I know this is a very late reply to your 3/24 post, but I never saw Arkansas Traveller or Red Calabash mentioned, both of which turned out pretty zingy for me. (I like tart tomatoes.) I think I noticed Cherokee Purple mentioned, and I'd second that--very flavorful. Also flavorful, though not really acidic, is Garden Peach--and it was my only sturdy little vine that survived a hurricane in Memphis! (Folks here are now calling it Hurricane Elvis.)
Amish paste tomato is the Heirloom variety I choose when I want to do some canning. Then the hybrids Roma, which is fairly standard, and Marzano, are my top picks. Marzano has got attractive orange stripes.
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The best canning/paste tomato I have found is the Opalka. It's a lot meatier than Roma and San Marzano, and totally flavorful. I don't know where you can get the seeds, commercially speaking, but I do know that they are available through a number of companies. I have some myself, if you are interested go to Seeds swap for more info. And I'd like to quote C. Male (author of "100 Heirloom tomatoes for the American garden") on the subject: "What distinguishes this (Opalka) variety from others is taste. Most paste tomatoes [...] just don't have good taste. Opalka is the exception, and the sweet, refreshing flavor is so good it can be eaten fresh off the vine".
Hello all, I like my big t's to have some bite and right out of the garden. I love the sweet millions, they are like eating candy, as long as I have the bite from the big t's I'll be in paradise. When the cherries are on, everyone stops by my work area and snags a hand full. I had one of my cherry t's grow to 8 ft last year by planting it on a compost pile, Take care, Clarence.
I've grown paste tomates and ate them fresh and they were really good. There were afew that would fall early but still riped really well and tasted wonderful. I Had bought the plant, it gave me lots of tomatoes. I don't remember the what tyoe of roma it was.
To buttercup69: I had a plant like that too, quite tasty but with the "tomato falling" problem. Mine was a San Marzano, and I guess it had been bred with that trait for commericial purposes, so it would make it easier for people (seasonal workers) to pick the tomatoes at harvest time. That's the only explaination I could come up with!
