372 Tomato Winners (and Losers) of 2024

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Ep. 372 Transcript Interview Tomato Winners 2024

Farmer Fred   

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Farmer Fred 

Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener, or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.

Farmer Fred

Who were the winners? Who were the losers? No, we’re not analysing pro or college football results today, nor, for that matter, Belgian cyclocross racing finishes.

 In this episode, we reflect on the ups and downs of Northern California’s 2024 tomato gardening season, with Don Shor of Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, California. 

And anyone in the world growing tomatoes will glean valuable information from this chat, despite the truism, ALL GARDENING IS LOCAL.

We share insights on the successful varieties, such as Rugby, Chef’s Choice, and Jetstar. But we also point out the ones that struggled, and failed, during 2024’s record breaking July heat waves here (I’m looking at you, heirlooms!). We explore the effects of weather on tomato growth, including coping with extreme heat, and a comparison of heirloom versus hybrid tomato varieties, including planting tips.

It’s all in today’s episode number 372,  2024 Tomato winners (and losers!). We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let’s go!

2024 TOMATO WINNERS (and losers), Pt. 1

Farmer Fred:

Well, here it is, the end of the year, and we like to look back and see how we did in our garden, especially our tomato garden. How is 2024 for you? Let me know. Leave me a message on Facebook or whatever.

Leave me a note on Facebook or other social media, thank you very much, about your success and failures when it comes to your tomatoes. We are recording this on December the 18th, and I have pronounced today the official end of tomato season in my yard. 

I picked the last remaining tomatoes. Ones that I would never show them to you whole because there was black mold on the tops and some cracking at the top. But the bottom half was okay for slicing, and so I put it on a roast beef sandwich, and it was delicious. And the tomato looked and tasted just like a tomato you'd buy at a grocery store, which is a terrible thing to say about a tomato, but it is December 18th.

 And for us to have tomatoes a week before Christmas, that's great. It was a winning year. We had the right weather. So I was left with basically three winners in December that we're still producing, even though what was there is either very green or pretty moldy looking:

Jet Star, Principe Borghese, and Rugby. I will be planting those again next year. 

What are you going to plant next year? What is Don Shor  going to plant next year? How did he do? He must have enjoyed this weather. It's been a long tomato season here in California. Don Shor is proprietor of Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, an alleged tomato head. He is one. And Don, you hector me every year about Principe Borghese, Principe Borghese. Well, finally, I grew it again. I actually did grow it like 20 years ago or so. And it was so-so. But this was a survivor. This one made it.

Don Shor:

 It's a very good tomato. It's a determinate. So you can, if you wish, just crop it early. You can get it planted on Farmer Fred's birthday, which is April 28th. And you can give it a nice head start with some deep watering and maybe a little bit a fertilizer at the time you plant it and let it grow as vigorously as it chooses to, which isn't super vigorously for this one. It's a small plant and let it flower and fruit. And you can pick most of that fruit, pretty much all of it at once if you want to, sometime around into June, early July. And if you want, you can be done with it at that point. You can harvest them all, sun dry them. That's its primary use, but it's also great for sauces, great for eating fresh, excellent for salsa, one of my favorites, actually. And then you can cut it out and stick something else in that spot for the rest of the summer. So it actually has a lot of versatility for gardeners who are limited for space and want something that's kind of gourmet. I plant Principe Borghese every year, and it's one I have to grow from seed. I don't have any wholesale growers that are doing it, so I grow them for my own customers as well. It's really good to do this show December, January, so the people who are getting the seed catalogs and watching them pile up on their desks can start marking some of these varieties. Some of them you will have to order yourself. You're not going to find them in most garden centers. That is definitely one of my winners every year. I did a count this year. I counted the fruit on all of my 35 varieties.

 And that one produced about 150 fruit, pretty much all at once, mostly in the first week or two of July.

 Now, unlike you, I didn't pull them out, so I went ahead and left them through the summer, and I got another 50 or 60 fruit in late September, early October. These are small fruit, but that was a pretty good crop for a plant that was supposed to be determinate.

