Since we’re on the topic of tomatoes, let’s talk about two of our tomato trials that we conducted this year. We had two open “slots” for new varieties this season, so we really opened it up to all possibilities.
One of the things we wanted to see was how a “traditional” tomato type might work, both in our greenhouse and with our growing technique. We selected one of the absolute classics, the Italian San Marzano. A traditional plum type, this tomato is the literal foundation of countless sauces, pizzas and classic Italian dishes. Honestly, we were curious if our greenhouse and methods were “good enough” to grow such a classic tomato variety.
Well, sadly, the news is that it’s not. As an early producer, San Marzano had all the “traits” we were looking for. While our San Marzano put on great flowers, our colder evenings definitely inhibited some fruit formation. We were successful in getting some fruit, most of it from the heat of mid-July, our fruit just hasn’t been packing on the weight. The truth is, some tomatoes just aren’t going to do well in far northern climates and despite optimal growing conditions, some varieties just aren’t worth it. We were truly hopeful we could make this classic tomato work, but alas, San Marzano isn’t going into our next year’s secondary trials.
For our second trial, we went a bit further north and explored the French hybrid called Carmello. Theoretically a 70 day tomato that’s known to do well in the Pacific Northwest, we had a bit more hope for this variety. It’s a traditional slicer type with a relatively early maturity time. While we aren’t even close to our French friends in latitude, our greenhouse can provide similar growing conditions as their outdoor summer conditions for at least 90 to 120 growing days.
Carmello has been seemingly unphased by our cooler evenings, setting massive fruit on pretty much every flower. The fruit have fully formed within 70 growing days, a major step in the right direction. While our fruit hasn’t ripened as early as our earliest of varieties (currently, a variety called Stupice), it does show a lot of promise. We have decided it looks promising enough to bring them into a secondary trial, so we’ll be growing Carmello again next year.
We mentioned it earlier this season, but all of our tomatoes experienced a very unfortunate setback this season. And we’re paying for it now. We had some major nutritional issues during our early tomato start growth and we just didn’t catch it in time. This set back our tomato plants by several weeks, mostly because we had to spend critical early season time recovering our starts. While this definitely affected Carmello and its ability to mature sooner, we don’t think it would have made a major difference for San Marzano. We can just look at comparative growth and see that. Essentially, if we hadn’t f’d up, we think there’s a good chance the Carmello would be a solid producer.
It’s important for us to state that we’re simply evaluating these tomato varieties and we’re not truly “recommending” them at this point. These trials are mostly for our knowledge, but since we’re “public gardeners,” we figure it’s helpful to talk about our process, thoughts and results. When we feel comfortable with varietal performance, we’ll escalate it to our “recommended” list in our northern tomato growing article. (Which you can find linked down in the comments!)
We generally try to plan our tomato trials such that we’re growing “tried and true” varieties and the trials at the same time. Just so we don’t get skunked. When we do tomato trials, it’s usually based around our viable seed stock and running out of a particular variety. Some years, we just go with what we know works because we have seed stock. We’re just a “small” garden, with a small greenhouse, so we don’t have infinite resources to put into trials.
If there’s a silver lining to this story, our “failure” with San Marzano means we’ll have a “slot” for another new tomato trial next year! We’re not yet sure what that will be. But, one thing is certain, we aren’t going to be surfing the list of “classic” northern tomatoes. One of our educational goals is to discover what’s possible, not necessarily repeat what is known.
