanum pimpinellifolium, or the currant tomato. The seeds are tiny. They're sometimes a little
bit difficult to find. Hopefully we can bring them to you guys at Botanical
Interests pretty soon. But for now, let's just say I source these
through interesting methods. But the currant tomato is the
smallest tomato in the world. It is absolutely tiny. It sort of has a more wild, sort of bushy kind of overgrowth look to the actual vegetation. But when it comes to
the plants or the fruit, the fruit is tiny, almost like little, I don't know, little candies. They're like the size
of a Skittle perhaps. And why do I find this so interesting is that I simply want an oddball tomato. You can pick tons of these. They'll grow almost like a wild tomato, and you can just pick 'em
and pop 'em into your mouth, or you can collect a bunch of them. You can throw 'em as almost like a jeweled tomato on top of a salad. They taste decently acidic, a little pop of sweet, but certainly not as sweet as some of these other varieties, oftentimes described sort of
as like a wine type of taste. So to me, a really unique one, a conversation starter for sure, and if you do like to
experiment in the kitchen, it is one that you could
have a lot of fun with. So this is Solanum pimpinellifolium, also known as the currant tomato. The next weird one I have for you is weird because you actually
don't want the tomatoes off of this plant, off
of this tomato plant. You don't want the tomatoes. How could that be? Well, that's because I'm talking about the Fortamino Rootstock variety. Now, rootstock, when you hear about that, you're talking mostly about the world of orcharding, when
you're growing an apple and grafting an M-111
rootstock on it or something like that, maybe citrus. Most citrus these days,
of course, is grafted. Avocados, grafted. Well, what is grafting? Well, what you're doing is
you're saying, I like the roots of this variety and I like
the fruits of this variety. So I'm gonna take these
roots and these fruits, put them together, and there you go. I have this sort of Frankenstein plant that gives me benefits both
above and below ground. And so that's what I'm talking about here with the Fortamino Rootstock. It's grown for its root system. Just realized I ran outta space, but what you want to do
is plant as many of these as you have tomato varieties,
as you have tomato plants. And then what you'll do
is as these ones grow and as these ones grow, you
will take the top of this one and graft it to the bottom
of the Fortamino Rootstock. We'll do a full video on this, but this gets into some
more advanced techniques, certainly, and you don't have to do it. Like I mentioned, these
tomatoes that I've selected, they all have improved disease
resistance, vigor, et cetera. But if you really want
to go crazy with this, you're gonna get more flowers, more vigor on the truss, or the area of the tomato that is throwing
out all those flowers. You're gonna get improved
disease resistance. There's also going to be more leaves around the entire plant
itself to prevent sun scald in the heat of the summer. So the Fortamino Rootstock is almost like a cheat code for tomatoes. You can say, hey, I want this flavor, but it doesn't have all
these nice features. I'm gonna go ahead and
put it in the Fortamino, and there you go. You have this sort of
Frankenstein beautiful superhero of a tomato plant. These are my tomato
varieties that I think make up the perfect 2023 tomato lineup. Where do you think I missed the boat? Do you think I'm spot on? Let me know down in the comments. Roast my selection. And remember, you can
always grab our seeds at Botanical Interests, which is now a company that
we own here at Epic Gardening. So, incredible honor to own that company and take it forward and
appreciate your guys' support, 'cause that's the only
reason that we're able to do this type of work. So until next time,
good luck in the garden, and keep on growing.
