Colorado Springs

The 2023 tomato year was largely a success. It was our second growing season since moving to this house, and we were building on the progress made in 2022. In 2022, it was a scramble to get everything ready to plant. We’d begun work on landscaping, moved two raised beds from a distant spot in the yard closer to the house, and filled the beds before planting them. In 2023 we were rushing to install drip irrigation before we went on vacation in June. It all worked out and 2023 was the first year things could somewhat run on autopilot after the initial Spring work.

We decided to have a higher proportion of cherry and paste varieties this year. Plenty of snacking tomatoes for the kids and paste tomatoes for pasta sauce and curries.

The standouts of the season were German Lunchbox, San Marzano, Sun Gold, Thorburn’s Terra-Cotta, and Pink Fang. These were our work horses. For aesthetics, the standouts were Queen of the Night and Black Strawberry. Read on for details of the 24 plants we grew.

Preparing the beds

May 30th

Growing Conditions

It was an unusually cool and rainy beginning of the growing season on the Front Range. The extra rain was welcome while it lasted - eventually it did warm up and dry out. Luckily at our house we didn’t get hail like most of the Springs did, just pea sized on several occasions. Enough to cause some cosmetic damage, but nothing that killed plants. Some of my friends were not as lucky. The relatively cool spring temperatures meant that our garden didn’t take off as early as it normally does. We planted the tomatoes on May 29th and 30th. The first tomatoes were later than normal for us - they first started ripening at the end of July/beginning of August instead of mid July.

Raised Beds: 17 tomatoes were in a 4’ x 8’ raised bed (roughly 18” spacing). I always grow tomatoes intensively and interplant with things like basil, carrots, beets, and marigolds. This bed had tomatillo volunteers this year, which didn’t do the tomatoes any favors, but most did just fine. Having the raised beds on drip this year was great. I fell behind on watering enough by hand last year. We only fertilized a couple of times, but the tomatoes did well despite this. We try to add plenty of compost when we plant.

Crawling into the jungle to harvest San Marzanos

In-Ground: Four tomatoes were in-ground (Harless Creek Gold, Golden King of Siberia, and two mystery tomatoes that ended up being indigo Cherry Drops and Amish Paste). I have been passively improving this bed here and there (no-till), but it’s still a work in progress, and it is still pretty clay heavy. There was no irrigation in this bed, so it was watered by rain and hand. I planted tomatoes here because I needed more space for ones that wouldn’t fit in the raised bed, and I like experimenting and comparing notes to differences in performance.

Container: Three were in a wood planter (small barrel-type) - Dwarf Adelaide Festival, Orange Hat Micro Dwarf, and Bellstar. I didn’t water or fertilize the barrel consistently enough, and the plants looked battered by flea beetles, so none of them produced well.

Other factors: I didn’t notice much disease pressure this year. There was what appeared to be flea beetle damage on some plants, especially the ones in the barrel. The tomatillos crowded some of the tomatoes on the north side of the bed, so they were competing for resources.

First tomatoes of the season, July 31. Orange Hat Micro Dwarf grown in barrel planter

Varieties

German Lunchbox (medium multipurpose): very productive. Firm medium sized fruit that keep on the counter for a long time. Will be growing these again.

Raspberry Lyanna (medium multipurpose): similar to German Lunchbox, though maybe slightly less productive.

Pink Fang (paste): Meaty interior. We made sauce and froze a lot of these. Productive. At the end of the season, they were prone to cracking shoulders.

San Marzano (paste): very productive all season. Will be growing again. We froze a lot of them.

Golden King of Siberia, San Marzano, Amish Paste, and Pink Fang

Amish Paste (paste): Very round and large. Late to produce and wasn’t very productive. The one in-ground was similar.

Black Strawberry (cocktail): very pretty, and produced moderately well. I don’t remember specifically tasting them, but they did make it into our salsa.

Queen of the Night (cocktail): beautiful! Used for roasted salsa, but I don’t remember the specifics of how they tasted. Grew well on the north side of the bed.

Rosella (cherry): seemed good, but I didn’t get many of them. Smaller than a regular cherry. The plant was in the middle and I think it didn't do as well as a result.

Indigo Blue Chocolate (cherry): I think these tasted good, but memory is fuzzy now which cherry tomatoes were which. Roasted a lot of them.

Indigo Blue Chocolate

Bosque Blue Bumblebee (cherry): this one along with other saladette and cherry sizes we did a lot of roasting with this year, making a lot of salsa. They were very well suited for this and gave our roasted salsa great dimension. The ones I tried at the end of the season were a touch mealy though.

