Citizen Science Initiative 2022 Data
Table. Performance of Klee lab tomatoes in home gardens across the United States and Canada.
Data are averages of 27 citizen scientists’ observations in the 2022 growing season.
Varieties were scored from 1-10, with 10 being the highest score.
Letters indicate significant differences in performance attributes.
| Variety | Flavor | Overall performance | Yield | Appearance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Garden Gem Improved | 8.5 a | 8.1 a | 8.1 a | 8.6 a |
| Garden Ruby Improved | 8.2 a | 7.5 a | 6.0 bc | 8.3 a |
| BC hybrid | 8.0 a | 7.9 a | 7.8 ab | 8.1 a |
| R Hybrid | 7.7 b | 7.6 a | 7.7 ab | 8.2 a |
| Better Boy | 5.9 b | 4.8 b | 5.3 c | 6.4 b |
Locations of Citizen Scientists' Home Garden Trials
Comments
San Rafael, CA, United States
Garden Gem ripened early -- and have continued to produce - with many more still ripening. GREAT YIELD!
Novato, CA, United States
Garden gem had no issues... high production, delicious fruit, plant did not get huge which is good in tight garden space. Est. 25 -30 lbs. total from 3 plants.
Ann Arbor, MI, United States
R Hybrid: Good tasting and abundant. Best as a Caprese tomato at first. They got smaller as the summer went on and ended as salad tomatoes (similar to the Sweet Millions in size and use by then)
B Hybrid: This is a good large tomato. We used it to eat sliced or in sandwiches. Also for making sauce but it is wetter than our sauce tomatoes-Amish Paste, Santa Maria, and of a different type San Marzino)
Garden Gem: Least used of the test tomatoes. Ate fresh, made into sauce. Too small for Caprese and too large for salad tomatoes.
Guelph, ON, Canada
The Garden Gem was a prolific producer, good red colour, taste was really good. The Garden Treasure had a nice taste, a little larger than a golf ball, lovely red colour. Not a producer like Garden Gem or R Hybrid. My family enjoyed these; I would grow these again! No rot! I had some lovely tomato sandwiches and made tomato sauce with the extra.
Baton Rouge, LA, United States
I really liked the flavor of the Garden Ruby, but it wasn't especially productive. If I had a bigger garden, that might be less of a concern. I still want to grow it again. The R hybrid also has good flavor, but its skin was a bit tough.
Montpelier, VT, United States
I was able to weigh most of the tomatoes that came off the plants (several got harvested and/or eaten by other family members and weren't recorded, so number of fruits harvested will be greater than recorded, estimate about 5-10 missed; they kept forgetting I was doing science, not just gardening). Weights were taken immediately (within 20 minutes) after harvesting. All weights in grams.
Garden Gem: 65, 80, 63, 70, 58, 53, 54, 65,67, 88, 72, 66, 72, 45, 54, 49,51, 67, 82, 42, 101 (! not an error, it was huge) [total number of plants: 4]
Garden Ruby: 268, 305, 303, 178 [total number of plants: 2]
R Hybrid: 32, 29, 28, 27, 27, 21, 27, 15, 31, 21, 32, 14, 20, 18, 18, 36,20,23, 22, 25, 23, 22, 23, 24 [total number of plants: 2]