Preparing the Hole for Transplanting

One more essential for transplanting, especially in our sandy, nutrient poor soil.  Because it would take a tremendous amount of organic matter to upgrade our whole garden plot all at once, it's essential to improve the soil around each plant.  I do this by preparing a substantial transplant hole that adds organic matter and trace elements along with fertilizer.  As I mentioned in Plant Positive not Pest Negative, the basic rule of good  gardening is to feed the soil, not the plant.  But at the moment I feed the plant, knowing that over time the whole garden will improve. 

For plants such as tomatoes, peppers, coles, and heavy feeders such as cucumbers, I remove a couple of shovels of soil, put a quarter to a half bucket of compost in the bottom of the hole, add a small handful of pelletized dolomitc lime (high in Magnesium as well as Calcium), a handful of basic 5-10-10 or 5-7-4 fertilizer,* and a handful of kelp or greensand (high in trace minerals).  I mix the fertilizers with the compost, add back some of the soil I removed, and mix it again several times.  I use the extra soil to build up the bowl around the plant.  I dig and fill this kind of hole for cucumbers and squash even if I'm planting them from seed.

The trace elements are essential for really healthy plants, and help build up disease and pest resistance.  Think of them as vitamins.  Vitamins aren't carbohydrates, fats, or proteins, but they're necessary just the same.

Blossom end rot (those first tomatoes that are black on one end) is a physiological problem, not a disease, caused by a combination of uneven watering and calcium deficiency.  Even though tomatoes really like a mildly acid soil, they need calcium enough so that adding a small handful of lime is a good thing for them.

The organic matter that gets added to the soil - whether compost, manure, leaves, or even peat moss:
1) adds trace elements,
2) makes trace elements already in the soil more available for plants to take up,
3) makes the soil hospitable for the micro-organisms that break down the soil into nutrients, *
4) Helps our soil hold moisture and fertilizers we add, which ordinarily leach out of the sandy soil.
So do all you can to add and save all the organic matter you can.  Compost in place the weeds and food plants you pull from the garden, by letting a small pile decompose right in your garden.  Or if you want to keep the garden neat, dig a hole, put the weeds in, and cove with soil.  Bring coffee grounds and the contents of tea bags from the house and mulch your plants with them; both are very beneficial.  Bring grass clippings if you don't put herbicides/pesticides on your lawn.

In the fall, think about bringing leaves.  Ideally, you'd have shredded them first, as otherwise they tend to blow all over the place before they get tilled in.  For those in the community gardens, you can see soil utterly transformed by a decade of adding leaves every fall, at Dan's garden.  I think his plot is B6 and C6, but you won't have any trouble finding it, because the soil is rich and dark and moist.  He's added horse manure this year, but the fundamental soil structure has been built up with leaves.  Last year his potatoes grew waist high.  I didn't even know potatoes could grow that tall.

In an emergency I've just put the plant in the ground, and planned on side-dressing with fertilizer later on.  But this is no substitute for providing organic matter for the roots. 

* There are lots of reasons not to use chemical (non-organic) fertilizers such as 5-10-10:
1) The manufacture of these fertilizers uses a lot of energy, and may be harmful to the people who make them.
2) The fillers in the fertilizer are not regulated or disclosed, and may sometimes contain heavy metals (lead, cadmium, etc.)
3) Chemical fertilizers are available all at once, and so the excess is leached from the soil and may end up in rivers and lakes where the phosphorus feeds algae blooms.  For this reason we're now being encouraged to use 5-2-10 for our lawns, to help keep phosphorus out of Lake Champlain.
4) Because they leach from the soil so readily more fertilizer is necessary than with slower-releasing organic fertilizer
5) Chemical fertilizers are harmful to the micro-organisms we need to encourage in the garden and which make natural elements in the soil available for plants.  Especially harmful to earthworms, too.
6) Because they contain no trace elements our food will be deficient in them too, which is not as healthy for us.  Any heavy metals or other harmful chemicals will, however, be taken up by the plants and we will eat them.

Planning for tomato diseases when you plant

In Northern Vermont the tomato disease we most often get is septoria leaf spot (as in the picture above), a fungus that lives in the soil and splashes up on plants, and is transmitted through the air, too.  The disease starts with yellowing lower leaves, then brown spots that appear and eventually merge together, and the leaves turn brown and dry up.  By the end of the summer we may have few leaves left on plants.  Without leaves the plant can't produce sugars, and the tomatoes become excessively acid and don't have the complex flavors we enjoy.

