BetNC -- was Early Girl shorter than 3 feet for you? I haven't grown it for several years now, but it was always at least 4-5' tall in my garden. (If you were growing it in a pot, maybe that was the difference?) At any rate, I was never all that impressed with it for flavor or even earliness.

My Early Girls always grow way taller than 3 feet. Last year I tried Bush Early Girl instead. Those did stay short at about 3 feet or so. But I hated them. Tasteless hard cardboad tomatoes. So back to Early Girl this year.

Yes, I was growing Early Girl in a pot. Bout 1st week of July, it already had a red, ripening tomato...and the plant was about 2.5 feet tall, with those rigid leaves I had to carefully bend up an inch or so, just to SEE the lone fruit. The fruit's size didn't impress me either - about 2-3 inches across.

That year, I had too many tomato pots for my patio that got 6-8 hrs of sun; I had to cull my "herd" by two. Early Girl was one and a tall (already well over 3 ft) was the other. (That Abraham Lincoln just grew and grew and grew some more, with scads of foliage. . . I had already started harvesting from some of my other plants, so my two choices were fairly obvious.)

That was the year of trying the Fourth of July, which I came to admire!
8-23-15,my Tomato Jungle (Fourth of July in grey patio container)

A proposal for a Tomato Datasheet

As an aid to choosing which tomatoes to grow this year, I mocked up an Excel datasheet containing abbreviated descriptions of the color, shape, size, season, growth type, parents, height, leaf type, yield, taste, origin and disease resistance of (so far) 500 varieties culled from reference books and web sites. So far it seems helpful, but I need your advice as to whether an expanded version would be uof use to the gardening community.

If you have a copy of Microsoft Excel and would be willing to let me know your opinion on this beta-test version, please send me a D-message with your email address and I will send you a copy of the Excel datasheet plus a Word file suggesting how to use it.

I have to go thru my tomato seeds to see what I still need to order. For sure I need either Sunsugar or Sungold. Maybe both. Those are such great cherry tomatoes that I just do not want to not plant them.

Has anyone ever grown "Health Kick" ? I'm not entirely sure whether this is an OP or hybrid variety... at any rate, I ordered seeds for it because I was looking for a determinate type that I could grow in my hoop house and use for salsa, sauce, etc. Of course, I didn't check the Plant Database before ordering, but now I see there's a comment that it is quite tasteless. Wondering if anyone else has an opinion about that, and if anyone knows if it's a hybrid, an OP type, or maybe there are 2 different strains, one OP and one hybrid?

Don't know anything about it, sorry.

Health Kick is a hybrid determinate. Most call it a saladette . Small plum shaped. Main claim to fame is a high lycopene content (supposedly 50 % more than standard tomatoes) It also has disease resistance including TSWV.
This review is interesting: http://www.thisgardenisillegal...

Sandy:
      There are some comments by growers if you scroll down to the bottom of this site:

Thank you, Dillard and Don! It seems to have mixed reviews so I guess I'll just grow it and see for myself; I'd be using it basically for sauce and salsa at any rate, so couldn't do too much harm mixed with the other types.

Has anyone tried Burpee's Supersauce?

Maybe I should just stick with San Marzano Retorta as those were excellent.

My seed orders are starting to arrive, and looking at those tiny seeds got me itching for a real tomato. So when I went to the grocery today, I saw this package of 3 Tasti-Lee "Vine Ripened" tomatoes, bought it, and sliced one in a mixed salad for supper. I've seen their web site, and thought that if it was developed at U. Fla. it had a fighting chance of living up to the hype.

Unfortunately not. The flavor was not sweet, not tart, just sorta bland. At least slathering salad dressing on it helped a bit. This is not a tomato to eat by itself. Best I can say is that it is about as good as any other tomato on the supermarket shelf. I see a few vendors are offering seed, but that's one variety I won't be tempted to get.

I hope Harry Klee's efforts (also at U.Fla., but a different branch) to produce a tasty commercial tomato meet with better success.

Have not grown tasty -Lee but many commercial tomatoes are quite good when vine ripened and heirlooms picked green and gassed can be quite tasteless. The major problem is that commercial tomatoes have to look good after transporting across continents sitting in warehouse for days and produce counters for weeks. Time from vine to table is the biggest problem. Even "vine' ripened tomatoes in the supermarket are harvested green. A piece of the vine is left attached to satisfy truth in advertising.

It is humorous that after breeding for travel etc.---they are now going back to breed for taste!

Breeding for travel is essential, no other way to get them to distant markets with minimum loss. The current effort is to develop a tomato that can be picked green, washed and packed, shipped thousands of miles, gassed to develop color and then shipped to distributors, who send them to grocers and still have some taste.

So I get a new Burpee Catalog in the mail today and right on the cover is a lively picture of their new paste type tomato named Gladiator. Looks big and tasty but of course who knows?

So -- are you ordering seeds for it, Rita?

Weedwhacker said:So -- are you ordering seeds for it, Rita?

If I get one of those free shipping codes or a free shipping weekend from Burpee I will probably order. If I have to pay shipping then I will not order.

I don't actually need any more tomato seeds but that doesn't mean I don't want any!!

In the past I have also had tomato plants from Burpee that I liked which were both Portorhouse Hybrid and Steakhouse hybrid. But only would want to grow one plant of each so being too cheap to order those seeds!!

Plus I have looked at others.

This is a dangerous time of year... especially for those of us that can't do much (if anything) in the way of gardening and all those seed catalogs tempting us to buy more seeds!

Those color catalogs make it all so temping!!