GardenSMART :: Amazing And Delicious New Tomatoes For Your Culinary Garden
Amazing And Delicious New Tomatoes For Your Culinary Garden
By All-America Selections
Photographs courtesy of All-America Selections
Each of these recent AAS Winners was trialed throughout North America by professional, independent, volunteer judges who grew them next to comparisons that were already considered best in class. These varieties performed better than their comparisons and were granted the prestigious AAS award designation.
If you've never tried an apple-shaped tomato, now is the time. This AAS Winner offers incredible garden performance, a dimpled apple-shape fruit with a deliciously sweet, citrusy taste and firm, meaty texture. Five-foot tall vines produce abundantly in clusters, resulting in up to 1,000 fruits per plant. The fruits are an eye-catching, bright lemon yellow color reminiscent of the "Big Apple's" taxicab colors. With just the right balance of sugar and acid flesh in a firm exterior, Apple Yellow would be perfect stuffed with a savory cheese for a delicious appetizer.
Buffalosun shone in the trials with fruit that had a better texture, a higher yield and less cracking than comparisons. Stake this indeterminate tomato and you will be rewarded with fruits long into the season. The unique yellow with red-orange flame-colored skin is beautiful and results in a nicely marbled interior. Good tasting sweet, tender flesh gives the look of an heirloom without the mushiness often associated with heirlooms. Buffalosun also outlasted the comparisons when disease hit in late summer, thanks to its late blight resistance.
Celano is a patio-type grape tomato with a strong bushy habit. It is best grown with some support, such as a tomato cage. This semi-determinate hybrid tomato is an early producer of sweet oblong fruits weighing about 0.6 ounces each. In comparison to other grape tomatoes on the market, Celano is sweeter, has a better texture, deeper color, healthier plants, and the yield is phenomenal.
The first bicolor tomato in the Chef's Choice series is here! Indeterminate plants produce up to 30 large, 7 to 8 ounce flattened beefsteak fruits with beautiful pinkish-red internal stripes within a yellow flesh. These heirloom-looking tomatoes are as sweet as they are beautiful, with a better flavor and texture than the comparisons. Gardeners will enjoy earlier maturity and more uniform fruits that hold up all season long, producing well into September in the heartland.
This rockin' variety has a very sweet (Brix of 8.5), light acidic taste giving it the perfect sweet/acid balance. Pronounced like "rock" not "crook," Crokini's round fruits are small and firm with a crunchy texture and good flavor. This winner gets high marks for durability because fruits do not crack on the vine, yielding up to 10-12 sweet fruits per cluster. Overall, the yield was better than comparisons because of the in-bred late blight resistance well into September. The southern AAS judges like the better taste and texture as compared to Sweet Million.
Early Resilience is a rounded Roma tomato with a deep red interior color, uniform maturity and good quality flesh for canning and cooking. The AAS judges noted that this variety was very resistant to blossom end rot, resulting in a high yield and less fruit loss. Similar great taste as the comparisons, but a much healthier plant and fruits. Overall, this is an excellent variety that would be a home canner's dream and could very well replace some of the other Roma varieties as a new standard.
Yes Sir! Galahad is a brave new tomato variety that has a high level of late blight resistance. Galahad is a high-yielding, great tasting tomato that grows on a strong sturdy plant. The sweet, meaty flavor is better than that of comparison varieties and boasts of being crack resistant. Broad shoulders (just like Sir Galahad?) and large, clean fruits grow on a highly productive, disease-resistant plant. Certainly a variety you'll want to use in your battle for tomato greatness.
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By Dan Heims, President, Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc.
Photographs courtesy of Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc.
Terra Nova’s breeders have created a series of outstanding world-class echinaceas that are consistent in size, bloom power, color intensity and are a pollinator buffet. What’s not to like.
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