Unlike the blight we had last summer, leaf spot doesn't generally directly affect the tomatoes.  They can still be picked and eaten, but they won't have the great flavor a homegrown tomato should have, and the plants won't be as productive as they could be. 

We can do several things at planting time to minimize or delay the onset of this and other fungal diseases.    Although the fungal spores are in the air, the plants are subjected to a heavy load when rain splashes up on the plants from below.  So anything we can do to minimize that will be helpful.

1) Removing the lower leaves keeps them from getting the disease early.  For this reason I tend to plant tall plants without burying the stem extra deep, which is an old-time practice to maximize the root growth.  I'd rather feed and water the existing root ball well. 

2) Just about any mulch will help, if it protects the plant from splash-up from watering or rain.  Straw will add organic matter eventually.  But plastic mulches work too, and red plastic mulch may help productivity.  I've put a clear plastic bag over the plant at planting time (by cutting a slit in the bottom seam), then inserted my cage, and had a bag I could pull up and attach to the cage, preventing even side splash, and helping to warm the plant on cold days.  Weeds will grow under the clear plastic, and I take the bags off around July 1.  If you have lots of compost or composted manure, you can top dress with it, which will protect the plant from soil splash but may also have disease-prevention properties on its own, as some have reported that spraying with compost tea or manure tea will prevent disease. 

3)  Help the plant stay dry.  Water gently with a hose at the bottom of the plant, rather than watering overhead.  Don't grow your plants too closely together.  Alternatively, you can prune so there isn't a lot of excess foliage, especially at the bottom.

4) Do as much as you can to give the plant a strong immune system, by feeding well and spraying with a sea weed extract.  Don't let the plant dry out to the point of serious wilting.  Water deeply to encourage deep roots that will stay hydrated when the surface of the soil dries out.

5) If you have a serious problem with a fungal disease, you can spray with a fungicide which may prevent the disease or treat it.  Update:  The Vermont Department of Agriculture has a new brochure discussing late blight and how to minimize the likelihood you'll get it in your garden.  Some of the listed fungicides (including those for organic programs) are very toxic to the applicator (you).  Use all the product label's suggested precautions when using  any fungicide or pesticide, and in general use only when the air is calm, wear long pants and a long sleeved shirt, and remove your clothes and shower after applying.  Wouldn't hurt to wear a mask or respirator, too.  The brochures are available at Claussens locally, and hopefully at other garden centers.  The same fungicides listed for late blight would also work for the septoria leaf spot we get every year.  I will still plan to use serenade, alternating with a copper fungicide, if necessary, both listed on organic programs.  The leading chemical fungicide may be safer to apply, but some sites have implicated it in the aberrant changes in amphibians that are happening worldwide, so I'll avoid it.

Last year's blight will hopefully not reappear.  It will have died with any organic material that didn't live over the winter.  Potatoes sometimes survive the winter if they haven't been found when digging.  In fact, I maintained a small crop of blue potatoes for a few years just this way.  But it will be very important this year to pull out any potatoes that sprout from last year (and dispose in the trash, not the compost heap), as the blight could have survived the winter in the tubers.  As you can see in the picture below, the blight affected the tomatoes and not just the foliage, and destroyed them in just a few days. Most organic growers in the Northeast lost all their tomatoes, and commercial growers needed to use a very strong fungicide to save their crop.  Some isolated plots were unaffected..  I sprayed my plants just as soon as the blight appeared, and the sun gold cherry tomatoes survived with practically no damage.  This is as good a reason as any to grow them.

Under Lights

The lights needed for growing vegetable starts are simple and inexpensive.  To start my tomato, pepper, and cole plants I use 3 sets of 4 foot flourescent shop lights side by side.  Under those lights I've started 100 each of tomatoes and peppers, and three dozen broccoli/cabbage plants.  I admit that by the middle of April I'm usually taking the plants outside for part or all of the day, and sometimes in early May when it's colder and rainier than I had planned on it being (meaning I didn't plan!) I've had to platoon them, growing half under lights during the night and putting them in a totally dark room during the day, and then the other half under the lights all day, and in the dark room at night.  As long as they spend time in total darkness they won't get leggy, even if they have to spend a couple of days there continuously.

