Randy Hooper tomato
After so many years of growing tomatoes we have our favorites that we grow every year with Cherokee Purple being at the top of the must have list.
In the smaller tomato category, what we call tommy-toes, we make sure to have the varieties Black Cherry, Sun Gold, an orange one we call David and Carolyn Anderson since that’s where we got the seed, and Juliet.
For many years we’ve grown Mountain Princess and Arkansas Traveler which are full size tomatoes. But this year we didn’t plant either since they’ve not done as well over the last two years.
Along with our favorites we always try a few new varieties. Most years we try too many because of my desire to grow every plant in the world š
This year we cut down on the number of tomatoes we planted by probably 20.
The tommy-toes and Cherokee Purples have done very well even with the dry weather we’ve had.
New varieties we tried:
- Brandywine: we’ve actually grew these before ages ago, but they never done well for us. The couple of plants we had this summer did pretty good, not as good as the Cherokee Purples but we have been eating tomatoes from them and they have a good flavor.
- German Johnson: another one we tried years ago. We’ve had similar results. One plant had one tomato and the other a couple. Really tasty just not a big producer for us.
- Hillbilly: we planted two plants and between the two we got one tomato. The flavor was okay, but not worth trying again for us.
- Black Krim: we started some seeds and I bought starts from the Satterfields. Neither did very well and we prefer the taste of Cherokee Purple.
There is one new variety that we are counting as a success: the Randy Hooper tomato, at least that’s what I’m calling it.
The seed for the tomato came from Debbie at Bryson Farm Supply before the state took her store to widen the road.
The farm supply was founded by Debbie’s parents. After they retired Debbie and her husband Randy took over. I never got to meet Randy since he passed before I met Debbie but I sure would have liked to have known him.
Randy loved making a garden and he loved old heirloom seeds and the stories that came with them. Over the years folks often brought seeds to share with Randy. Many of the seeds Debbie shared with me came from Randy’s collection.
The Randy Hooper tomato came with this information: “These are a great tomato and very good tomato flavor. Our favorite. Seed goes back to early 1900s. Randy Hooper. Red large heirloom tomato.”
We planted two Randy Hooper tomato plants. They have been prolific and are very tasty!
The tomatoes are largeāabout like a softball and are sort of splotched with yellow here and there. The flavor is pure tomato with a real brightness to it.
Last night’s video: Matt Makes Breakfast & How We Cook Corn on the Cob (Roastnears).
Tipper
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We are busting at the seams with tomatoes. We bought 6 plants and were gifted 6 more. We save seed and start our own, but many people in our county start seeds as well, so now we can typically purchase theirs.
I always plant a lemon boy in memory of my daddy. He loved them so.
Now that the kids are all gone we don’t can as much as they can also.
I don’t like to eat tomatoes, but love everything made with them.
This is really interesting to hear what all you have planted and how they turned out. I am very interested to read what others have said about their tomatoes this year too! I’m sorry for the lack of fruit people have had in certain areas & with some plants, but, on the other hand I am glad to hear I am not the only one who has had this issue. German Johnson was very poor last year for me but I also only planted one plant. This year planted one Better Boy, two Cherokee purple; one Golden Jubilee and one black cherry plants which were gifted to me and both new to me this year. It has all produced very little even though I had a regular watering/feeding schedule and checked them every morning/day. I remember my dad planted better boy plants and they were very prolific. But I have only gotten three from this one. The only plant that has produced enough to really enjoy eating is the little sun golds but still only enough for a daily eating nothing more. Plus, weāve lost three maybe four tomatoes to a critter of some sort. I donāt think itās deer bc we donāt see them in our neighborhood. We are thinking squirrels, opossum or raccoon. Itās almost not even worth the effort, however, when I think about having this versus not having to buy any of these at the store it makes me glad I tried! I plan to work on the soil between now and Spring. And maybe we can cut down a sweet gum tree or two that is bordering our yard that will allow more full sun through. Surely that all would help.
We tried growing Cherakee Purples this year based on how well you and Matt seem to enjoy them but we didn’t get to taste a one of them. They all rotted on the vine before becoming ripe. Very disappointed. Our favorite tomato to grow is Mountain Fresh. I can them whole and also make juice, salsa and pasta sauce out of them. They are very tasty and prolific.
My grandparents always grew Better Boy. This year, my husband bought some Beef Steak tomatoes from the farmers market. They were very tasty and I enjoyed them on several BLT sandwiches. Unfortunately, Iām the only one in my family that eats tomatoes so I never try to grow any. Iād sure like to try a Cherokee Purple, especially since we lived in Cherokee,Oklahoma for 41 years and just moved 2 years ago.
