The 10 Best Tomatoes to Grow

There are hundreds if not thousands of tomato varieties available to grow. When presented with so many tomatoes and only a small garden, what should you choose? Let’s talk about the 10 best tomatoes to grow!

Any “best of the best” list is going to have bias and personal opinion. What I offer is my personal experience of nearly 20 years of growing tomatoes and testing. Additionally, I polled other home growers and taste testers to create an ultimate list. 

This post contains affiliate links. Here is the full disclosure.

When growing a tomato, there are many considerations like disease resistance, hybrid or open-pollination, usage, texture, yield, and flavor. Below you’ll find the 10 best tomatoes to grow with notes of why they are the best!

1. Cherokee Purple

If you want a great fresh eating tomato for snacking or sandwiches and love an intense, deep flavor Cherokee Purple will not disappoint you!

Cherokee purple has one downfall – it’s doesn’t produce very many tomatoes on each plant. However, it makes up for it’s lack in that area with flavor. I grow Cherokee Purple every single year in my garden and will not go without it!

• Flavor: Rich, sweet but not too sweet, depth of flavor
• Seed category: Heirloom
• Usage: Slicer for fresh eating
• Texture: Smooth and not gritty
• Pros: Flavor, quality, and texture is excellent.
• Cons: Not as productive, less fruit per plant

2. Sungold

Sungold is a great option for kids and those who don’t like tomatoes that much. At peak maturity it gets so sweet (for a tomato at least). It’s a hybrid tomato you’ll need to buy a new batch of seeds each year to get the same fruits. 

• Flavor: Very sweet for a tomato- almost like candy and complex
• Seed category: Hybrid
• Usage: Cherry Tomato
• Texture: Smooth and seedy
• Pros: Super sweet and delicious
• Cons: Can split easily and you need to purchase new seeds each year because you can’t save them from the plant.

3.  Black Cherry

I personally think of a Black Cherry tomato as a mini version of the Cherokee Purple tomato. It has the same richness and depth of flavor but the pop and seediness of a cherry tomato that is expected.

Oftentimes with cherry tomatoes, you’ll get a skin that is thick and very present. Black cherry tomatoes have a much better textural balance between the skin and the tomato flesh inside.

• Flavor: Rich, sweet but not too sweet, depth of flavor
• Seed category: Open pollination
• Usage: Cherry Tomato
• Texture: Smooth and not gritty
• Pros: Rich, intense flavor. Holds on the vine a long time. Resists cracking.
• Cons: None

4. Sunrise Bumblebee

Sunrise bumblebee is a more mellow and sweet tomato. Some (like my husband, Cam) think this is the ultimate cherry tomato. He loves that type of flavor profile for a tomato. 

As an aside, when we got married Cam hated fresh tomatoes but slowly started to like them more over the years. So for him to go outside and eat sunrise bumblebee tomatoes like a snack, it’s a big deal! 

This cherry tomato is mostly yellow with streaks of pink. 

• Flavor: Mellow and sweet
• Seed category: Open pollination
• Usage: Cherry Tomato
• Texture: Smooth
• Pros: Easy to grow and seeds can be saved.
• Cons: Splits easily with rain.

5. Roma

I’ve tried at least 10 different varieties of paste tomatoes but I just keep coming back to Roma. While San Marzano is appreciated for its flavor, and amish paste is noted for its size, Roma is reliable and prolific. 

For a paste tomato, the goal is to cook it into sauces, soups, and more. Therefore, reliability and yield come first in this choice, flavor and texture come second. The flavor difference in a paste tomato is subtle and after cooking practically imperceptible unless you are a connoisseur of tomatoes.

 I grow Roma with success year after year to feed our family of seven. It definitely deserves a place in the 10 best tomatoes to grow list.

• Flavor: Robust after cooking
• Seed category: Heirloom
• Usage: Paste
• Texture: Grainy
• Pros: Prolific, disease and bug resistant. Low amount of water content which is great for turning it into sauce or drying.
• Cons: Flavor is not as good as other paste tomatoes.

