I’ve mentioned a few times in previous posts that I decided to try a new tomato variety this year, but that I’d withhold any judgement on it until I had ripe tomatoes. Well, it’s judgement time – but first a little background.

With the vast selection of tomato varieties available every year, the fact that I was trying one new variety really shouldn’t be that big of deal. What made it unique was that it was the first year this hybrid was available to the public – unlike the proven varieties that have been around for years, this plant had no track record.

If you received a Burpee seed catalog this spring, you couldn’t help but notice the huge tomato on the front cover. (And no, I’m not being paid by Burpee). Burpee had the entire cover dedicated to it’s new “SuperSauce” Hybrid. The write up was just as eye catching:

The world’s largest sauce tomato! It’s SuperSauce! The new tomato superhero. A whole lot bigger, a whole lot better, a roma with aroma. Weighing in at 2-lbs., a whopping 5.5” tall x 5” wide, SuperSauce produces gallons of luscious, seedless sauce from a single plant harvest—one tomato fills an entire sauce jar. Very few people in the gardening world consider a paste tomato for anything other than to make paste or sauce. SuperSauce is extraordinarily delicious and versatile as a salad tomato, as well as having a distinctive quality in that its large segments of fruit often make a shape that is perfect for a meaty and tasty hamburger slice, quite different from the horizontal slice commonly used from a large round tomato. Easy-to-grow, indeterminate, disease-free plants yield a summer long supply of the exquisitely-flavored marinara, tomato gravy or meat sauce plus plenty for slicing and salads.

I’ve grown enough tomatoes to dread working with tiny Roma tomatoes or large tomatoes that are all seeds and water. I decided to Google it. The tomato corner of the internet was abuzz with the plant – mostly how it couldn’t be possible. It had to be a GMO (genetically modified organism), Burpee was the devil, and Monsanto was to blame. These ‘mator farmers don’t hold back. In reality, the plant is a hybrid, not a GMO. Burpee doesn’t sell GMO seeds. (It would be nearly impossible to get GMO seeds for a backyard garden.) So, I bit. I purchased a pack of seeds and decided to see how things went before casting Burpee into the fires.

Here’s what I ended up with.

That tomato weighed 1 lb 4 oz. I had a few that were larger – one weighing just over a pound and a half – but this was typical of what I was picking. Just to give you an idea of how big that is…

The smaller tomato is a typical Celebrity variety. Then, there’s where the real difference comes in…

They weren’t seedless, but close enough. And almost completely solid. You can see the difference when compared to the sliced Celebrity on the right.

There were draw backs, too. Most of this could relate to the cool summer we had as they took forever to ripen and were prone to splitting. It might be a characteristic of the hybrid, but even when ripe they never developed a deep red color. The plants also blighted early. With the upcoming heat, these plants will be finished by Labor Day instead of producing until the first frost.

A tomato “superhero” as Burpee claims? I don’t think so. Still, it made a pretty good sauce over the weekend, so I think we’ll give it another shot next year.