We like less acidic tomatoes: The Cherokee Purple is a favorite in our house and the Sun Gold small tomatoes too.
Tommy-toes. When I called our little cherry tomatoes that the other day, my wife laughed at me. But as a child in W Va that’s all I heard them called. Had to go to Google to prove to her. Good to hear the old words and phrases I heard long ago.
Ralph, my family always called the small tomatoes Tommy toes and I still do. One year when I was still at home Daddy bought some plants that were mislabeled, they turned out to be Tommy toes. We carried 5 gal buckets of these tomatoes to our hogs. Mother did try to make tomato soup with them.
Tipper, I like to try new varieties of tomatoes also, but we have basically settled on Celebrity and a couple of tommy-toes. Have you ever tried the Celebrity? The Celebrities do very well for us and have that good tomato flavor. Our gardening space is limited so we have to plant what produces and tastes good. We have tried Cherokee Purple and German Johnson, but neither did very well.
Lucy-we tried them a couple of years ago but we tried them as late tomatoes and it got too cold before they could really produce š
I love all tomatoes especially with mayonnaise and white bread. Thought about your husband when I made my first sandwich of the season!
Our garden was okay this year. I did well with the black cherry tommy toes, but my Cherokee Purples only produced a few. Enough for me and my āmater sandwich-obsessed teenage boy to get a few sandwiches and a BLT, but Iād loved to have had more and some to put up. My peppers were a total bust and my bush beans just produced about two rounds before going to seed in the dry weather. I had to water a lot from the hose here because just like up the road in Brasstownāthe rain wasnāt much and rain is so much better than faucet water! Next year Iām gonna do things a bit different and expand a bit making my tomato plant āsetupā a bit more organized and contained (they got a bit crazy and out of control despite no fruits!). Whatās funny, my Mom and stepfather live about 8 miles southwest of me and they had TONS of tomatoes (Beefsteak and Better Boys) this year. A friend of mine with a huge garden who lives about 4 miles west of me had some of the biggest and best tomatoes Iāve seen in ages. Some of his plants grew 10-15-feet tall! That said, my herbs, flowers, and even sunflowers were awesome! Iāve still got a good amount of sunflowers blooming so it looks like theyāre sticking around ātil at least frostā¦maybe. But NOTHING beats a Cherokee Purple for sandwiches! Canāt wait for them again next year!
We started with 15 tomato plants better boy, big boy and goliath. I wanted to try oxheart as I had seen a french chef on tv showing how meaty it was. Wife makes a lot of sauce and we find romas so small it takes too many. I found seeds on line and ended up with 10 plants. They have been prolific with large heart shaped tomatoes and unbelievably small number of seeds. We have saved seeds, but I probably have enough from what I bought for a couple more years. For us we have had the best growing season. It has been hot but we had rain almost every week until recently. We moved to Ohio 30 years ago and then the ground did not thaw until mid June. Now it doesn’t even freeze more than 1″. We planted in late May this year. This was the earliest for us.
My all-time favorite tomato is the Cherokee Purple and the next on my best tomato list is Akers W. VA, an unknown to my family until a few years ago. My grandson said they grow as big as basketballs. My friend is the AG teacher at the local high school where the students run the greenhouse. A few years ago, they wanted to try growing a new tomato plant called Tie-dyed. In all my years of gardening, I have never seen a tomato produce as heavy as they did. They were low acid and not very tasty.
So happy the Randy Hoopers did well. Sounds like he enjoyed gardening like you do Tipper. What a lovely tribute.
I really wanted to grow Cherokee purple tomatoes this year. They look so good. I couldnāt find any plants for sale in my area, but I did find a packet of seeds at a local farm supply store. I planted them in little cups, but with the colder climate here and no greenhouse, I was not successful. I am not giving up though. I am going to buy another packet of seeds and ask my brother-in-law if I can try them in his newly built greenhouse next spring. We have had a very bountiful harvest of our other tomatoes this yearāI think itās the best we have had in a long timeāeven with the hot and very dry summer. Our pepper plants have perked up and blooming like crazy now that the temperatures in WV have cooled down a bit and we have had some rainfall.
Tipper–It’s hard to beat a Cherokee Purple, but one variety you don’t mention well worth trying is Mr. Stripey. One problem with many heirloom tomatoes is that they do not set nearly as many fruits as some of the hybrid. I’ll take the taste over quantity every time though. Paul mentions Romas. They are nothing special fresh, but when it comes to sauce and to being prolific that’s another story. Which varieties do you dry? Romas dry well and the dried pieces are great in salads or reconstituted in soup.