The real key is to have the lights be no more than 3-4 inches above the seedlings.  To accomplish this I raise the lights gradually as the plants grow.  Here comes the part where you should not do what I do:  I rest the ends of the fixtures on books (an old set of encyclopedias), and this means that with some of the brands of fixtures the bulbs themselves rest on the books.  This can't be a good thing.  They never get hot, but I'm still not sure it's safe (informed opinions about this would be welcome in comments), and it would be better to have an arrangement where the lights could be lowered and raised by chains, as the fixture always comes with holes for an S hook to hold the chain.  Some brands of fixtures are designed such that the metal shade extends below the lights, and these are the ones to look for if you're going out to buy them.

The light stands that are sold by gardening centers do generally have a way to lower the lights by chains, but they are very expensive.  At best, you could build a modest arrangement to do this yourself.  Make sure you can put at least two units side by side, as I find that there's not enough light to satisfy plants off to the side.  If you're planning on putting flats under the lights you'll definitely need two-or three sets side by side.   As a temporary arrangement planks or 2x4's straddling workhorses, with hooks that would let you attach the fixtures' chains, might possibly be safer than my arrangement.  No matter what you do, make sure that neither children nor pets can upset the lights.

Fortunately I have a 6 foot table in a back room that I can dedicate to this project, so I'm not getting down on the floor to water little seedlings.  I drape the table with 6 mil plastic, and I'm all set to go.

This picture shows the dilemma I face with just these 3 sets of lights.  I have tiny seedlings 3 inches under the lights, and tomatoes that are growing right up into the lights.  It's time to transplant the tomatoes, and I'll need to raise the flat of tiny seedlings so they're closer to the lights.  The tomatoes are a little leggy.  That's mostly because there have been days I've never turned on the lights at all (sigh), and also because I should have bought new bulbs this season, and didn't.  Even though the lights still turn on, they lose brightness over time, and should be replaced every year.  But the tomatoes will be fine when transplanted, and the camera angle is also exaggerating how tall they are.  They tiny seedlings look okay, as you can see. (And yes, the tomatoes are a little yellower than they should be. need fertilizer)

Why These Tomatoes

Sun Gold Tomatoes


Here are the tomato varieties that I'm growing, and why.  Some tomatoes are in more than one list:  If you're planning on canning, all tomatoes except red will need some added acid (like lemon juice, vinegar, or citric acid) if you're canning with a hot water bath (instead of pressure canning).  I think the USDA even suggests adding acid for most modern reds.  I freeze tomatoes quite a bit, and you only need to throw them in a bag or container, so you can freeze the low acid tomatoes too.

Most of these are indeterminates, meaning they will keep growing and producing blossoms and fruits as long as the plant lives.  A few are determinate, meaning they tend to be more bushy, and have a finite fruit set. (beaverlodge plum, roma, rutgers).  In the north this doesn't much matter, as the determinates seldom run out of fruit, and the life of the indeterminates is cut short by frost anyway.  But determinates are more practical if you don't want to stake, and don't want your plants to sprawl all over the ground.

Somewhere in each description there's a link to seeds (and a description there, too).  For some of these tomatoes there are other sources, and some of those are less expensive.

EARLY, AND STARTED EARLY (March 3):

Beaverlodge plum (from Territorial Seeds).  A small plant, and good flavor for such an early tomato.  I can grow them in a pot in the back yard. 2-3 oz

Glacier:  A variety I haven't tried, listed as very early.  3-4 oz

New Girl: An early variety with much better flavor than Early Girl, but otherwise filling that niche.  New Girl is from Johnny's, and they had a seed crop failure this year.  This is one of many reasons to save seeds from year to year, and these are last year's seeds. 3-4 oz

Sun Gold: My wonderful, favorite, fruity, orange cherries (shown above) They are usually the first tomato to ripen in the garden, even though they aren't advertised as early.  I'll probably have ripe cherries the first week of July, on the couple of plants I started yesterday.

RED TOMATOES - STARTING WITH THE LARGEST

Delicious - I haven't grown this variety for a number of years, but it will give me tomatoes consistently more than a pound, with very good flavor. (This variety holds the all-time record for size, at 7 pounds 12oz.)

Burpee's Big Boy - One of two tomatoes I'd grow if restricted to two varieties (the other is Sun Gold). About the first big hybrid, introduced 60 years ago, when flavor was still the primary interest.  Not only is the flavor great, but the aroma is, too. The tomato of my childhood.  10-16 oz, generally. (Usually available locally as a plant- Claussens, at least) Any of the big beefsteaks are pretty similar, except perhaps for aroma.

Supersonic - A sturdy hybrid that's been around a long time.  Good flavor. My friend JP grows this as his primary tomato.  A little smaller than Big Boy, maybe 8-14 oz.

