If there was ever a controversial heirloom tomato, this must be it. It’s probably the first heirloom tomato I ever grew, and I really like it. If you look around on the Internet, you will see all range of comments on this tomato with most of them taking a very ambivalent stand. As well as being called Taxi, it’s sometimes called Yellow Taxi. It has quite a striking yellow color. It’s an early determinate variety.
I got the seeds for this tomato from Seeds Trust about 5 years ago. Since then I’ve saved several generations of my own seeds. At the time Seeds Trust were the only source for this tomato on the Internet. Bill McDorman, the person who started Seeds Trust, is a reader of this blog and occasionally leaves comments.
I have my own personal story that goes along with this tomato. In the late ’90s we were in Chicago, and decided to have dinner at Charlie Trotter’s restaurant. At the time it was considered to be one of the best restaurants in the US, and on top of that had a menu suitable for vegetarians which is very rare in this class of restaurant. It was so popular at the time we had to make reservations six months in advance, and men had to show up in a suit and tie. This isn’t our usual class of restaurant, so we were quite excited.
The theme of our vegetarian dinner was heirloom tomatoes!
We had never heard of heirloom tomatoes before, and at the time they were quite a novelty. Dinner took nearly 3 hours, where they brought us course after course of plates with tiny servings of dishes that all had heirloom tomatoes in them. I think it was about 15 courses, concluding with heirloom tomato ice cream for desert. It was really a wonderful experience, and the presentation of the meal was also excellent.
The tomato held out as the most special and most prominently featured on the menu was Yellow Taxi. It was really delicious.
Even now from time to time I see Taxi featured in seed collections of well known seed savers or heirloom plant collectors, but it doesn’t really seem to be a mainstream heirloom tomato because few seed companies seem to carry it.
I can’t honestly say it’s my absolute favorite, because there are quite a few other really excellent tomatoes around, but it remains one of my favorites nonetheless. It’s certainly the tomato that inspired me to start growing my own heirloom tomatoes.
I like your story!
I don’t know if this tomato is tasty but it’s beautiful. I will be happy If I can grow a plant
I’ve never tried this one. I do grow Creole tomatoes. It is a favorite one on the Coast. People have grown them here for generations. One of the reason is the high acid taste. You know you are eating a vine grown tomato when you taste it. It is also the best tomato for green fried tomatoes which is a Southern favorite.
It does have a lot of pest though and not a lot of disease resisitance in my experience but I can’t think of not growing it.
Mary: I have extra seeds if you want to give it a try! Just email me your address.
Eve: I’ve never heard of Creole tomatoes, but they sound nice. I like your blog. It looks like you are fond of heirloom and native plants of all kinds. I’ve never had fried green tomatoes, only seen the movie, but I’d like to try them sometime.
I may have to try this one next year – thanks for the story and the Seeds Trust link! I see that the Garden Seed Inventory (from Seed Savers Exchange) lists it as 65-70 days, so that’s early enough for me. It’s so great to be able to share info about experiences with different varieties. Even with our very short growing season, the number of possible tomatoes to trial is pretty overwhelming. Usually I only try 1 or 2 new ones a year. We have 9 varieties total out in the gardens this year, 7 of which are old tried and true family members for us.
Oh, I forgot. Patrick, what is your favorite early tomato?
Uncanny. I was just perusing my Kokopelli catalogue, already thinking about next year, and that was one that I had ticked to try. It’s called Taxi Yellow in their book. I want more earlies so maybe I’ll give it a go. I grew Orange Queen one year which is also early and about the same size and shape just deeper colour and the flavour was superb. One of our favourites.
Leigh:
Until recently I’ve never had much interest in early tomatoes, because we can grow almost any tomato here. This means I’ve never really had a chance to compare the earlies side by side. What tends to happen anyway is after gorging myself on delicious heirloom tomatoes for about 6 weeks, I can’t stand to eat them anymore until the following year, so it doesn’t matter much if that 6 week period starts earlier or later.
Now with a greenhouse, having early determinates is more useful because I can remove the plants to make space for the other tomatoes. This means I have a little more interest in them.
