Edibles: Eight is enough -- tomato varieties

A few years ago I grew 19 varieties of tomatoes. This year I've seeded a modest eight. Why, you might ask, does a gardener need even eight varieties? Let me offer a defense.

Tomato nuts like me want to begin eating homegrown fruits as soon as possible. That's why I'm growing Stupice and Matina. Invariably, Stupice has been my earliest ripening tomato, even ahead of cherry varieties. Moreover, it has great flavor. Its one flaw is cosmetic: many fruits, though ripe, aren't red all the way to their shoulders.

Matina, a small-fruited German heirloom, comes into production less than a week after Stupice, tastes just as good and turns red all the way to its shoulders. It's more of a serve-to-company tomato. Really, I could get by with one or the other variety, but I have room, so it's four Stupice plants and four Matinas this year.

Last year I didn't plant cherry tomatoes, and I heard about it from my wife and the grandkids, who got used to Sungold. So this year I've planted Sun Sugar. The skinny on this award-winning variety is that it tastes as good or better than Sungold and is far less prone to splitting. Four plants should hold off a family insurrection.

One reason we grow tomatoes is to can them. Though you can can Stupice and Matina, the fruits are small and the work is time-consuming. Early Girl produces larger fruits that do double duty: they serve as good-tasting slicers until the later slicers ripen, and they make up the bulk of our canning tomatoes. Incidentally, home-canned tomatoes are far superior to commercial-canned varieties. The latter tend to be acidic and short on flavor.

Twelve Early Girl plants, supplemented by other varieties, should keep the canner boiling in August and September.

Having experimented with a variety of paste tomatoes, I've settled on Principe Borghese. This Italian variety produces small, 2-inch-long, meaty fruits with few seeds. They dry easily and flavors intensify in the process. Moreover, this variety is not prone to blossom-end rot like so many of the other paste varieties I've grown. I'm growing only four plants because they're so prolific.

Momotaro is our slicer par excellence. Once it ripens, we rely on it for Nicoise salads, sandwiches, any other uses calling for fruit of surpassing flavor and texture, and as gifts for friends. It's not as bountiful as Early Girl and Matina, so we don't count on it for canning. Eight plants should be enough.

Several years ago I grew a lone Eva Purple Ball, a midseason German heirloom variety. I didn't start this plant and it was a lanky, dubiouslooking specimen. Eventually it matured and produced fruits of startlingly high quality, about on a par with Momotaro. However, production was paltry. I've decided to grow my own starts and give the variety another try based on memory of its flavor. Four plants should make a fair trial.

At last summer's Tomato Fare in the Columbia Gorge, I sampled more than 40 heirloom tomato varieties. One of my favorites that day, Brandywine, is a variety I tried to grow one year in Port Orchard. There wasn't enough heat in the summer that year to ripen Brandywine, and I swore off the variety.

Last year though, I heard from a Kitsap Master Gardener who's had successful, albeit light, crops of Brandywine for years. She thinks the strain of the variety offered by Territorial Seed Co. may be slightly earlier than others. I'll try four plants from Territorial this year.