Farmer Fred:

 Well, now, in my defense, the Principe Borghese is still in the ground. The plant is still there. I'm just waiting for more room in green waste to put it.

Don Shor:

Right.

Farmer Fred:

There's plenty of time.

Don Shor:

For a lot of gardeners who are limited for space, these determinate ones are really good ones to look for because I've actually done Principe Borghese in a container. Now, I used a 15-gallon container because, in my opinion, the absolute minimum soil volume to grow a tomato is one and a half cubic feet. And that's what a 15-gallon nursery tree container holds. I've done well with it that way. You are watering daily by the time you get into July, but it will do that. And then you can harvest a whole bunch. And if you wish, if you wish to be done with it at that point, that is the way determinate tomatoes are often used. Don't rush to take it out. They'll continue to set and ripen some, but if you're limited for space, that's certainly one option. It's definitely on my six-pack of varied tomatoes that I keep thinking, dreaming I'm going to someday produce and sell retail. Six varieties that you'll be able to buy all at once to be your six for this year, it would definitely be in that category.

Farmer Fred:

 You scare me when you say “six-pack” when it comes to tomatoes.

Don Shor:

 Well, what I really mean is six plants.

Farmer Fred:

 Okay, all right, okay.

Don Shor:

 Yeah, the six-pack of tomatoes is kind of going away, but the single plants are going to be a better way to go. But if people are looking for five or six varieties to cover the whole base, you know, you want a cherry tomato type, you want something for sauce, you want to get high yield for one so you can freeze stuff and put it away. You know having that diversity is always a good plan because some are more heat tolerant, some have greater disease resistance, and some you know. And various characteristics that we're looking for this would be one that would definitely be in there and i've been impressed with it year after year after year. 

There's a couple others you mentioned: Rugby. We can't tout that one highly enough. It's being marketed as a sauce tomato but i've got customers who are slicing it and using it as a regular slicer. iI cooks down great. It’s not going to be in garden centers, very likely, unless the buyer or the grower at one of the large local chains is listening. Rugby is one you should definitely put in your program because it's just not that widely known yet. But every year I grow it, every year I sell it and plant it, people rave about it. Yield is great. It takes the heat well, sets very well early as well as late, in my case, at least this year. So it's a really, really high quality tomato. You also mentioned...

Farmer Fred:

 Well, let's recap first for people who may not have any idea about what we're talking about in some of these. The Principe Borghese is a small tomato, about one to two ounces, sort of a grape-shaped fruit, very dry, few seeds. Rich tomato taste, though, that does make for good sauces. So if you do make sauces, this is really one of the perfect plants to use, the Principe Borghese. 

And I noticed that, by the way, if you're looking for a Princip Borghese, I've noticed that I, too, as you might have guessed, have a stack of catalogs next to me. And I see the Baker Creek folks, Rare Seeds, Carries Principe Borghese. It is an heirloom. So, yeah, that makes perfect sense. The Rugby tomato, I see that in the Totally Tomatoes catalog for 2025. And it's got the disease resistance to verticillium, fusarium, and tobacco mosaic virus. It produces early. It produces long season. And, yeah, I like to use it for slicing, too. And they're sort of a pinkish, heart-shaped fruit.

Don Shor:

 Yeah, they describe it as pink and it's elongated kind of Roma shape, but it's bigger, way bigger than that. And it's become my go-to sauce tomato. It does turn darker red over time, but you can pick them and they pick quite easily, by the way. They just detach quite readily. Mine set early, kept setting even into the heat of July, which I'm sure we'll get to in a moment, and then a lot late in the season as well. So it was just another stellar year for this new variety. It's been around four or five years. It came from Bulgaria, I believe. And initially we had to order our seed from Europe. Now you can actually find it in this country and it's catching on. But Rugby is one you'll need to look for. And it has that built-in verticillium resistance and two strains of fusarium resistance as well.

