My Favorite Tomato Varieties
29. May 2026Most tomato gardeners have a few favorite varieties they plant every year. But as we all know, it’s always fun to shop for new tomatoes to try! While my garden is small, I like to cram in at least three new varieties each season. But I always leave plenty of space for my most cherished tomatoes. These are the tried and true plants that have almost never failed me. Below are some of my most-loved tomato varieties.
Black Krim Tomato
Black Krim is hands down my all-time favorite heirloom tomato! This plant is prolific and usually loaded with fruit. If you’re nervous about planting black tomatoes, don’t be. First off, Krim doesn’t look nearly as black as Black Beauty or other purple varieties. It’s a darker red with hints of green. This variety holds up well in wet weather. It can get some minor scarring, but I’ve never had large cracks even when it’s super wet out. The scarring tends to be concentric circles going around the top portion of the fruit. It’s actually quite pretty, and some scars have a whimsical design. The scars on my Krims have never been very deep. So I often won’t even pare them out when slicing for sandwiches.
Black Krim doesn’t seem to cat face as much as other varieties. But when it does cat face, boy howdy is it EPIC. Do you all see ZIGGY in the pic on the left? If I do, I’m sure someone else out there does too!!
Wisconsin 55 Tomato
My Wisconsin tomatoes were destroyed by pests last year and this is the only photo I even took of it because it was too heartbreaking to document it!!
Wisconsin 55 is a big old flavorful 6-8 oz slicer variety. The backstory from Johnny’s says this variety is a resurrection of the classic strain. While there are a few strains of Wisconsin 55 available, their quality has degraded over time. Johnny’s variety is supposed to be a healthier plant with more consistent size and fewer fruit defects than other Wisconsin 55 strains. This strain was acquired from a plant geneticist from the University of Wisconsin who had frozen seeds purchased in the 1960’s! Wow! It’s an indeterminate variety.
Wisconsin produces a hefty amount of tennis ball sized fruit. They are great sliced on egg sammies. The skin is thinner, so roasting them to remove the skins produces crushed tomatoes, ha! Other varieties hold up better to roasting for sure. It also seems to have a good shelf life. Due to our prolific squirrel infestation, I sometimes harvest tomatoes early before they ripen. Wisconsin can be on my counter for two weeks and not get any bad spots. Impressive!
Celebrity Tomato
Celebrity tomato is a highly prolific producer! The fruits are medium to large and all perfectly shaped. Johnny’s variety has been bred for a very high disease resistance. There is almost no cracking on this tomato when I have planted it. This is a vigorous determinant variety, so it’s nice to not have a giant sprawling plant for once as well.
Striped German Tomato
Striped German is a yellow orange variety. The flesh has a pretty marbled look with red, orange, and yellow hues. This heirloom produces some pretty massive tomatoes. I’ve found my plants yield less overall tomatoes though. But if you’re looking for a great heirloom slider, this is a superb choice. There are some cracks and blemishes, but the insides are meaty with a good taste. Striped German is a classic heirloom to try if you want a non-red mater.
Mushroom Basket Tomato
Mushroom Basket is a really neat pleated tomato. It produces tons of fruit that are very large in size. Some of my plants have had giant clusters of fruit resulting in some getting crushed under the weight. This is why pruning (aka “suckering”) tomatoes is sometimes recommended. Sure, you’ll get less tomatoes if you remove stems that can produce fruit. But if those tomatoes grow in elbow regions, it can be problematic. They can get crushed and cracked as they grow in nooks and crannies. This also makes harvesting them difficult. I’m totally lazy when it comes to pruning tomato plants though. I like unruly and rambling greenery taking over my garden.
The above photo is a great example of a Mushroom Basket plant that I should have pruned or removed a few fruit from. The end result was that all of the tomatoes grew together tightly. The weight crushed one of them, but it was almost impossible to pull them all apart when harvesting. So this is definitely a variety that I would recommend pruning a bit.
There are other pleated tomato varieties on the market. One “downside” for this style is the extra effort needed to skin them. Usually a quick blanch in boiling water followed by a dunk in ice water makes peeling tomatoes super fast. You just pinch the skin and it peels right off. But with pleated tomatoes, you have to pull the skin around all the wavy edges. So it takes longer to peel than round fruit.
