My Tomato Picks for 2024, Part 1

These are the varieties I'll be growing next season

In my garden, tomatoes are king. They're my favorite child. They are what I yearn for during winter.

Fortunately, I am not alone in this, and there is a large community of highly-motivated weirdos dedicated to growing, breeding, and trading tomatoes for home cultivation. In keeping with my rule that amateur obsessives are the best source of critical information, I have spent countless hours perusing their forums, websites, and social media feeds in order to decide what to grow next year, along with my repeats from last year. The list is long, so I’m breaking this into two newsletters.

Without further ado, here are half of the varieties that will get precious space in my garden in 2024. Stay tuned for Part 2 next week.

Ananas Noire

An early ripening, high-yielding bearer of massive slicing tomatoes, with stunning psychedelic coloration. The flavor is described as sweet and smoky with a zing of citrus, receiving high marks from tomato geeks. Checks every box. You can get seeds here.

Sunrise Bumble Bee

A new open-pollinated  variety from the nouveau breeders at Artisan Seeds, Sunrise Bumble Bee is a striped bicolor cherry tomato that looks incredibly tempting. The flavor is described as “bright, sweet, and tropical,” which sounds right up my alley. There are two other cultivars in the "Bumble Bee" series--Purple and Pink--but they get lower marks for flavor among tomato nerds. You can get seeds here.

Berkeley Pink Tie Dye

A repeat winner for me, Berkeley Pink Tie Dye got my attention because of the claim that it was preferred in taste tests to Cherokee Purple, one of the all-time greats. It was bred by Brad Gates, the impresario behind Wild Boar Farms, one of the best and most avant-garde tomato breeders around. And for me, it lived up to expectations in both production and quality in 2023. A perfectly ripe Berkeley Pink Tie Dye is an elite-tier slicing tomato. You can get seeds here.