determinate or indeterminate

[LostGardener]

Hi;

Simple question for a zone 5 person....which variety should I grow? One benefit over the other?

Do the determinate still produce fruit even after hitting their full height?

Just getting started in this and after having some of my neighbors tomatoes I gotta grow some of my own! Had planned on those, some peppers both sweet and hot, some cucumbers, and watermelon.

Figure that should get things rolling for me but I'm at a loss with all the choices, I figure if I can narrow down between determinate and indeterminate then I at least eliminated some of them!

thank you!!!!!

 

[bid]

Hi LostGardener and

I grow both and I think most people do. My canning tomatoes are mostly determinate and table tomatoes are mostly indeterminate. But that's just me. There are some real tomatoe experts on here that I am sure will weigh in with their opinions. Best advice is to try a few different varieties every year and keep the ones you like and maybe not the one you don't care for as much- flavor, production, that type of thing.

Determinates will continue to produce after that initial flush of fruits.

 

[hoodat]

What you want to do with your tomatoes has a lot to do with it. Determinate make all of their fruit at one time, whereas indeterminate make less fruit at any one time but keep producing throughout the season. If you do a lot of canning you want all of your fruit at one time so you can do it all and be done. If you want tomatoes for the table indeterminate is probably a better choice.

 

[journey11]

Depends on what you want to use your tomatoes for. Unless you like to can--if you are just growing a small garden, you might want to go with indeterminates to grow a few tomatoes for the dinner table throughout the season. Even with the determinates I grow for canning, I still need at least a dozen or more plants to have enough worth a day's canning. You'll find more variety in the indeterminate category too, lots of colors, shapes, sizes and flavors. You can can indeterminates if you have enough of them (or are willing to keep freezing them as they come on until you have enough to bother with.) They are not usually your paste-type tomatoes though. But you can also use paste-type tomatoes for roasting and cooking...so maybe you'll want a couple of those around too. Welcome to the wide and wonderful world of tomatoes! The possibilities are countless, sorta like the stars.

ETA: and !