After a 20+ year hiatus, which was caused by the wife constantly reminding me she could simply buy veggies a lot cheaper than the water and fertilizer it takes me to grow one in the NC Sandhills area --- I am back to growing tomatoes for salad and sandwich consumption at her request.

Why?   The wife was remembering fondly walking out to the vines to find a just now ripe tomato to cut up for a BLT.   And yes, that ugly home grown ripe from the vine tomato tasted a lot better than the pink cardboard tasting tomatoes you buy from the store.

I have bought 12 plants, 12 cages, mulch, tomato fertilizer, and have just this afternoon rooted 4 suckers off the original 4 plants that if they root successfully will start me towards the fall crop (should they actually survive the heat of summer).

In the 20 year mean time, the varieties I used to grow have all gone "heirloom" on me and the DNA assisted supersweet low acid hybrids are all the rage now at the Lowes and Walmart garden centers.

I bought and planted different 3 kinds, but hands down the best of the lot so far is the Better Boy tomato.   If you fertilize it and water it once a day the plants just explode into those long clumps of 4-5 tomatoes you sometimes see in the grocery store still on the vine stub.

I have plants that aren't quite 3 months old now that have 18 tomatoes on them that still the vine hasn't gotten up as tall as the cages yet.  I look to see 25 plants from a vine, easy, which is really good compared to what I got in years past.  

I have planted Better Boy sucker cuttings a variety of ways and I can say compared to Roma and Paste and Cherry tomato plants the Better Boy is a much much tougher sucker to kill.   I have seem my Better Boy sucker cuttings go totally flat, get crispy on the leaf edges from sun burn and still come bouncing back if they get a good watering.

Good genetics or genetic meddling?   Hey, they work --- I don't care all that much about how.

I am now propagating my herd of plants by cutting and rooting the very best plants copious suckers, intentionally selecting the individual plants that are setting 6-7 tomatoes per node layer instead of the slightly slacker plants that only set 3-5 tomatoes.

Which tomato varieties do you guys like, and why?

sorry to jerk your thread, but can someone tell me why US strawberries on sale here in Canuckistan are the size of apples? Wotinell fertilizer are you guys using?????
cheers!

I'm planting big beef. Supposedly they grow with less than perfect light, I have some shade. Last year I had a good crop growing but the squirrels attacked them . This year  I'm going to have 5 foot chicken wire cages around each plant.

Good idea!