Rutgers:  A non-hybrid, that at one time accounted for 75% of the tomatoes grown in the U.S., so if you're remembering that "old-time tomato flavor" this could be what you remember.  Not quite as productive or disease resistant as hybrids, but worth growing just the same. 6-8 oz.

New Girl, Glacier, Beaverlodge see above

Red paste: Big Mama and Roma, see below

Red Cherry: Super Sweet 100, see below

PINK

Brandy Boy:  Burpee's hybrid version of Brandywine.  More productive and disease resistant.  Very large fruit with outstanding flavor.  I find them a little temperamental (they don't always ripen properly), or I'd grow more of them, and I have in the past.  The fungal disease we get strips the leaves off plants and without leaves tomatoes can be very acidic, but that is never a problem with pink tomatoes.  Very sweet and meaty.  Another comparable tomato is Rose, from Johnny's, or Pruden's Purple, which is smaller and earlier but with  similar flavor.  Or of course Brandywine, for which you can probably find plants locally. About 16 oz. (but I grew a 36 oz Brandy Boy or Rose a number of years ago). Seeds available on some Burpee seed racks. (Depot Home and Garden, locally)

ORANGE

Jubilee - My favorite orange, but evidently that's an opinion not shared, since I have to hunt for the seeds.  Orange blossom may be available locally and is similar. I use this variety for making orange tomato/orange marmalade.  Along with the pinks and yellows, orange tomatoes have less acid. 6-8 oz.

Sun Gold - See above or below

YELLOW

Yellow Bell - One of my all-time favorite varieties, which was lost to me for a number of years, after it was discontinued by Pine Tree Gardens.  I found it online this spring from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and I can't wait to grow it again.  The last time I grew it the tomatoes were plum shaped, and not as flavorful as I remembered, from the pear shaped bells - so there may be some variability in the variety, and I'm prepared to save seeds from the tomatoes I like.  This is not a hybrid, so saving seed will be possible.   Very meaty - essentially a paste tomato -  and it stays on the vine a long time without over-ripening.  3-4 oz

Lemon Boy - A good sized truly yellow tomato, with mild flavor as all yellows have.  May have just a hint of citrus if you use your imagination.  6-10 oz (Usually available locally as a plant- Claussens, at least)

Yellow Pear - A cherry - see below

PASTE TOMATOES (high pulp, few seeds. Ideal for canning)

Big Mama - Burpee's large pendulous paste tomato.  Unlike many pastes, it is thoroughly ripe on the inside when it's red on the outside.  Not a lot of fruits, but they are large. 4-8 oz

Roma - Haven't grown this for a while.  Good flavor, though San Marzano's is probably better.  Very productive.  Ripe fruit sometimes drop.  3-4 oz.

Yellow Bell - see above

CHERRY TOMATOES - 
All of these have tender skins, making them available to home gardeners, but not commercially available since they don't ship well.  They also crack easily after a rain, or after picking.  Flavor's great, though.  But if you've become fond of the chewy grape tomatoes you might find the texture of cherries too soft.  You can find grapes to buy, including as plants.  I haven't tried any.

Sun Gold - See description above, too (and picture at the top of the post).  I often just eat these in the garden while I'm working, and I give a lot away (though they do crack easily).  Good over a wide range of ripeness. These will make your friends happy. (Usually available locally as a plant- Claussens, and Gardener's, I think)

Super Sweet 100  - Similar in size to Sun Golds, and similar in flavor too. Not quite as fruity.   The skins tend to be a little tougher than the Sun Golds, and they don't have as wide a range of ripeness.  This is probably what you used to have available to you as a cherry tomato at farm stands. (Sometimes available locally as a plant)

Yellow Pear - A beautiful pear-shaped cherry tomato.  Very prone to splitting.  I got a Burpee cherry mix from the seed rack at Agway, with these 3 varieties in it, and that's a very good mix. - But whether I have any yellow pears will depend on whether I beat the odds when I grow 5 or 6 from the pack.  I have seeds for the other two varieties that I'll grow separately.  It looks nice to have a bowl with all three varieties, or to use all three in a pasta salad, etc.

