Our tomato trials are looking very fortuitous at this point in the year. When we were planning this winter, we chose to try out some of the more recent All-America Selections tomato winners. These are varieties that have been tested all across the U.S. and have shown to perform reliably under a wide range of conditions.

We had already grown Chef’s Choice Orange a couple of times and found it to be a reliable producer with great flavor. (I have also grown it at home for a few more years and it has quickly become one that is an easy choice.)

With that experience, we are interested to see if other, new varieties in the Chef’s Choice line will be just a promising for Kansas. We chose to grow the Chef’s Choice Orange again as our “known” trial variety. To that, we have added the following varieties. (Links to the All-America Selections pages, with more variety details.)

Chef’s Choice Red – 8 oz fruit, prolific

Chef’s Choice Green – Green and yellow at maturity and citrus-y flavor common to green-when-ripe tomatoes.

Chef’s Choice Yellow – 10 oz. somewhat sweet fruit

Chef’s Choice Pink – 12-14 oz beefsteak with pink skin and flesh

We also chose two non-Chef’s Choice varieties to test in order to have a broader comparison.

Galahad – Red fruit with high disease resistance and purported crack resistance. (Crack resistance is a hot commodity in Kansas, so we are hoping for great things!)

Mountain Rouge – From the “Mountain” series, a 12-14 oz. pink beefsteak with high disease resistance.

Some Cherry Tomatoes:

In other areas of the garden, we also have some cherry tomatoes planted, and these are a little further outside the normal varieties.

Moonbeam – A pale yellow or white grape tomato that is supposed to have high yields and exceptional flavor.

Brad’s Atomic Grape – This multi-colored tomato has been all over social media for a couple years, but we have heard from some locals that it cracks horribly. So…we’re going to give it a try!

Blush – A yellow oblong cherry with red stripes and interior blush. We have tried others in this series in the past, all with bad cracking problems, so it will be interesting to see how this one performs.

If all goes well, we hope to have a bounty of tomatoes this year, as well as some great new varieties to recommend in our area.