Farmer Fred:

It'll be in my garden for 2025 again. One of the big lessons I learned this year, I planted, I believe, 12 varieties this year. I used to plant 40. This past year, I planted 12. Next year, I think I'm going to get that down to six or so because I'm tired of dealing with a jungle. I usually plant three tomato plants in their cages in a four by eight bed. But they just do so well and sprawl and get tangled in everybody else's cage that I would like some space between the plants. So I'm going to go to two plants per bed. And I think I will limit my planting to, I'm shooting for six. It'll probably end up eight, but I can always buy Smart Pots for them. You, on the other hand, have dozens of plants every year.

Don Shor:

 Yeah, I have unlimited space. I always want to test new varieties. So I plant anywhere from 25 to 35 varieties each year. And a lot of that is simply to see how well they do. And also some fun ones. I mean, I planted the Galapagos Wild Tomato this year. Hey, guess what? It doesn't take the heat. I can tell you that it barely fruited at all.

Farmer Fred:

From the Galapagos. What a surprise.

Don Shor:

Just so that people can, you know, find out. So I can give them some information. They don't waste the space on it. I will say,  a couple of things. The whole Chef's Choice series have been very, very consistent producers. I've been very impressed by all of them. So if you're looking for one really big tomato, almost any one in that series appears to be fine. I have not had problems with any of them. I still go back to one of the first, Chef's Choice Orange, which is firmer textured than the other. Each fruit is close to a pound. My count was that I got 60 on my Chef's Choice Orange, including a fair number early on and a really good crop late in the season because of the mid-season temperature issues that we had this year. But the Chef's Choice Purple also set very well, yielded very well. That whole line appears to be very, very good if you're looking for a large slicing tomato. 

One that you and I have mentioned more than once, and again, one of my top producers this year, is Bodacious. The fruit's 12 to 14 ounces. Some of them are a pound. They set early. They ripened early. They set even into the heat pretty well, which was a big issue this year. And they produce a lot late in the season. Again, about 60 fruit on the vine of Bodacious that I planted. So another top-rated hybrid for me this year. Bodacious, 10 to 12 ounces, what they usually describe that one as another great slicing tomato.

Farmer Fred:

I did a mid-August report card for all the tomatoes I planted, and Bodacious did pretty good in that little exam, if you will, of tomatoes and how they did in mid-season, because that's what you're looking for, right?

Don Shor:

 Right. Yeah, I did a count mid-August as well, and I can tell you, if I had based my full season evaluation on that, I would never plant another heirloom. They barely set at all early in the season. Pineapple,  Mortgage Lifter, Hillbilly, everything. They're growing fine, hardly setting at all. Cherokee Purple. Then, thanks to our traditional August cool-down, which nobody ever remembers, but we had one. It was actually very pleasant for about 10 days in the middle of August as the weather kind of shifts. We got great fruit set, and most of the heirlooms pulled it out with 25 to 30 fruit per vine. That's okay. That's not a high yield, but they were, you know, fooled. They were heirlooms. They were interesting. And they did pull it out, so they didn't go on to the don't bother to grow again list. They went on to the “this heirloom did okay” list.

Farmer Fred:

Yep. Is it really an August cool down, or is it because there's a July heat up?

Don Shor:

 Yeah, well, we need to talk about that. We do. We get a consistent pattern in August where the weather sort of shifts. We're getting more air from the Gulf. We often have the Gulf of Mexico. we often have actually a bit of monsoon weather, monsoon air pushing over us. August is generally milder, not the whole month, but we almost always in the years I've been here, we have seven to 10 days in August where we get good pollination weather. Good pollination weather, for listeners, is anything below 90 degrees. So July is pretty hot. You don't get great pollination even in normal July. This year, July was even hotter. So that's an issue. But in August, it cools down. We get a good fruit set here going into August. If you do your seven to eight week count from (blossom) set to ripen, I picked that data point up from a farmer once years ago, for example, 49 days for Early Girl tomato from blossom set to ripeness. That means that something that sets in mid-August, you're harvesting in early to mid-October. And many of your listeners, maybe outside of this area, early to mid-October would be too late for them. But in the Sacramento Valley, interior of Southern California, Bay Area, and most parts of lowland, California, we have good weather all the way into the second or third week of October suitable for fruit ripening. So that August cool down actually makes a huge difference for me. I had one of my best yield years ever this year, thanks to what I was picking in late September and into October.

