🍅 Quick take: Daniels is an indeterminate, mid-season potato-leaf family heirloom (brought to Missouri from Germany). It produces large, meaty, and juicy pink beefsteaks with small seed cavities. Growers highlight its excellent sweet flavor, high yields, and uniform ripening. It also handles extreme heat uniquely: instead of dropping blossoms, it simply stalls fruit development until temperatures cool down. Full summary ↓
Growers’ Notes and Photos (USDA Zone 4 Experience)
Indeterminate mid-season slicer. Potato leaf. Fruits are large pink beefsteaks, few seeds, small seed cavities, meaty but juicy at the same time. The flavor shifted over the course of the summer from a good basic tomato taste to very good, with a nice sweetness. Very good yield, low-maintenance variety, fruits ripen uniformly on the cluster.
Seeds from Redko. Grew it in the greenhouse, pruned to 2 stems. This variety has some character. During the heatwave, it didn’t drop its blossoms or fruit set, it just “put them on hold”. So trusses 1, 2, 5, and 6 grew and ripened normally, but trusses 3 and 4 stalled out and only ripened at the end of August.
The “stalled” truss (September 2).
Full Summary: Plant, Yield, Taste and Storage
- 🌿 Plant: Indeterminate, mid-season, potato leaf (PL). Vines produce large pink beefsteaks with small seed cavities. Responds uniquely to high heat: instead of dropping blossoms like many varieties, it stalls fruit development on the middle trusses and resumes growth once the heat breaks.
- 📈 Yield: Rated as highly productive and low-maintenance. Fruits tend to ripen uniformly on the truss.
- 👅 Taste: Flavor starts off as a good, classic tomato taste early in the season and becomes progressively sweeter and richer as the summer goes on. The flesh is meaty yet juicy.
- 📦 Storage: Not detailed in this thread.
- 🌎 Who Reviewed It: 2 growers contributed to this thread, including reports from USDA Zone 4.
🍅 Have you grown the Daniels heirloom? Drop a comment below and share your zone! Did it stall its fruit set during the mid-summer heat for you too?