6. Kelloggs Breakfast

Like most yellow tomatoes, the flavor of Kelloggs Breakfast is more sweet than acid. It has a similar texture to other heirloom tomatoes like Brandywine and Cherokee Purple.

During peak growing season Kelloggs Breakfast tomatoes can grow over 1lb fruits. Our personal experience has been that they are produce more tomatoes than most of the heirloom beefsteak types. They also are more disease resistant.

• Flavor: Fantastic sweetness
• Seed category: Heirloom
• Usage: Fresh eating, slicer
• Texture: Smooth and juicy
• Pros: Disease resistant, good flavor, and you can the save seeds
• Cons: Due to it’s large size, it takes more time to ripen

7. Eva Purple Ball

Eva purple ball is a fairly recent addition to our top ten tomatoes list. I was wowed by this tomato the first year I grew it. 

It combines disease resistance, high yield, and good flavor in an heirloom variety. Southern Exposure seed exchange also raves about it in their description: 

Outstanding performer in hot, humid areas. Excellent resistance to diseases, including some resistance to late blight. One of the most blemish-free tomatoes we have grown, with a soft tender texture.

This is a must grow if you struggle with heavy disease pressure.

• Flavor: Sweet with a touch of depth
• Seed category: Heirloom
• Usage: Fresh eating
• Texture: Smooth and tender
• Pros: Prolific, disease resistant, good for high heat and humidity areas.
• Cons: Flavor doesn’t isn’t quite as good as a cherokee purple or brandywine but the other qualities make up for it.

8. Brandywine

Brandywine is well known and loved because of it’s perfect balance between sweet and tart in a tomato. It’s juicy and amazing even plain with a little bit of salt! We love this tomato for BLT’s and tomato sandwiches.

• Flavor: Perfectly balanced between sugars and acids
• Seed category: Heirloom
• Usage: Fresh eating, slicer
• Texture: Smooth and tender, juicy
• Pros: Taste is incredible
• Cons: Doesn’t produce very many tomatoes per plant, can be kind of ugly (see photo, haha!), and is not very disease resistant.

If you’re looking for a more productive version of Brandywine, I recommend trying German Johnson. It’s a little bit smaller but still captures the essence of Brandywine’s delicious balanced flavor.

9.  Green Giant

Full disclosure: I haven’t grown this tomato before! It’s on my list to grow for 2025!

Green Giant was recommended to me recently by a friend and I also saw it in Craig LeHoullier’s book Epic Tomatoes as one of the “ten tastiest”.

Baker Creek describes it as “The most productive and best tasting tomato in our trials! Large emerald-green fruit is over one pound in weight, uniform, very smooth and blemish-free. Color stays pure green even when dead ripe!”

It’s described as being similar in taste and texture to brandywine. Brandywine is a real winner for both of those categories so it must be good!

• Flavor: Balanced
• Seed category: Open Pollination
• Usage: Fresh Eating, slicer
• Texture: Smooth
• Pros: Large and delicious
• Cons: Stays green when dead ripe, so it makes it hard to know when it’s ready- depending on how you look at it, this could also be a benefit

10. Peacevine Cherry

This cherry tomato is a beauty and produces tons of tomatoes! It’s our top pick for a red cherry tomato.

High Mowing Seeds describes Peacevine Cherry as “A de-hybridized selection of Sweet 100, known for its incredible flavor and resistance to cracking. Produces impressive numbers of uniform bright crimson 1″ tomatoes. Very high in Vitamin C and amino acids.”

• Flavor: Sweet
• Seed category: Open Pollination
• Usage: Cherry
• Texture: Smooth and tender
• Pros: Resists cracking, sweet flavor
• Cons: Skin is a bit tough

Conclusion

This list of the 10 best tomatoes is hopefully helpful in narrowing down your search for what tomatoes to grow! Here’s a recap:

Other helpful information about tomatoes can be found in these posts: Best Tomato Companion Plants and The Best Fertilizer for Tomato Plants.

P.S. Am I missing any of your favorites? I’d love to hear about them in the comments!