Quick Summary of the Discussion
- 🚨 The Problem: A grower faces a common late-summer disaster: a massive harvest of heirloom tomatoes that are all splitting and cracking on the vine, forcing immediate processing into juice and sauces.
- 🍅 The Heirloom Dilemma: While heirloom varieties are beloved for their rich, juicy flavors, their thin skins make them highly susceptible to cracking, especially when carrying a heavy fruit load.
- 🛡️ The Hybrid Solution: Some growers argue that for bulk processing and canning, it’s better to rely on modern paste hybrids (like Pozano or Sarra). They are practically immune to cracking and blossom end rot.
- 👅 The Trade-off: The debate highlights the ultimate trade-off: Hybrids are trouble-free and great for canning, but some find their flesh too dry and lacking the complex, juicy flavor of true heirlooms.
Girls, I have a real disaster with my tomatoes. Firstly, there are too many of them, the harvest is absolutely massive. The large-fruited varieties are producing giant tomatoes not just on the 1st-3rd clusters, but all the way up.
And now, this entire avalanche of tomatoes is cracking right on the bushes, even though I haven’t watered them in a long time. And it’s not just the giant beefsteaks cracking, but the regular ones too. The only ones not cracking are the hybrids and Yablochnyi Lipetskiy. Plus, I have a lot of unripe yellow shoulders. To top it off, armyworm caterpillars (cutworms) have gone wild in the greenhouse for the first time in my life, ruining a lot of fruit.
Because of this, day after day I have to process these tomatoes into juice or ketchup; there’s barely anything decent left to pick for whole-canning. I’m getting to the point where just the word “tomato” makes me sick to my stomach, I can’t even look at them anymore.
Anya, I was harvesting mine yesterday. I filled a huge crate, but I only got through one row. I have exactly the same problems as you, minus the yellow shoulders. Many large ones have micro-cracks and start weeping juice.
It got me thinking: for fresh eating, I would plant maybe 10-15 heirloom bushes total. These tomatoes don’t store long, they aren’t good for canning, they are only for eating straight off the bush. Everything else should be trouble-free: tasty, productive, not sour, doesn’t crack, no blossom end rot, dense, can hang on the bush for a while, can sit on the counter for a couple of weeks without problems, and is great for canning and freezing. And for that, I would rely entirely on good hybrids (like Pozano, Sarra, Pink Bush).
Lyudmila, trouble-free is good… but… last year I had a lot of basically trouble-free hybrids. But the juice made from them was sour and tasteless; this year from the heirlooms, the juice is amazing.
Tell me, I keep meaning to ask, what do you do with Pozano? I tried it… it is absolutely bone dry, no juice at all, though at least it’s not sour, it’s slightly sweet. And they are huge icicle shapes. What do you do with such tomatoes? I don’t find them tasty for fresh eating. I don’t make sun-dried ones, and for canning I also dislike tough, hard tomatoes that you have to chew rather than just “drink” out of their skin.
As for Pozano, I love those kinds of tomatoes for canning in jars, and the grandkids happily eat them fresh right now. This year many heirloom varieties are extremely juicy, you take a bite and you drown in juice. I don’t like drinking my tomatoes. I prefer dry, dense, meaty, and sweet ones without acid. There are few tomatoes like that, especially this year.