Farmer Fred:

 Yeah, I sort of rode out that July heat wave, and it was the hottest July on record here in Sacramento. According to the records I kept, we had 16 days in July of over 100 degrees, two days over 110. And June was no slouch. There were 17 days of June that were over 90. So that was a warm up. And things started looking bad here in July. But I figure, well, if it cools down a little bit, they'll bloom again and we'll get another crop.

Don Shor:

And that's what happened. Yeah, the conversation I've had with people, the most common comment was, I had a miserable year. The plants just withered. Well, that was almost certainly, unless it's a root disease, that was almost certainly was watering related. The other comment I got was, I hardly got any fruit because of the rats and squirrels. Well, that's a different conversation. But in Davis, our average high in July, the high temperature for the day, is 93 degrees. This year, the average temperature, high temperature in July, was 97 degrees, actually 97.7 degrees, which may not sound like much of a difference, but it's a pretty big difference. There were only two days in July that were close to average high temperature. The rest of the month was essentially three back-to-back heat waves. And the other thing you can glean from the weather data at the CIMIS weather stations, those of you that are weather geeks probably know this, but it's C-I-M-I-S, CIMIS weather stations, you can look at the daily evapotranspiration rate.

Farmer Fred:

 Well remember, this is only for California. .

Don Shor:

 We've got one in Davis. You've got one in Fair Oaks. You've got one in Sacramento. And they go back to varying degrees a number of years, depending on how long they've been there. Davis, of course, we go way back because we got a land grant university out here. And we looked at July and realized day after day, it was running 10, 20, or even 30% above average for the evapotranspiration rate. Of course, you have above average, below average, except in July, we didn't have any below average. The entire month was above average. So people who were normally good at watering, who normally watered correctly, weren't watering enough. That's what it came down to. Whether you're watering daily because you have raised planters or out in the garden, you're watering a deep soaking once or twice a week, you needed to up that at least 10 to 20% in July this year. If you didn't do that, the blossoms would drop from the temperature. The plants would struggle. You wouldn't have as many growing points. And the fruit that was starting to develop would either not develop properly or worse, if it was ripening and we had a heat wave, it would sunburn.

Because on drought stressed plants, the fruit sunburns worse than if they're properly watered. So the takeaway from this year, you need to water deeper. If you're out in the open garden, you need to water more often if you're in a raised planter or some combination of those two things. I was measuring 10 to 15 gallons a week per plant is roughly what I was providing them. And in some cases with day-to-day extreme heat, I was going ahead and watering daily, which I don't normally need to do with my farm type soil. But I was doing that just to keep the plants growing vigorously. Even though they weren't setting much. I was counting on that August cool down that we did get.

Farmer Fred:

And woe to you if you grew your tomatoes in a 15-gallon container. Oh, yeah. In a heat wave like that, you're better off keeping them on the north side of the house.