Jim-Juliets are our favorite for drying š
Used to grow a hundred or more Roma’s for sauce. My wife is Italian and made GREAT spaghetti and pizza sauce; a GREAT harvest; REAL groceries! Now, I grew only 4 plants this year, and the best was the yellow “cherry” (I know no names) we’ve grown from the same seeds for probably 20 years or more. It was our favorite of the “cherry” tomatoes, so we just stuck with it. They are scrumptious! I eat a handful or so most every day right off the plant; washed by God. This year, for the first time I know of, there were two tomatoes on the same plant that produced what looked like 3 of them “stuck” together. But they are actually one tomato. So I saved both and will try to grow them next year to see what they produce.
And as a side note, my friend, Virgil, saved seeds from all his harvest and would pull them out of the freezer each Spring. I’ll never forget the first time I saw “Leather britches” printed on one of the zip lock bags of bean seeds. Blessings EVERYWHERE!
I only set out 6 plants this year, they were celebrity, early girl and a new one for me, a cross/hybrid between the Cherokee Purple and Carbon Black tomatoes. The name is Cherokee Carbon. I think it has a very good taste. Like some others said the heat really took a toll on my tomatoes even though I was watering them. Some how I received a a seed catalog through mail that had nothing but listings for tomato seed, there were probably hundreds of different varieties. I think the name of the catalog was āTomato Growers.ā I donāt have a greenhouse and have never had any luck trying to grow my own plants, they will sprout and come up and then stop growing after getting an inch or two high. In the past I have planted the red Brandywine and Hillbilly, along with some others. I love the Cherokee Purple, it was my deceased daughterās favorite, she would take them to work and some of her coworkers would bring bread and mayonnaise (Required to be Dukes) and have tomato sandwich lunches. I would grow some especially for her each year but can never grow or eat them now without thinking of her. Some of my friends have started growing the Mountain Pride tomato, if I am still around, I am going to try them next year.
My Great Grandfather Roscoe grew German stripped heirloom tomatoe at the farm and and some German Pink which came from Homeland in Germany for 160 years. I’ll send you some this fall from our Homeland
I had to smile with you about your wanting to plant every plant in the world. I certainly suspected it before. Hope you are keeping a garden journal or something so you can build on experience. I kept one for several years until I realized what I was doing was not useful later. It was just an account of what I did each gardening day. I was not doing any test plantings or anything like that. I think you could write your own gardening book. Just a compilation of BP&A gardening posts would be one. You and Matt have a wealth of experience that ranges widely so there would be something for everybody.
When you speak heirloom non GMO tomato-you speak my native tongue! I think your Randy Hopper tomato looks dandy indeed and softball size-you donāt say!!! Since I met the Cherokee purple, itās been my favorite tomato baby! I have some bigger than a softball and this year some due to their location crossed with RUSSIAN brown sugar tomatoes and you talk about tasty-itās incredible what GOD and the bumble bee come up with! Iām canning tomatoes again today and Iāve had a steady supply since around the end of July! I never tire of REAL tomato sandwiches or even grilled cheese and sliced tomato sandwiches. I can eat one with salt like an apple too! Iāve ate my heart content! When people ask for my produce, am I wrong for thinking they couldāve grown a garden as easy as me? Now Iām not talking about my 93 year old aunt, but Iām not coming off my tomatoes to a bunch of high falooters!!! One or two tops is all the clowns will getā¦ I know Iāve got literal hundreds but itās cost an arm and a leg to just keep stuff up and going!!! Oh well, yāall have a good one while I play outside emptying out spent plant pots and tidying up the garden (in city bounds) on a steady yet small scale! Next year if I live-Iām getting cattle panels to cover a planned green house and a trellis for my beans. Even without it, Iām not doing badā¦ I wonder how Iāll move it since I donāt have a flat bed tractor trailer. I canāt see it in my Toyota Tacomaā¦ lol ITS 48 F in Bluefield, WV this morning.
It was a rough year for tomatoes in west-central Virginia as well. I planted 18 Mortgage Lifters and 12 German Johnsons. The plants looked great and were setting tomatoes, and then the drought hit. All 18 of the Mortgage Lifters succumbed to blossom end rot even though I had added calcium to the soil over the winter and again at planting. The German Johnsons did some better, but it took them forever to set new fruit once the drought ended, and what they set wasn’t nearly as pretty as it had been. Nearly everyone I know has had problems; we’re even having trouble finding canning tomatoes up here.
The Cherokee Purple is hands down my favorite tomato. A produce stand in the local Mennonite community always has great tomatoes and recently they had some large tomatoes like the one you called a Randy Hooper. I tried one and it made some fine tomato sandwiches.
I tried Cherokee Purple this year, but they aren’t doing well. The plants took forever to grow and make anything. I’m still waiting for a couple tomatoes to turn. I will enjoy them and I will try again next year. We may have to get a greenhouse.