What I'm growing this year

Now that the gardening season is upon us I'll post every day (really). You might want to check out Where to get seeds, and How long can I keep seeds, the two posts preceding this one.  Here I'm going to let you know what vegetables I've got seeds for (will do flowers and herbs in another post). It took me forever to organize all this, which argues for just going down to the store and picking some seeds off the rack. I might not grow all of these varieties. Some are seeds I have that are still viable, but for some reason I've decided to try another variety, or I don't have as many as I need of what I've got left.  But for the most part this is what I'll grow. I'm going to mark seeds I'm buying this year with a colored asterisk, but I'm not going to bother to let you know where I got the old seeds.  If you want to know a source ask in comments and I'll be happy to oblige. 

For some vegetables I'm also going to mark the one or two varieties I'd grow from these if I was only going to grow one, and this doesn't mean they're the best variety.  But I want to emphasize that the time, energy, and money invested in preparing the soil (or in the case of our very sandy soil, feeding the plants as well as the soil) matters a whole lot more than the varieties of seeds.  The varieties you can get from the seed racks are all you need, and there are many of them here. 

* Seeds from Johnny's in 2010
* Seeds from Territorial in 2010
* Seeds from Southern Exposure in 2010
* Burpee seed rack half price 2010 or earlier

The one variety I'd grow if I grew only one

BEANS 

*Fresh pick (bush green)

*Early bush Italian
Derby
Royal burgundy (purple)
*Sequoia (purple)
*Brittle Wax (yellow)
* Kentucky Wonder (pole) (the pole bean of my childhood.  Very "beany")
Fortex

PEAS
Sugar Ann (early snap pea)
Sugar Snap (very tall)
*Super Sugar Snap
*Snow Sweet (snow pea)
*Caseload (shelling)
*Dwarf Grey Sugar (for the shoots)

BEETS
Detroit Dark Red
Merlin
*Forono (cylindrical beet - nice even slices)
*Touchstone (orange beet)

CHARD
*Bright lights
Magenta Sunset
Fordhook Giant (sweeter flavor than the others, which are prettier)

BROCCOLI,

*Green Goliath (ripens over extended period)

Blue Wind

CAULIFLOWER
*Snow Crown
Veronica (romanesco, spiraled and green)

CABBAGE
*Gonzales (early green)
Alcosa (savoy)
*Super Red 80
*Kaitlin (for sauerkraut or keeping)
Minuet (chinese or napa)
*Soloist (small napa)
(the plants of the first 3 can be grown close together for small heads)

ASIAN GREENS
Mei Qing Choi (pac choi)
Bonsai (pac choi)
Red Choi (pac choi)



CARROTS
*Danvers Half Long
*Nantes Half Long
*Red Cored Chantenay
*Deep Purple (yes, purple carrot)

CORN
*Trinity (early bicolor SE)
*Mantauk (mid-season bicolor, synergistic)
*Whiteout (late white SE)

It's important not to grow supersweet corns (also called SH or SHrunken gene) in a community garden, or where you want to grow other corn as well.  All of the corn will end up with very tough kernels.  SE corn (sugar enhanced) are very sweet and more tender than super sweets.

CUCUMBERS
*Burpee Hybrid II (very reliable slicer)
*Sweet Burpless Hybrid
*Tasty Green Hybrid
Marketmore 76
*Bush Champion
Picklers:
County Fair Hybrid
*Burpee Pickler
Pickalot Hybrid
Vertina
*Diamant (parthenocarpic - seedless if not fertilized)

SUMMER SQUASH
Sweet Zuke Zucchini
Anton Zuchhini

*Burpee's Hybrid Zucchini (very reliable)

*Early Prolific Straightneck (yellow summer squash)
Sunray (yellow)
Geode (round zucchini)
*Early White Bush Scallop

WINTER SQUASH
Puritan Butternut
Baby Bear Pumpkin

SPINACH
Emu
*Space
*Beetberry (a spinach relative with red berries)

LETTUCE
Green ice (green leaf)
Black-Seeded Simpson (green leaf)
Ermosa (green butterhead)
Antago (red lollo rossa)
Fireball (red butterhead)
Mottistone (mottled crisp)
*Crispino (iceberg)
*Wild Lettuce Mix
All star lettuce mix

ONIONS
Deep Purple bunching
*Nabechan bunching
*Alisa Craig (large sweet white)
*Red Bull 
*Copra (yellow keeper)

PEPPERS
*{Anaheim
Ancho
Long Slim Red Cayenne
Jalapeno M
Hungarian Wax} (these 5 were in a Burpee Mix)
Golden Baby Belle
Sweet Banana
Red Delicious
Big Dipper
*Ace (reliable Northern variety)
*Carmen

EGGPLANT
*{Applegreen
Rosa Biana
Millionaire Hybrid
Snowy Hybrid} (these 4 were in a Burpee Mix)
*Fairy Tale (striped lavender and white, tiny)

TOMATOES
(I have other seeds. I'm going to try to restrict myself to these this year)
I have opinions about tomatoes, and will do a separate post with detailed descriptions of these varieties and others.

