Paste, Slicers, Cherry and 'Mystery'

Once I decided to get serious about our garden for the upcoming season, I pulled out the cardboard box that stores all our packets of seeds and reviewed what we had. We had an amazing variety, and some duplicates (but from different seed companies). What I started from seed this year:

• San Marzano, a paste tomato
• Costoluto Genovese, another paste tomato
• "Dirty Girl", a small slicer from saved seed
• Matt's Cherry, a cherry tomato
• Big Red, a slicer
• Dona F1 hybrid, and...
• Mystery 'Mater

The San Marzano paste tomato makes excellent pasta sauces. We had seeds from three different seed vendors. I planted a few from each vendor, and have ended up with far too many seedlings this season. I'm hoping to find homes for all the plants that did not get planted.

I've never tasted (or even seen) the Costoluto Genovese, another paste tomato. An experiment!

The "Dirty Girl" tomato is one I've only seen at a local mega-organic store, and for only two years. I've not seen it since. The second year is when Spouse urged me to save some of the seed, and I'm glad I did. Of course, this particular tomato could be a hybrid and not set true to it's previous fruit (it's small and sweet like a Campari tomato). We'll see how it goes. Hopefully the plant patent police won't come knocking on my door to drag me away for infringement...

I've never grown a Matt's Cherry or a Big Red tomato, but everyone needs at least one cherry and one beefsteak-style tomato in their garden, right?

The Dona F1 tomatoes were grown by a local horticulturalist from seeds that I'm not at liberty to say how they were obtained *ahem*. There's some strange dust-up about the Dona F1, that the F1 was discontinued, but is now being re-issued, but is it really the F1 or is it an F2?, and oh you can't get F1 in the States, what you're actually getting is the F2, and on, and on, and on. I don't even know if it's a good tomato, but I was given two plants for free, so will see how this one works in our climate. It might just keel over at the first heat wave.

Last but not least, is the Mystery 'Mater. It was from a packet of seeds marked "Tomato", with further info that it was heirloom/open-pollinated, but nothing more. It could be a slicer, a paste, a cherry, or who knows what.

What I forgot to start this year: yellow tomatoes. I'm surprised that I had no seeds for them, cherry, pear or slicer! I love the sweetness and low acidity of yellow tomatoes, but ah well. I think we've plenty of others to keep my Summer tomato addiction sated for the season.