Early And Late Varieties Of Tomatoes

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

What varieties of tomatoes to choose for the new season

Early and late tomatoes

According to the ripening period, all tomatoes are divided into 4 groups: super-early, early, mid-ripening (they are the ones that give a massive harvest) and lying (usually they are late-ripening, but this is not always the case). But since this culture is grown in seedlings, depending on the time of planting, they also ripen.

As a result, it turns out that the division into early and late varieties is very relative. For example, some gardeners who sowed super-early varieties in the very last time (or even immediately into the ground - such an innovation appeared, alas, not at all suitable for our Ural region. I sincerely do not recommend conducting such experiments, even if the package of tomatoes you bought says that they are suitable for sowing directly into the ground), look with envy over the fence to a neighbor, whose mid-season fruits sown in February have long been turning red.

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Super-early or super-early varieties of tomatoes

Despite all of the above, the group of tomatoes belongs to the superearly ones, the fruits of which ripen with a minimum total consumption of solar energy. This group is characterized by:

• low sugar content of fruits, which is understandable (there was no sun yet, so why should tomatoes be sweet);
• short stature - their growth usually ranges from 20-25 cm;
• low yield (no more than 10-15 pcs. from a bush), which is also understandable, because a small plant cannot potentially yield a large yield;
• small fruits.

In a word, these are rather mediocre tomatoes, and you yourself can choose whether they are really needed in the garden. From my point of view, it is better to sow the usual mid-season varieties earlier and plant the seedlings in the greenhouse earlier, creating ideal conditions for it. Then the harvest will ripen early. And the taste of mid-season varieties is better, and the yield - you don't know then where to put the resulting crop. But this is my point of view.

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There may well be other considerations. Let's say you are growing seedlings in an apartment without lighting, which means that you cannot sow it early, because the plants will lack light and will stretch out a lot. Then a compromise is quite possible, in which several plants from a series of super early maturing can successfully supplement the main crop obtained from mid-maturing. Or maybe, for some reason, you were late with planting (alas, anything can happen in our life), you can't get the harvest from mid-season varieties, and the super-early ones can still please you, albeit with a symbolic harvest, but at least try your tomatoes in salads …

In general, there are many options and situations, but still you should not rely mainly on super early ripening varieties. They will give you the first red tomatoes for salads, but the total percentage of their participation should be low, say, for 100 tomato plants you can plant 3-5 bushes and no more.

Among the varieties and hybrids of this group, I would like to note:

• Red banana with fruits weighing 70-80 g and bush height up to 70 cm;
• Bonsai - he has fruits weighing 20-25 g, and the height of the bush is 20-30 cm;
• Parodist is a new very early ripening variety up to 40-50 cm high; it has a unique fruit set in all weather conditions; fruits weighing 140-160 g;
• Boni-M - fruits are flat-round bright red, weighing 60-80 g; due to its high early maturity, it gives up the entire crop in two weeks.

Early varieties of tomatoes

After 10 days, just early tomatoes begin to blush. These are, as a rule, small-fruited, berry varieties, all kinds of "cherries", "pears" and "apples". Most of them are pickled, and the main purpose is to make sure that the process of preparing salads is not interrupted.

The exotic also attracts: many of the early varieties look very attractive both on the bush and then in the blanks in the case of whole-fruit canning. In addition, among these varieties, there are often varieties with very different fruit colors. For example, I will never forget how I was first brought from the GDR (about 18-20 years ago) the seeds of early tomatoes of the Garden Pearl variety.

It still seems to me, and this is despite today's abundance, that I have not seen anything more spectacular and at the same time tender - their fruits were mother-of-pearl, like real pearls, and had a delicate crimson color. But this is, of course, lyrics, but in general, the percentage of early tomatoes should also be small - 5-10 bushes maximum, because all the shortcomings of the super-early ones remain for them, however, they are manifested to a lesser extent.