Sun Gold (cherry): the only hybrid that has earned a place in my garden every year. Produced well with lots of vigor and no pest or disease problems. Sweet.

Sun Gold

Blondkopfchen (cherry): seemed a bit outcompeted this year. It was on the north side of the bed and was very slow to get going. Normally I have huge trusses of endless fruit, but it didn’t perform very well this year. This has been a favorite in past years - toddler approved!

Brad's Atomic Grape (grape cherry): I have heard people either love or hate this tomato. Very vigorous plant. I’m not sure I was hitting the right window for harvesting - it’s a bit tricky due to the color. It wasn’t one I reached for for fresh snacking, but we did put it on our roasting pan for salsa.

Lucky Tiger (elongated cherry): I don’t remember anything being remarkable about the taste, but good. I think most of them ended up being roasted, like the Brad's Atomic Grape. Ended up being pretty productive but not until late season.

Prairie Fire (elongated cherry): my plant did not appear to be Prairie Fire, so I’m not sure what happened. I gave my friend one and hers was Prairie Fire. I will try again for 2024.

Indigo Blue Cherry Drops (cherry): gorgeous and produced reasonably well in ground. Taste is good.

Chocolate Stripes (slicer): I only got a couple of these. They were in the middle of the bed and outcompeted. Delicious and pretty striping. I normally grow Pink Berkeley Tie Dye every year but swapped it for this one in 2023. I’ll try Chocolate Stripes again, but PBTD will always be a favorite.

Thorburns Terra Cotta (slicer): large, very good flavor. It was not extremely prolific, but I will grow this one in future years.

Thorburn's Terra-Cotta

Golden King of Siberia (slicer): this tomato grew the best of the four that were in-ground. Delicious large yellow fruit. Not a heavy producer, but decent. It ended up getting too big for the cage and bent over.

Harless Creek Gold (slicer): in-ground. Did not get as big as the Golden King of Siberia next to it did. Good flavor.

Bellstar (determinate, paste): grown in the wood barrel, and the plant struggled. I have grown this variety most years and it typically is productive.

Dwarf Adelaide Festival (slicer): in the wood barrel. As noted above, growing conditions were not great. There was one tomato, beautiful with good flavor.

Orange Hat Micro Dwarf (cherry): these produced the best of the tomatoes in the barrel. They were the first tomatoes that produced. Kids loved them.

October 11, a few days before a freeze. Harvested a lot this week.

How We Used the Tomatoes

The kids, neighbor kids, and I ate cherry tomatoes straight off the vine. We put them in salads and pastas. We roasted many pans of tomatoes (all types), tomatillos, onion, garlic, chiles, and sometimes other peppers for salsa. The rest were frozen to use in sauces, soups, and curries. We have already had many delicious meals using these. If you are wondering how we freeze our tomatoes and one of our favorite soup recipes, take a look here: Preserving tomatoes: freezing. The roasted salsa has been wonderful in sour cream enchiladas and added as a flavor base to quick Southwest-inspired soups.

Roasted Salsa

Roasted tomatoes, tomatillos, onions, garlic, and chiles for salsa

Looking Forward to the 2024 growing season

One thing I have realized is I need to take better notes during the growing and harvest season, and to make sure I take the time to taste test each tomato instead of running out of steam and rushing to get them processed. Luckily I did take the time to save seeds of high quality fruits.

My goals for 2024 are to trial several early heirloom varieties (50-55 days), be more consistent with fertilizing, and grow more tomatoes in-ground. We have more gardening space available for 2024 with all of the in-ground beds I began preparing last season. I am working on sheet mulching them so they will be ready for Spring. I haven’t chosen all of the tomato varieties I will be starting this year, but I’m hoping to grow many more than my usual 20-25. Other than that, it will be more of the same themes - snacking tomatoes, all-purpose and paste tomatoes, with a few slicers/beefsteaks and fun pretty varieties thrown in.

A few new-to-me varieties I’m looking forward to growing are Variegated Potato Leaf, Painted Lady, Aunt Ruby’s German, and Solar Flare.

One thing I want folks to take away from this is to grow as many tomatoes as you can to see which ones grow well in your garden, fit your needs, and palate. My growing conditions will be different from yours, so we will have different results and opinions even if we grow the same varieties. Experimenting is half the fun!

May you all have a bountiful growing season!