One year I grew a really fun triangle-shaped Mushroom Basket tomato. It reminded me of the first GMO tomato called "Flavor Savr.” And no I didn't spell that wrong or make it up. Flavor Savr was designed to ripen on the vines unlike other factory farmed tomatoes that are picked green so they are easier to ship. Green tomatoes are then ripened with ethylene gas. Flavor Savr was tougher and could be stacked since it had a flatter bottom. Did you know there were tomatoes bred to be square in the 50s so they were easier to harvest and ship? Anyway, Flavor Savr wasn't designed for better taste or nutrition, it was all about the industrial food system doing what it does. And can you believe that it had good publicity? Tom Brokaw said on nightly news that it stayed ripe longer and was tastier. FAKE NEWS!!! Apparently it had an awful taste, gasp, I'm shocked. AND it wasn't very square either. I read about Flavor Savr in a great book called Food Fight, GMOs & the Future of the American Diet. It's a fair and balanced book that covers the pros and cons of GMOs. Check it out!
Dark Galaxy Tomato
Dark Galaxy tomatoes are stunning! It may be "The World's Sexiest Tomato.” The tomatoes start out black and green, then turn red with orange splotches once ripened. How neat-o is that? This plant produces smaller tomatoes, but there are a decent amount of them. I’m often duped into buying varieties claiming to have huge tomatoes. In my experience, that means the fewer tomatoes on a plant, the more likely I’ll get none of them due to my backyard squirrels. I’d rather have a tomato produce more smaller tomatoes than fewer big ones. This tomato is good for slicing and roasting. End-of-season green tomatoes work well for pickling too.
Juliet Tomato
Juliet is one of my all-time favorite tomatoes! I have planted Juliet for several years now. It is a highly sought after hybrid variety because it is so disease resistant. The plants are also loaded with fruit. Juliet can get 12-18 tomatoes per cluster, wow! Every season this plant is incredibly prolific in my garden. So there are often plenty of tomatoes left after squirrels have their fill of them. Sometimes I’m actually overrun by the tomatoes. How overrun? Well, don’t even think of harvesting them in your scooped up t-shirt. Forgetaboutit! Every time I harvest, I come in with a 2 gallon bucket filled up. And that is just from a few plants. Every few days. For the entire season. Even into the fall I still have a massive amount left on the plants.
The end of the season yields tons of green tomatoes that eventually ripen weeks later. The shelf life is LONG! I’ve had some on my counter for over a month that do not get bad spots. Juliet is also great for pickling whole or quartered. I experience NO cracking with this variety either.
Juliet tomatoes are also really easy to pick. When ripe, you can just touch them and they will fall off into your hand. So they are very easy to pick with one hand. They also have a long shelf life (several weeks & I’ve had some last a few months even).
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Juliet and other paste and grape tomatoes work well in our Bruschetta in a Jar canning recipe. These varieties hold up well for canning. This Bruschetta recipe is easy to make with handfuls of leftover, end-of-season garden tomatoes too. If Bruschetta isn’t your thing, perhaps our lovely red wine vinegar tomato jam will tickle your taste buds?
Verona Tomato
Verona is a similar variety to Juliet. It’s a larger, more flavorful plum tomato variety. Verona is an indeterminate plant and also has some resistance to Early Blight, Fusarium Wilt races 1, and Verticillium Wilt. But how does it match up to my favorite Juliet? Well, the fruit is larger, but there aren’t as many on the plants as Juliet. They also seem to ripen much slower than Juliet. But overall, it is a fairly decent tomato.
Juliet and Verona are both great varieties to roast. Slice in half or roast whole with the skins on. It’s easy to pinch the skins off after they cool down. Save the skins to dry for tomato powder. Alternatively, you can roast with the skins on, then use an immersion blender to make skillet sauce. You can also remove the skins with a food strainer (then save the skins to make tomato and seeds for tomato powder too).
So why on earth would you save all the tomato skin? Well, waste not, want not for starters! While the skins are often tossed out, they are great to dehydrate and grind up for tomato powder. You would be surprised how much powder you can get in a season’s worth of ‘maters. Last season I got 1.5 quarts of tomato powder. I saved the skins for each canning project, then dehydrated along the way. It doesn’t take long to dry thin skins in a dehydrator. And you can even dry and grind up the seed and pulp too. Of course if you have an abundance of tomatoes, you can also slice whole tomatoes to dry instead of just the “scraps”. Once dry, I use a mini food processor to chop up the skins. Then I put them in my coffee and spice grinder to turn into a powder. If you have a high-powered processor, lucky you, you can powder those skins faster than me!
