2007 Tomato -- Jeff Davis

My favorite tomato plant of 2007. Not my favorite tomato, but it was up there. My favorite plant.

I picked this up at Tomatomania as an afterthought. Based on the name I assumed someone simply named a new strain after themselves (Wrong – it's named after our only confederate president). It has leaves that look like fronds.

The plant looked dramatic as it grew strong, tall and seemingly proud. You could see the tomatoes would be good sized (but not too big), firm and juicy.

The only downside was that all the tomatoes were growing and ripening at once. If I didn't secure it, the cage would definitely collapse! We used a metal stake and some twine to keep it from falling over.

At one point I estimated that there was 70 pounds of tomatoes on this plant. Now of course I could be wrong, but even if it was 50, that's a lot for one plant. The big leaves helped protect the growing tomatoes in the hot summer.

The plant was great, the tomatoes felt and looked great. I was slightly disappointed that the tomato was merely very good and not fantastic.

For the most part the harvest came in all at once, so we were inundated with one pound (sometimes a pound and a half) Jeff Davis tomatoes. Most were brought down to sauces and frozen.