RED

*Burpee Big Boy (Wonderful aroma and flavor)
Supersonic
*Delicious (very large)
Rutgers (standard - great flavor)
New Girl (very early and exceptional flavor for an early tomato)
*Glacier (early. a new variety to me this year)
*Beaverlodge plum (hanging basket size)

PINK

*Brandy Boy (I love these, but they don't ripen as reliably as I'd like)

ORANGE

Jubilee (I make marmalade with these)

YELLOW

Lemon Boy
*Yellow Bell (my long lost favorite)

PASTE
Big Mama(red)
*Roma (red)

CHERRIES
Sun Gold (Orange.  I eat more of these by volume than any other tomato)
Super Sweet 100 (red)
*Yellow Pear (maybe. I have a mix)

APARAGUS AND RHUBARB

I've bought Jersey Knight Asparagus seeds from Johnny's and Victoria Rhubarb seeds from Territorial.  For the Asparagus I'm not really sure it's worth it to grow from seed because you lose a year, and maybe two years if you start them in the spring instead of late winter.  But I know I'm not going to have a bed ready for them in time to buy roots to plant.   I had a beautiful bed of red rhubarb that has died out from neglect, and apparently I can grow rhubarb from seed for some picking this year, and then let the plants die out.  I could also plan to put them in a permanent location and not pick any this year.  I'll see how they do and decide.  I'd love to be able to just grow them as an annual.

PLANNING TOMATOES

I ended the gardening season promising myself I was going to cut down on the number of tomato varieties.  This is what I usually do, and sometimes I've succeeded.  I used to plant about 25 varieties, and was down to about 12 this year, but then the catalogs came.  I'm a sucker for new varieties, even though I've discovered over the years that when a new vegetable is introduced the descriptions of its flavor, size, vigor, disease resistance are all a little more optimistic than - over time - the plants can live up to. There's a reason the old vegetable varieties are still around.  They taste good and generally yield well and tolerate less than ideal conditions. Nonetheless, I try out some new ones every year and I probably always will.  Hope springs eternal in a gardener's breast, or she probably wouldn't be gardening.

 If I had succeeded in paring down for next year I would have grown just 5 varieties: 
Sun Gold cherry tomatoes
Big Boy
Lemon Boy
Orange Jubilee
Big Mama

If I had to choose one it would be, strangely enough, the sun golds (pictured above).  From mid-July to mid-October hardly a day goes by that I don't walk by the plants and eat a few of the fruity little jewels.  After trying lots of varieties of red tomatoes I've settled back in to Big Boys as the bulk of my reds.  The aroma as well as the flavor really mean tomatoes to me, as we mostly grew Big Boys through my childhood.  The Lemon Boys have a nice mild flavor even when Septoria Leaf Spot has stripped most of the leaves from the plants.  They keep very well on and off the vine, and are tasty over a long period of time, unlike lots of tomatoes that have to be picked and eaten at the peak of ripeness.  This is also somewhat true for the Orange Jubilee, an underused orange that I have a hard time finding now (totally tomatoes calls it golden jubilee - I hope!)  I like to make an orange tomato/orange marmalade, and these are the ideal tomatoes for that.  Big Mamas are very large paste tomatoes that ripen all the way through and stay on the vine well, which is not as true of San Marzanos, which really set the standard for flavor for paste tomatoes.


The other tomato varieties I grew this last summer were:
Golden Mama (yellow paste. insipid tomato, but very productive and they resisted the blight)
Big Beef
Supersonic (good flavor, about the size of a Big Boy)
Rutgers (at one time 75% of tomatoes in this country were Rutgers, and if you miss that old time tomato flavor this is the tomato for you.  Not a hybrid and not as disease resistant as some.
Costoluto Genovese - a neighboring gardener grew them and gave me some plants.  They succumbed to the blight, so I only got a couple, but the flavor was very good
San Marzano
Brandy Boy - Burpee's hybrid version of a Brandywine.  Outstanding tomato, but last year they didn't ripen well for me.  Johnny's version or a hybrid Brandywine is called Rose, and I may go back to them.
New Girl - Johnny's seeds.  An early girl but much better flavor than Early Girl.