I use the powder to thicken sauces and add an extra tomato zing to side dishes. It’s also great added to various spice mixes and salad dressings. And you know those irritating cooking recipes that call for 1 tablespoon of tomato paste? Now I can just reconstitute some powder to make a small amount of tomato paste. That means no partially filled tomato paste cans in my fridge or freezer. Woot!
Blush Tomato
Blush is a yellow-red marbled Artisan grape tomato. It has a fruity taste that makes it great for snacking. It’s an indeterminate variety that’s prolific like other vining grape tomato plants. The skin on this variety is fairly thin though. So I’ve found it’s prone to cracking if not picked a little early. Since the skin is so thin, they work really well roasted and made into skillet sauces pureed with an immersion blender. If you like to blanch your tomatoes to remove your skins, this is not the variety for you. Since the skins are so thin, it’s hard to remove them without getting a lot of flesh off too.
Brad's Atomic Grape Tomato
Brad’s Atomic Grape tomatoes have very mixed reviews online. You either love this variety or hate it. My plants get loaded, but it’s hard to tell when they are ripe because they are always so firm. You’ll know they are too ripe because they will split. The skins are thick so I have never felt like they are the best for eating fresh. So why is this tomato on my list of favorites?? Well, it’s super cool looking for sure! They start off black and green before morphing into an iridescent array of cosmic colors. I’m not one for planting “novelty” tomatoes though. What’s the point of having a pretty tomato if it doesn’t actually taste great? I’ve found this tomato is awesome for pickling. In the past, I’ve planted this grape tomato for the sole purpose of pickling them while green.
Sungold Cherry Tomato
Sungold Cherry is a tremendously prolific orangish cherry tomato. It’s a favorite amongst gardeners. I have planted this hybrid variety for many seasons now. It is always a star performer in my garden. While it yields a hefty amount of fruit like many cherry varieties, the TASTE is the sweetest I’ve ever had. It’s an indeterminate vining plant, so be prepared for it to take over your garden! Plan your trellis and supports carefully, ha! Otherwise you will end up with a “Tomato Monster” taking over your garden. This is a hybrid plant, so don’t expect to save seeds and produce the same thing in future gardens.
Sunrise Sauce Tomato
Sunrise Sauce is described as being a “low maintenance” orange roma tomato. This determinate plant grows fairly compact with large clusters of 4-6 oz tomatoes. The reason I wanted to try this variety was because fruit produces during a concentrated period. I thought that would work well for my summer canning. In my experience, nearly all of the tomatoes ripen within the same week. I harvested around 60 tomatoes from just a few plants early last season. And then that was it. And when I say that was it, the plants were pretty much done. No more blossoms. No more fruit. Wow. But this is a good variety to plant if you wanted to do succession planting. Just rip those finished tomatoes out early and plant another crop.
My husband and I thought these tasted like “hot house” style tomatoes. The skin is really thick. So while I wouldn’t recommend this variety for eating fresh, it does work well for sauce, hence the name Sunrise Sauce! The fruit is semi hollow and easy to seed (there isn’t much pulp or seed inside).
Here is a comparison photo showing Juliet, Verona, and Sunrise Sauce tomatoes. Despite the smaller size, Juliet offers the most bang for your buck since it’s so prolific. But Sunrise Sauce yields a ton of tomatoes in a very short period of time.
Be sure to read our other blog posts on tomatoes to increase your yield in the garden (and the kitchen).
Grow Prolific Tomatoes Using Japanese Rings Staking Method
Banana Peel Fertilizers for the Garden (great for tomatoes)
How to Save Tomato Seeds
Read all of our Tomato Blog Posts
Try one of our Tomato Canning Recipes!
Enchilada Sauce canning recipe
Bruschetta in a Jar canning recipe
Red Wine Vinegar Tomato Jam canning recipe
Tomato Canning Recipes
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What are YOUR favorite tomatoes to plant? Do you plant these same varieties every year? Let us know in the comments below.
