Federle Tomato

I have grown these for 3 years now with varying levels of success. If you can get them thru germination, transplanting and the initial few weeks then you have a good chance at harvest. They need to be trellised, because the branches get very long. It struggles in my North Dakota climate as it is susceptible to early fall frosts, so I have never seen it's full potential. The fruit is amazing for canning. Long 6-8 in, easy to peel, good flavor! If I had a longer season I would only grow Federles!

I have grown this tomato for about 5 years now and am never disappointed. High yield per plant, and a very fleshy fruit makes them ideal for sauces and salsa. The skins are thin and often don’t need peeling if you are making sauce. They grow well from seed and tend to be a bit smaller than other varieties from the start, but once they are in the ground they catch up and produce well.

This year was the first time growing this variety. We grew (trellis method) this along with Amish Paste Tomatoes for canning salsa/sauce. The beginning of the season, the tomatoes started to have bottom rot. After researching, I learned that the soil may need more calcium. So we provide some calcium in the soil and from then, no bottom rot. Very productive and large tomatoes. I would say less juice than Amish Paste tomatoes, which is great for canning or making salsa. Definitely will grow again.

Great for salsa and sauce! They are a bit slow to start, in our Northern Michigan climate, but take off by mid-summer. September is the month for canning and processing!

We grow Federle (and Opalka) for sauce. Big, meaty, excellent quality. In our Catskill mountains short season we grow multiple varieties as failsafe. Federle are wonderful this year as our first frost is quite late. We have endemic late blight, uneven rain, and blossom end rot. Most of these are cheerfully unaffected, still ripening on brown, ragged vines.
Few seeds, little water so, perfect for sauce, which we freeze.

Excellent tomato for salsa. Meaty, tasty, producing less juice and seeds. I passed a few on and heard nothing but raves. The plants start out slow but when they take off, the plants can grow over 7 ft with fruit all the way up. We double caged and trellised the plants.

This variety is not a pretty plant, very leggy and slow to germinate/establish. Once it starts producing, it does really well and the fruits are huge! Nice flavor and meaty flesh too. I have grown it in rocky soil and clay soil, both of which it seems to tolerate. Despite being fiddly to start, I’ll keep growing it because it doesn’t succumb to the problems I’ve had with other paste types - it’s more resistant to blossom end rot than any other paste variety I’ve tried. Just know that it will always look like a ragged, rangy teenaged thing of a plant.

I loved this tomato. It’s not only a show stopper in terms of beauty, but it made a great tomato kabob! It was productive, I had no disease problems, it looks like a red pepper(!!!), it’s a huge tomato that’s almost laughable huge.

Agree 100% with other reviews. Huge, meaty, thin skinned, and delicious. Very productive. Plants grow wispy and frail so strong staking is a must. It has a truly messy, scrappy growth habit. I’m in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I started these later than my normal . I also normally plant outside during Canadian May long wknd which falls around May 20 but was late with that as well and these tomatoes (small starts 7-8 weeks old) went into the ground in the first week of June. I also did not get around to using the ‘cozy coats’ product on my tomatoes this year. Fruit was early to set, in fact one of the earliest in my garden, and then stayed green until ripening at the beginning of September . It’s now one of my “must grow” tomato types.