After reading the post about catalog shopping, reader Martha S. asked which tomatoes and peppers I’ll be growing this year. The list is a little long so I decided to put it here instead of in comments. Feel free to debate with me on which tomatoes everyone should try – I love to try new varieties, especially if they are highly recommended.
Here’s my list, so far, of the tomatoes:
Cherry tomatoes: Sungold, Green Doctors
Salad slicers: Jaune Flamme
Paste: Amish Paste*
Oxheart: Orange Russian 117
Beefsteaks: Great White , Brandywine (Sudduth’s strain) *, Gold Medal, Stump of the World, Tajik giant tomato, Aunt Ruby’s German Green*
Sweet Peppers: Shishito Pepper , Wisconsin Lakes
Hot peppers: Shishito Pepper , Red Peter (no link to photo because this novelty pepper looks like its name), Mucho Nacho, Anaheims, Ancho Gigantea
This is the short list I’ve come up with, but I know there will be more to add once I’ve finished swapping seeds with a few folks. Chan, the globe-trotting gardener who gave me the Tajik giant tomato plant last year (fruits weighed 1.8 pounds each), is at it again, talking me into giving the Shishito Peppers a try. You’ll notice they’re listed under both “sweet” and “hot” because Chan tells me that you never know what you’re going to get from your plant – one pepper will be mild, another will flame your eyeballs out. Sounds fun.
Stuart has promised to send me seed of his favorite tomatoes, Creole, Old Brook, Gail’s Sweet Plum, and Demidov, which he says were both tasty and productive in his Colorado garden. As a dwarf plant, Demidov did well in containers, but if you can’t find it, give Super Bush a try.
I admit, I don’t grow vegetables in pots – I’m fortunate to have enough space for a good-sized garden. To be honest, I have a little problem called “forgetting to water” that I’m guilty of with my containerized plants. This is never bad enough to kill them off, but they seesaw between drought and drowning, which is a recipe for blossom end rot in tomatoes.
When choosing your tomatoes, try to plan for early, mid-, and late season fruit, to ensure that you have love apples throughout the season. We have a short growing season, due to snow squalls that pop up to surprise us in late May or mid-September.
Any variety that sets fruit at higher temperatures is also a plus, since our summers can be scorching hot. One of the more common causes of blossom drop – where the tomato doesn’t set fruit and the flower fades – is daytime temperature above 85-degrees F plus nights that remain above 70. Black From Tula is one type that likes the warmth, or if you prefer a hybrid, look for Heat Wave.
*Denotes tomatoes listed on Slow Food USA’s Ark of Taste.
Gardening after five 
I am making my list this year for tomatoes and was wondering if all of your varieties did well this past year. I didn’t have a good tomato year at all!
thanks
Blair
Hi Blair,
Sadly, I had one of the worst years for tomatoes I can remember, with the exception of The Tragic Bleachwater Incident (I watered my seedlings with bleach, instead of water). We had a slow warm up of soil in early summer, making the tomatoes pouty. Then we had very cool nights, which delayed the plants further. Add in psyllids – those bugs that stunt both plant and fruit – and it was October before I saw an appreciable amount of tomatoes. But it’s a new year! Make your list and let me know what you’ll be growing. I’m going to go with a few of my favorites, such as Gold Medal and Green Doctors, but am toying with some new ones too.
I didn’t have much success with my tomatoes either so I was hoping to get some recommendations for ones that are really disease resistant! I keep rotating my crops but still have problems with leaf spot and fusarium wilt-especially on my sweet 100 and golden pear tomatoes. I kept the wall of waters around them also until the end of June. Should I have kept them on longer? Sungold was my only good performer!