Anyway, a couple of earlies that I’ve liked in the past are (in no particular order): Black Prince, Black Cherry (Brown Berry is similar and also good) and Taxi. Black Sea Man that I posted about a few days ago was also good. If you like current tomatoes, Matt’s Wild Cherry is also a good one.
Can you tell I like black tomatoes?
A favorite for many Europeans is Whippersnapper. Silvery Fir Tree (the carrot leaved tomato) is also popular here, and very wind and disease resistant.
I’m trying another now called Nebraska Wedding, but it’s not ready yet. I also have some Russian seeds from a SSE person in Belarus that I got too late to try this year. Søren (see Whippersnapper link) recently posted about some interesting Russian varieties he has, but I don’t know if you can get the seeds for them.
Anyway, even if I didn’t answer your question, I hope I gave you some ideas. Maybe in a month or two I’ll have some more useful opinions that include what I’m growing now.
What are your 7 tried and true favorites?
I haven’t tried Taxi. My favourite open pollinated tomato is the pink brandywine.
One of my sons, a fine dining chef, is currently experimenting with “tomato water” – it’s the juice that runs from a salted tomato. I’ll remind him of the yellow tomatoes because I think the colour of the yellow tomato “water” would provide a contrast.
For canning, Ropreco and Saucy; for winter storage, Golden Treasure; best all purpose, Pixie, collected 15 years ago from a local market gardener who had true-lined the original hybrid; Red Currant; Red Lightning (bred by Fisher’s in Montana c1980s); and Marmande.
Actually, Pixie might be good in a greenhouse. The plant architecture is very compact, and it’s pretty bullet-proof around here. Excellent fruit quality, medium sized. I don’t know whether it’s determinate or indeterminate – our first frost comes too early to tell for sure.
I love Taxi tomatoes and am growing them again this year. But, please explain: What’s so controversial about them?
Rhonda Jean: Thanks for the comment. Tomato water sounds like an interesting cooking ingredient!
Leigh: Have you ever tried Matt’s Wild Cherry? If you like Red Currant, you might like it. I think the taste is better, and the fruits are a little bigger. It’s probably not as heavy a cropper.
Superweed: I guess what’s controversial is not everyone agrees it tastes good. Here are some reviews at Dave’s Garden, which are mostly not very positive and emphasize it being bland:
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/554/
Here’s another from Dan Jason, an experienced heirloom seed collector in Canada, which is much more positive (rating it 8 out of 10) and says it has good flavor:
http://www.seedsanctuary.com/tomatoes/index.cfm?expand=yes
Charlie Trotter of the restaurant I went to thought it was absolutely gourmet quality and featured it as such on his menu.
It’s true it’s a little sweet and low acid, but it’s also very fragrant and I at least think it has a nice taste. It’s also a bit on the bland side, but I don’t think that’s always a bad thing with tomatoes.
I guess it tastes different to different people.
I want!
🙂
I’ll send you my address
Thanks Patrick – I’ll put Matt’s Wild Cherry on my list of candidates!
Patrick, I love the personal histories we have with our different crops! Our tomatoes went in late this year so I have yet to try any of them – I planted a whole bunch of new heirlooms – in fact only heirlooms this year.
My favorite is the same as Rhonda’s: Pink Brandywine. I bought one from a farmer’s market a few years ago, from a lovely elder farmer. That was my entryway into the amazing world of heirloom tomatoes.
Territorial Seed carries Taxi. Very beautiful and quite early, a bit mild for my taste, but some people really loved it. I’d grow it every year, but I just don’t like determinates…
My early tomato is Polar Baby, they are small red
ones, just a bit over cherry-size. They come in weeks earlier than anything else every year.
I bought something that was labeled as a Taxi tomato seedling. The plant struggled at the beginning of the season – it proved quite sensitive to cold. But the plant is thriving at this point and it has produced several large, meaty, bright RED tomatoes. I am wondering whether I bought a “fire engine” tomato by mistake.