Don Shor:

 You know, the question we got a lot was, should I shade the plant? And I don't think it's really good to shade the plant because that'll reduce yield overall. Shading the fruit, on the other hand, can be very helpful. If you've got a good fruit set in, say, May or June, and that fruit's developing in July, and we have a heat wave, putting some shade cloth on a panel to the west of the plant so it casts a shadow directly on the fruit, that can be helpful. If you shade over the whole plant, I guarantee you're going to reduce the yield overall. Bottom line is that I usually suggest if we're having a real heat wave, like a couple of those days, you mentioned 110, something like that. If you've got some fruit that's even close to breaker stage, even gone from green to off green, pick that, at least some of it, bring it in, set it on your counter inside. It will ripen correctly, just as it does for the grocery store. They're climacteric fruit. They go through a predictable set of stages and five to seven days after you pick it, you'll be able to eat that fruit. It'll actually ripen faster and more appropriately indoors than in the extreme heat. Extreme heat slows down the ripening process and, of course, can lead to sunburn. So if we've got a heat wave threatening, aside from the damage it does to your peppers, which is another conversation entirely, you should probably pick the fruit that's beginning to change color and bring it in. If it looks like a three or four day major heat event, at least get some of them indoors. You can protect them that way, especially the fruit that's exposed to the afternoon sun. Some tomato vines shelter their fruit better either you don't.

Farmer Fred:

 Probably a better strategy too for protecting the plant if it is in a container is to put it in a larger container to shade the inner container and put some bark between the two containers to give it even further insulation from the heat.

Don Shor:

 Yeah, and the bigger the better as far as that container goes. I've got, because oak barrels have become a little challenging to get a hold of, I've got customers who are using livestock water troughs. Well, those are great. Don't forget to take the plug out at the bottom. But they work great because they often hold four or five cubic feet of soil. So you've got even bigger soil volume. That's really the key. My bare minimum as I said at the start of the show, 15 gallon, that’s with one and a half cubic feet of soil. And you will be watering that daily in July if we have a heat wave. So that's kind of if you have to do it that way, not as a preference.

Farmer Fred:

So if you have a bunch of different size containers at home, one way to figure this out would be, go to the garden center and get yourself a 1.5 cubic foot bag of potting soil and bring it home and see which ones you can fit that in.

Don Shor:

That's a pretty standard size now. Nursery bags are usually one and a half cubic feet. And I can tell you that basically fills a 15-gallon container. A half barrel is about three cubic feet plus a little bit more. So that's even better if you can find them. But again, even a bigger container, you're talking about a tomato that wants to grow eight to ten feet, okay, with an extensive root system that's capable of going five feet deep if it can. But if it can't, it just gets root bound. And if it gets stressed in high temperatures, you're going to lose a lot of blossoms and a lot of growing points. But the key this year is just keeping them growing through July, even though they weren't setting. But we get to that August period and they did start setting. I did make notes about which ones set better going into hot weather. And it was kind of interesting to see some results. But in general, anything above 95 degrees, you're not getting a lot of fruit set. Above 100, you're definitely not getting fruit set. I did a test this year, Early Girl versus New Girl.

Farmer Fred:

 Oh, okay.

Don Shor:

Side by side. And I will tell you, I could not tell the plants apart. New Girl grows like Early Girl. They are not super vigorous. They fill a six-foot cage where it doesn't go all over creation. And they're both a four to six ounce fruit. And they both did very well. They both set early, as expected. It was actually a race to the finish to see who was going to ripen first. And Early Girl won that by a couple of days. But overall, over the course of the season, New Girl gave me about 50% more fruit than Early Girl. It seemed to set a little further into the high temperatures. It set more in August. And I couldn't tell the fruit apart. I think most people could not tell the fruit apart. So I think we finally have a worthy competitor to the crown of Early Girl.

Farmer Fred:

I am going to plant New Girl again for 2025. The plant and the tomato production was excellent until the high winds of last Saturday blew the plant over. So I harvested all the green and the breaking colored tomatoes and  put them in a cool, dry place to ripen and to keep the rats fed. Apparently, I'm doing that.

Don Shor:

That's very nice of you. Yeah. I had a couple of surprises. My absolute top producing normal tomato this year, you probably will never guess. Lemon Boy.

Farmer Fred:

You know, I was thinking about that. I was like, “OK, I'll have room for something I haven't grown in quite a while”. And I've always liked Lemon Boy.