The list of early good varieties and hybrids is very long. In this list, the following are worth noting:

• Atom is an early maturing determinant variety up to 60 cm high, standard, with fruits from 80-100 g to 150;
• Baloven is an unpretentious, early determinant variety with abundant fruiting and early and amicable ripening; fruits weighing about 85 g;
• Batyr F1 is an excellent early maturing determinant hybrid with fruits weighing 80-110 g, amicable ripening and stable productivity;
• Gold of the Scythians is an unusually beautiful semi-determinate mid-early variety; vigorous plants, up to 1.2-1.5 m; fruits 100-120 g, golden orange, very effective and tasty, with a high content of carotene; the yield is quite high;
• König F1 is one of the most competitive early vegetable products on the market, an early maturing determinant hybrid with fruits weighing 80-120 g;
• Rosalia is an early ripe semi-determinant variety with pink-raspberry, up to 100-120 g in weight, fleshy, with juicy "watermelon" pulp, very tasty fruits; vigorous plants, up to 1.2-1.5 m;
• Khan - early maturing determinant variety, one of the most delicious early tomatoes; medium bush, low, fruits weighing more than 110 g;
• Druzhok F1 - the highest-yielding of the early-ripening tomatoes; it is distinguished by an early and friendly return of the harvest; fruits are beautiful, round, uniform in color, weighing 80-100 g; has a complex disease resistance.

Mid-season tomato varieties

Finally, after another decade, tomatoes of the main, mass, medium-ripening group ripen - it is best to allocate about 80 percent of the tomato area (or even more) to them. It is them that you will eat fresh for most of the tomato season, and it is they that will be used for preparation.

Mid-ripening tomatoes, in turn, can be divided into subgroups: disease resistant; delicious; large-fruited; multi-colored; with an unusual shape of the fetus, etc. Of course, some of the listed signs can be successfully combined in some sort, for example, tasty and large-fruited, but, alas, combining all this together as a whole is not very successful.

The most productive varieties of tomatoes

To date, only heterotic hybrids (i.e. those that have the designation F1 on the bags) can be attributed to productive today. It is from them that you can quite often expect an abundance of fruits with a sufficiently high resistance to diseases and bad weather conditions, although this is not necessary. In addition, a part of amateur varieties, which were obtained by spontaneous crossing by amateurs on the basis of former "collective farm" varieties, once bred by Soviet breeders for the "plan", general food fermentation, making juices and pastes, falls into the same tomato category.

In most cases, fruitful tomatoes are quite disease-resistant, transportable and with a strong, rough skin, but they often cannot be called tasty. In principle, all tomatoes with a yield of more than 8 kg per square meter indicated on the bags are considered very productive. To list them is an extremely thankless task, but I will name some of the most productive.

The new medium-ripening variety Tyutchev gives large, 400-500 g red fruits of sufficiently high quality and salad purpose, it provides a yield of 9-10 kg / m2. Resistant to a number of diseases.

The early variety Alaska with fruits weighing 85-94 g, yield of marketable fruits in the open field of 9-11 kg / m2 and complex disease resistance is distinguished by a good yield. Ties fruit well under unfavorable growing conditions.

Salad variety Budenovka with spectacular heart-shaped fruits weighing 150-350 g gives a yield of 9.3 kg / m2.

The lettuce hybrid Harmony F1 with fruits weighing 90-94 g has a yield of 8-10 kg / m2. In addition, the variety is resistant to tobacco mosaic virus, cladosporium and fusarium.

And in the Gelena F1 hybrid with fruits weighing 134 g, the yield of marketable fruits in unheated film greenhouses can even reach 16.2 kg / m2 with good care. The hybrid has a complex disease resistance.

I have not listed all the varieties and hybrids with the maximum yield here. I would like to mark a number of them separately under the heading "Harvest and Delicious".

Harvest and delicious varieties of tomatoes

As noted above, breeders often pay little attention to taste when creating fruitful varieties, although there are pleasant exceptions. For example, for many years, sorting out fruitful varieties and hybrids and stuffing myself a lot of cones, I still found quite fruitful and tasty ones at the same time: these are Bityug F1 (yield - 8-10 kg / m2), Botticelli F1 (yield - 8-10 kg / m2), Viardot F1 (yield - 9.7-10.4 kg / m2), Dessert pink (yield - 9.8-12.4 kg / m2), Kirzhach F1 (yield - 31.8 kg / m2), Princess F1 (yield -14.9 kg / m2), Kumir F1 (yield -14.2 kg / m2) and Nasha Masha F1 (yield - 7.5-9.8 kg / m2).