What are some of the top producing tomato plants for use in sauces?

Question

I'm getting ready to start some tomato plants. We do a lot of canning and want to get some highly productive plants for making sauces. We live in USDA zone 5. Looking for meaty tomatoes from plants that have high yields.

I have an area about 35 feet long against a fence that is 6 feet tall. It faces directly south, gets full sun and I can tie off the plants to the fence as they grow. Looking for semi determinate to determinate plants so I'm not spending the entire summer making sauce a little at a time.

I had some regular roma's last year along with other varieties. I wasn't happy with the production from the roma's.

Answer 1

One variety you might want to consider is Mariana Hybrid. It is a determinate paste tomato. In my experience, it is very productive and has good flavor. They have nice large fruit that are well-shaped.

Answer 2

Of those I'm about to list, I've only ever actually grown Roma, San Marzano and Yellow Pear. Roma was quite productive, but San Marzano probably needed to adapt to my hot & dry area better; I could tell it could be quite productive in ideal conditions. Roma produces all season, but we get a lot at the end of the season, normally. Because I'm sure lots of different strains of Roma must exist, the kind we had last (I don't know where the earlier ones were from) was from Home Depot (bonnieplants.com tags) in Ontario, Oregon, in 2014 (and the tomatoes were pointed, unlike the grocery store Romas).

I've read and/or heard that these are productive tomatoes great for sauce:

• Opalka (indeterminate)
• Gilbertie (indeterminate)
• VF Roma (determinate; this is supposed to be a disease-resistant tomato to supplant the regular Roma, I believe; I know someone who quite loves the taste; so, it sounds like more than disease-resistance was improved.)
• Roma (determinate)
• Oroma (determinate; parthenocarpic; half Roma and half Santiam)
• Saucy (determinate; parthenocarpic; half Roma and half Santiam)
• Federle (indeterminate)
• Napoli (indeterminate)
• Polish Linguisa (indeterminate)
• San Marzano (indeterminate)
• Amish Paste (indeterminate; I hear it's on the juicy side for a paste tomato, though, but people like it.)

Heat/drought/cold/humidity/aridity/disease tolerance can also affect your productivity. So I recommend studying up on which tomatoes do best in your area, too. Usually local retailers will sell some that do well. Saving your seeds and planting again the next year every time may also improve productivity.

You might try Yellow Trifele tomato and Red Trifele Russian tomato. They're supposed to be very meaty and productive. Yellow Pear is also supposed to work as a sauce tomato, and is extremely productive (but very indeterminate). Mexican Yellow is supposed to be meaty and extremely productive.

Based on your stated requirements and this description, I'm guessing Saucy might be a pretty good choice. I could be wrong, but it looks perfect. It's determinate. It holds well on the vine; so you can get one large harvest, they say. It's supposed to taste great. It's very meaty. It's supposed to be very productive.