Don Shor:

Yeah, it's very good. I stopped counting at 100 fruit. This vine. It was early season. It set into the heat. It didn't keep setting through, but I was still picking into mid-July and then set a ton of fruit late. This is a four to six ounce fruit, bright yellow. It's been around for quite a while. I mean, it's actually a pretty common hybrid. It's one that I've sold year after year and I always plant it because I like them for cooking and they've got great sweet flavor. And it just really outperformed everything this year. So that was one of my absolute top performers. It would definitely be, if you're looking for a list of six. Something interesting to have in there. There's a different color and is absolutely reliable. Lemon Boy was a very good one for me this year.

Farmer Fred:

 Maybe we should complete that list that we started there where you were talking about the six tomatoes to definitely have in your garden that will take care of a lot of situations, a cherry tomato, a sauce tomato, a slicer, beef steak, and overall, good producer.

Don Shor:

Okay. Well, we talked about the Chef's Choice Series, and Chef's Choice Orange is my top-rated one in there. Rugby for sure and Bodacious for sure. I do like to mention this one that's from Seeds and Such, and you and I have both grown it. It’z a Keeper, and I planted my version of that,  on July 15th.  I do three or four tomatoes mid-July every year just to see. I'm always curious. And actually, this year, they went in, they need a lot of water if you plant something in mid-July. So I put it on the same line with my peppers, so getting that kind of frequency of irrigation. And it gave me 40 fruit in the first week of October. Very good. And this is one that is firm, great for slicing, and they hold. I mean, it stays firm. You can leave this on your counter for two or three weeks and continue to use them as they get a bit sweeter. But more to the point, they don't spoil. So It’z a Keeper is a very good one if you're looking for a late producer. So if you wanted Principe Borghese and you've got your Chef's Choice Orange, and of course you've got Rugby, and of course you've got Bodacious, you can now add It's a Keeper. I guess we're just missing one there, Fred.

Farmer Fred:

 Well, let's go back a bit. Let's define our terms here because not everybody, you know, is growing their tomatoes in what is farm country like you are. So I imagine your plants are getting 10 to 12 hours of sun a day.

Don Shor:

Yes. Sunrise to sunset, basically. Although I did put a few of them where they get a little afternoon shade, which did help with that sunburn problem, by the way.

Farmer Fred:

 OK, which ones did you do you keep in the shade? I know it's not full shade, but probably afternoon shade.

Don Shor:

 I did a couple of the bigger ones. The Chef's Choice, one of those was in a little bit more shade just because I wanted to see if it would yield as well, and it did. It gave me 30 or 40 fruit. It was late planted. Several of the Brad Gates varieties went into light shade. His Michael Pollan, which is an interesting, elongated, yellowish-green fruit, it probably produced 300 fruit. It's one of those ones where people just won't even know what to do with all of them. That one, a little bit of shade was absolutely fine. The cherry types that I did, including one that's a new reintroduction from Brad from Wild Boar Farms called Tim's Taste of Paradise, was my most vigorous plant. Putting it in a little shade probably made that even better or worse, depending on your viewpoint. It was already eight feet plus by the first of July, and it produced hundreds, hundreds of small fruits. So cherry tomatoes in general, smaller fruited tomatoes in general, if you have to deal with shade, are likely to be good choices for you. Look for the two to four ounce types if you're looking for something for sauce. Look for the little cherry types if you just want, you know, for snacking, that kind of thing. But again, you know, something a little firmer textured. The Principe Borghese we've mentioned, but there is another one we did this year that I do think people might want to try called Cupid.

Don Shor:

Cupid, C-U-P-I-D. And it's one of these saladette type tomatoes. I hate that term, but it's a firm flavor. Tomato that's a cherry tomato size, and it's a little more elongated shape. Juliet is a good example in that category. This one was bright orange-red, really popular with everybody, picked really easy, which can be a hassle with some of the cherry tomato types. Really good, that kind of tangy, sweet flavor, and constant production all summer. So if you're looking for a new one to try, Cupid, give that one a try.

Farme