Paste tomatoes have a meaty texture and concentrated flavor. They are also known as “sauce,” “pear,” “plum,” “saladette,” “Roma,” and “Italian.”
Use paste tomatoes for cooking sauces, juicing, drying, or eating fresh sliced in salads or on the side.
Paste tomatoes come in a variety sizes—from an inch or two long to large 2-pound fruits. They can be pear-shaped, heart-shaped (called “oxheart”), elongated—like a banana pepper, or large and lumpy. What paste tomatoes have in common is that they are meaty and have fewer seeds and less juice than other tomatoes.
Grow paste tomatoes much like other tomatoes: plant in full sun; add lots of compost to the planting bed; set transplants out when the soil has warmed to at least 60°F; protect young plants from cool nights; feed plants with fish emulsion or kelp meal every 10 days or so.
Where the season is short or cool, grow determinate varieties; where the season is long, grow indeterminate vining varieties.
Here are several paste tomatoes that perform well in home gardens:
- Amish Paste: open-pollinated; indeterminate; heart-shaped red, about 8 ounces; 82 days to maturity.
- Black Plum: open-pollinated; indeterminate; plum-shaped mahogany, 2-3 inches long; 75-80 days to maturity.
- Heidi: open-pollinated; indeterminate; red, round to heart-shaped; 75-80 days to maturity.
- Italian Gold: hybrid; determinate; golden, plum-shaped; 70 days to maturity.
- La Roma Rossa: hybrid; determinate; red, pear-shaped to 4 inches; 78 days to maturity.
- Martino’s Roma: open-pollinated; determinate; red, pear-shaped, 2 ounces; 75-80 days to maturity.
- Myona: open-pollinated; indeterminate; red, pepper-shaped to 4 inches long; 80-95 days to maturity.
- Opalka: open-pollinated; indeterminate; red-orange, pepper-shaped; 75-85 days to maturity.
- Orange Banana: open-pollinated; indeterminate; orange, banana shaped to 3 inches long; 85 days to maturity.
- Plum Dandy: hybrid; determinate; red, plum-shaped to 6 ounces; 75-80 days to maturity.
- Plum Lemon: open-pollinated; indeterminate; yellow, lemon-shaped; 81 days to maturity.
- Powers Heirloom: open-pollinated; indeterminate; yellow, oblong-shaped, 85 days to maturity.
- Ropreco Paste: open-pollinated; indeterminate; open-pollinated; determinate; red, pear-shaped to 3 inches long: 70 days to maturity.
- Rocky: open-pollinated; indeterminate; red, oxheart to plum shape to 6 inches long; 95-105 days to maturity.
- Roma: open-pollinated; determinate; red, pear-shaped to 3 inches long; 80-85 days to maturity.
- Russian 117: open-pollinated; indeterminate; red, oxheart shaped to 2 pounds; 80-90 days to maturity.
- San Marzano: open-pollinated; indeterminate; red, pear-shaped to 3 inches long; 80 days to maturity.
- San Remo Paste: hybrid; indeterminate; red, oblong-shaped to 5 inches long; 76 days to maturity.
- Verna Orange: open-pollinated; indeterminate; orange, oxheart-shaped to 1 pound; 84 days to maturity.
- Viva Italia: hybrid; determinate; red, pear-shaped; 80 days to maturity.
- Yellow Bell Paste: open-pollinated; indeterminate; yellow, long pear-shaped; 60 days to maturity.
