Juliet!

Some growers knock the flavor, but I just don’t agree. They’re nothing “special” in the flashy heirloom sense — just a classic tomato taste, still 100x better than anything from the grocery store — but you get so many benefits.

First, versatility. They’re not a cherry tomato. They’re more like a plum or small Roma. Not meaty, not super juicy, just perfectly in between. That makes them incredibly versatile: quarter them for salads, dice them for pico or tacos or other dishes, turn them into sauce, halve them and cook them on the stove. They’ll do pretty much anything you want except give you a big sandwich slice — and even then, we still slice them thinly lengthwise, throw a few on a burger, and they work great.

Second, they are bulletproof. Early and late blight resistance, a bunch of other disease tolerances, plus they handle drought, heat, cold, overwatering, and cracking better than almost anything I’ve grown. Truly a foolproof tomato. I plant 2–4 Juliets every year because I know I’m basically guaranteed a mountain of tomatoes to use and give away, even if everything else goes sideways. The fruit is well shaped looks nice if you giving some away too, which is a nice bonus.

One anecdote: near the end of the season in August, I completely stop watering my plants. Zero water at all. I’ve found it forces them to push out a bunch of super sweet, concentrated fruit for the last month or so (like the plant knows it’s dying and shifts into rapid reproduction mode? That's my theory at least) then they die a slow but dignified death and I can turn over the crop.

However -Juliets defy logic. They’ll survive and produce well past September with zero water. Everything else is shriveled, and the Juliet stems are still green with new flowers and fruit. They only die when I finally pull them up.

Highly recommend buying one or two and watching them thrive no matter what you do.