My San Marzanos, Romas and Basil (TView)

Now that's a nice looking garden like mine is smaller then yours but I'm still excited to grow more an more tho. My basil has gone crazy too and the tomatoes were few and far between but there was some and the jalapenos are still going strong.

Nice pics & maters!

I went out around midnight and picked a couple dozen because rain is forecast later today and thru the weekend and temps dropping from the mid-upper 80's into the 50's tonight with highs in the mid 60's forecast for the weekend. Mostly some of my crosses as well as Opalka, Kalman's Hungarian Pink, Wagner's Italian, Joe's Plum, Speckled Roman, Romeo and Ukrainian Heart. I will try to post some pics in the Show Me thread.

I got a late start again this year and haven't had any ripe beefsteak sized varieties yet, just hearts, paste & plum cooking types and cherries. I picked these cherries yesterday:

Cherokee Green Grape (my own project), Snow White, Yellow Submarine, Rose Quartz Multiflora, Haley's Purple Comet, and Matt's Wild Cherry.

This year I have 56 tomato plants and 44 pepper plants... of the tomatoes, 11 are cherry types.

I will probably wait for the storms later and go on the front porch and try saving seeds from most of them.

P.S. here is Speckled Roman, a VERY PRODUCTIVE San Marzano type that is sweet enough to eat as-is without cooking into sauce, though can be used either way:

They are a little juicier than San Marzano, but that makes them good for other things besides just cooking, like cut up in salads or for salsa. Below is what a professor & tomato connoisseur at UofWGB & U of New Mex, Jeff Nekola, wrote, he's a member of Seed Savers Exchange (SSE.)

"Probably my best new variety of 1999, and definitely in my top 10 list; 5x3" tapered red fruits with stunning wavy orange stripes; fruits meaty and with excellent flavor; the markings are more distinct than reported by John Swenson in the 1999 Yearbook. [IL SW J 99]  Chance cross of Antique Roman with Banana Legs."

Most paste types seem bland, especially Roma, but varieties like these listed below have that old fashioned taste of heirlooms. Some you can just SMELL how great just by cutting them open, like Wagner's or Joe's Plum. I alsao grow one that doesn't have a big bold taste but makes up for it in size: Romeo. They get about 5-6 inches by about 3 or more inches and are really solid. Another great one for size & production is Uncle Steve's:

Here are some of my best sauce/salsa varieties, you can click on the names to see pics:
I included a bunch of oxheart types too because you can cook them into sauce, cube or dice for salsa, or slice for sammies. Most of them have few seeds in them.

Sorry, I'm not that good with HTML webpage tables and the formatting got chopped off on the right because of the right ads column...

Hope this helps.