We really enjoyed our “Great White” tomatoes, but it has not produced much fruit. Our Reisentraube cherry tomatoes have been the top performers – first to ripen, still producing fruit like crazy, and quite tasty. They are technically a grape tomato, but we’ve had some up to 2 inches in diameter!
I have grown taxi tomatoes two years in a row. They are prolific but bear the worst tasting, mushiest tomatoes I have ever eaten. I would have ripped up the plants second time around when I confirmed that’s the way they really taste, but I just couldn’t kill those beautiful bushes.
in alaska, zone 1, experimenting with taxi, black sea, isis cherry, siberian, red sunset~~ learning by observation…the siberians are wilting on my deck; actual air temp is 70 degrees, but know the ambient temp of the brown deck must be too hot for the siberians, as they are all wilting, while their soil is moist….they must not like temps above 80-90. I am guessing it is 90-100 on the deck now…
any special tips for these other plants, why, send to me, please. Thanks much. Is Bill McDorman of Ketchum?? I used to live in Hailey and took several high altitude gardening classes, and medicinal herbal classes from you, if one in the same. Was young then; never thot i would need to jot down notes! Youth. Ahhhh.
Lots of blossoms to you all out there in cyberspace~~~
This is one of my favourites as well. It seems to be quite variable in the time it takes to produce fruit. If I ever get a series of decent blight-free summers (I grow it out of doors) I may try to breed a slightly earlier version.
I just planted a yellow taxi in my tomato cage and am excited that it is an heirloom AND a deterinate for my cage hanger! Hope they are yummy.
I got a Taxi tomato plant this year. it was the first of my tomato plants to get tomatoes on it. It has continued to get new green tomatoes on it and looks healthy. But the first tomatoes have not changed in size or color for weeks. While it was the first to have tomatoes, it looks like plants of other varieties that didn’t fruit until weeks later will produce ripe fruit while the Taxi’s tomatoes just stay green seemingly forever. Is there some trick to getting them to ripen?
Hi Bill,
While I’m not growing Taxi this year, I don’t usually have this problem. For me it’s usually one of my earliest tomatoes.
If you can’t find any other reason, you might try getting some different seeds from somewhere else. You might also try to change the genetics of the seeds you have by planting say 10 or 20 plants, then only saving seeds from the fastest ripening plant(s). It may just be a matter of acclimating the plants to your area in this way.
I grew a Taxi from seed (also from Seed Trust) this year, and… oh my goodness. I had no idea what to expect, but when I bit into that first tomato it was like an explosion of sweet deliciousness in my mouth. It was so sweet I couldn’t even bear to adulterate the taste with a dash of salt. I adore tomatoes of all colors, but I can honestly say these are some of the best tomatoes I’ve ever tasted.
I bought this as a plant from our wonderful local coastal NC nursery and planted it in a pot and soil cocktail that was meant for strawberries (miracle grow organic potting soil, a lot, a lot of organic lime, some organic soil acidifier, and perlite) and man, this plant blew up. It grew huge and dark green and quickly put out countless flowers and all turned to beautiful tomatoes. It’s June 10 and I have over 70 tomatoes on two plants growing and about to ripen (although they are taking forever to ripen!) I’m very excited- I’ll be making some special yellow salsa this year!
Good luck Mary!
Does anyone know how to find other cultivars that are related to Taxi but are not the same as Taxi? I’ve grown at least 25 different cultivars and find that Taxi in particular likes my back yard, in my exact pots, in my exact garden spot. So I’m looking for close relatives. I live in Colorado Springs, CO (high desert, high altitude) and I grow everything in self-watering containers.
Thanks.
Hi Phoebe,
I had a look in a very old Seed Savers Exchange yearbook I have on my bookshelf. The person offering the Taxi tomato says it’s a ‘companion’ to Gold Dust tomato. I don’t know exactly what this means, but it might be worth a try. Otherwise it may be because Taxi is an early tomato, so you might look for other early tomatoes. An early tomato is one that has the fewest days to maturity, and not more than 70-80. You can probably find them with as few as 50 days to maturity if you look around. The days to maturity is usually on the seed package or the variety description.