Looking for new "strange but good" heirloom tomatoes

If you have visited my blog in the past, you probably know that I am addicted to tomatoes. I'm sure my wife wishes that I could stop with that statement because she too loves tomatoes. Unfortunately for her, I also have an unusual fascination for wierd tomatoes - the stranger the better, as long as they still have great flavor.

Eating plain red tomatoes is a bit boring to me. I would rather my BLT look something like this:

or this:

The first picture featured Aunt Ruby's German Green tomatoes and they are fantastic! The second picture was a new heirloom variety that I tried last year called Kentucky Beefsteak. Since I live in Kentucky, I am particularly proud of it. It boasts tasty large orange fruits.

Of course my all time favorite unusual colored tomato is Black Krim. It isn't exactly black in color, but look at them in comparison to the red Roma tomatoes:

Another new unusual heirloom tomato from last year was Green Zebra:

It has great flavor and the markings make it very interesting to look at. I do wish it produced larger fruits though. Here it is plated with red Brandywine (the king of flavor) and Black Krim:

Not every wild and wacky variety that I try turns out to be great. This is why I think my wife gets aggravated with my obsession. For every variety that "makes the team" there are two or three that don't get invited back. Last season's disappointments included the White Tomatoes. How cool is a white tomato? Unfortunately when you take all the pigment out of a tomato, some of the tomato flavor goes with it. They do look cool though:

The above picture is Great White and the below picture is White Tomesol:

Actually, to be fair, the flavor is still good but pretty different. I may still grow some this year, even if for no other reason than the novelty of it.

So this year I am perusing the seed catalogs and seed company website in search of more "strange but good" heirloom tomatoes. My keeper list from years past include Brandywine, Black Krim, Orange Blossom, Ky Beefsteak, Aunt Ruby's German Green, Kellogg's Breakfast and possibly White Tomelsol. A clear winner in the Pink Tomato varieties have yet to surface.

So help me out - am I missing out on a truly great heirloom tomato variety? What is your favorite? Least Favorite? What should I be looking for for my new rookie sensation this year? I'm a bit worried. I have successfully found worthy varieties to join the rooster each year, but I'm not sure about this year.

I'd like to hear your thoughts. Doesn't this make you crave a garden fresh BLT?

Today is one of my favorite days in the garden season!

I would have to say that my favorite day in the garden is the first ripe tomato of the season. My second favorite day just might be today - the day the new Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds Catalog arrives!

As I stated last year, Baker Creek is my favorite seed company AND my favorite catalog. This year's catalog is even bigger than last year! It is full of rare and unique heirloom seeds. There are detailed descriptions and loads of beautiful color pictures!

You definitely know what you are getting when you order from them. I never get the feeling that they are hiding anything or are trying to make their varieties sound better than they really are. Everything that I have grown from them has done well and has grown just as they describe. Their 2 foot long Chinese Red Noodle Beans were amazing. Baker Creek helped me grow many colors of heirloom tomatoes - red, yellow, orange, green, black and white. This was fun to do in the full size tomatoes as well as with the cherry tomatoes.

If you are not yet familiar with Baker Creek, you really should visit their website. They are located in Missouri but have collected heirloom seeds from around the world. The owners of the company are Gere and Emily Gettle and they are great people. Here they are pictured in the front of the catalog with their daughter Sasha:

I was lucky enough to meet them because another cool thing about them is that they host many garden festivals at their site. They have built a whole little town called Bakersville to host these occasions. My family and I drove about 12 hours just to attend the Spring Planting Festival earlier this year and we had a wonderful time. I posted about our trip when we returned home. In that post, I put on a record 30 pictures of the Baker Creek Festival! You can see that post here.

I would love to go again this year - maybe to their end of summer harvest festival!

Well, I better end this post so I can start looking at this new Baker Creek Catalog! How will I decide what to buy? I think the size of the garden will have to be doubled again this year!

I can already tell that I'm going to like this year's edition even better than the previous years because their are several pictures of little Sasha with the veggies.

How cute - and have you ever seen such big cabbage heads?