Tomato variety
✓ In your garden
Amish Paste is an heirloom sauce tomato from the Wisconsin Amish community — bigger, meatier, and much better-tasting than a Roma, with sweet full flavor that's good enough to slice raw. It grows on an indeterminate vine, crops steadily all season rather than in one flush, and makes a richer sauce than the supermarket paste types. Stake it and keep the water even.
“The paste tomato you'd actually eat raw — bigger, meatier, and richer-tasting than a Roma.”
Sweet and full-flavored — good enough to slice, which is rare for a sauce tomato. The reason people grow it over Roma.
An indeterminate heirloom that needs staking and even water; no built-in disease resistance and some blossom-end rot on the long fruit.
Being indeterminate it crops over the whole season rather than one big flush — steadier, but you wait longer for a canning batch.
No built-in resistance. Give it airflow, mulch, and water at the soil.
The elongated shape rots at the tip when moisture and calcium swing. Water steadily.
It trades Roma's one-shot convenience for better flavor and a longer season.
Numbers from university growing guides. Ratings are our take, judged against all tomatoes. Tap a meter to see why.
Amish Paste grows like any other tomato. The full picture — how deep to plant, spacing, feeding, pests, harvest — lives on the Tomato page so it's maintained in one place.
Amish Paste ripens to a deep, even red. Pick when it's fully colored and still firm-meaty. Check the blossom end for soft dark rot on the long fruit.
The stages: Green → Breaking → Red → Pick it. Grab it at that last stage.
A chunky paste — bigger than a Roma, roughly 3 inches and about 6 oz, in an oxheart-to-plum shape.
Our take for a vine like this — the real height depends on your soil and summer.
Our take, from how it grows and tastes — not every kitchen agrees.
A little at a time. You pick a few every few days, from the first ripe one until frost.
A plant like this keeps making new fruit for weeks, so you pick a few at a time. Plan your kitchen around it.
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Want the full 10/50/90% odds + nearest stations? Open the frost tool →Greenhouse or cover on: your start slides ~4 weeks earlier and your harvest stretches ~3 weeks later (shown striped).
Planting seeds straight in the ground only works where the season's long and warm — most gardeners start seeds indoors or buy young plants, or you'd pick your first tomato right as frost hits.
Comfortable — first ripe fruit lands around mid Jul, well before your typical frost (~late Oct).
Typical dates for zone 6b — set your zone or ZIP above for yours.
Basil can cut thrips numbers on tomatoes, and a modest yield gain shows up when it is planted at good density. They also want the same heat and water, so the bed suits both.
Grown thick and turned into the soil, they suppress root-knot nematodes. A couple between plants mostly just look nice.
Its flowers feed hoverflies, and hoverfly larvae eat aphids. Commercial lettuce growers interplant it for that exact job.
A tall tomato throws exactly the shade lettuce wants once summer heat makes it flower and turn bitter (bolt).
'Carrots Love Tomatoes' is a book title, not a trial. They coexist fine — just expect the tomato to shade them by August.
Chart canon says onions and garlic make good tomato neighbors. No trials to point at, no conflict either.
Walnut roots release juglone, and tomatoes are on every sensitivity list. Keep beds well clear of the canopy.
Fennel foliage and seed are rich in trans-anethole, and extracts of them held back germination and seedling growth across a range of species in testing. Whole-plant effects at garden spacing are milder than the "fennel kills everything" reputation, but the chemistry is real — give it its own pot.
Same family, same late blight. One sick bed infects the other.
Corn earworm and tomato fruitworm are the same moth. Side by side, you're setting its table twice.
Flagged on the classic charts, mechanism murky. Skip the pairing if you've got the space.
The badge is the honesty. Trialed = a published field trial · Practical = a real mechanism · Traditional = companion-chart lore. These pairings hold for every tomato.
Pairings compiled from University of Minnesota Extension, USDA Agricultural Research Service (Salinas, CA), West Virginia University Extension, Penn State Extension, El-Kenany & El-Darier.
From university growing guides (see Sources).
Amish Paste is exactly what it sounds like — a paste tomato kept and handed down in the Amish community, traced to Wisconsin and grown by saved seed for generations before it reached the wider seed catalogs.
It became a favorite because it does something most paste tomatoes can't: it makes a great sauce and it tastes good raw. That double duty is its whole reputation.
This is the paste tomato for people who think paste tomatoes are boring. The flesh is thick and meaty with few seeds like a Roma, but the flavor is sweet and full — rich enough that plenty of gardeners slice it for sandwiches, not just cook it down.
In the kitchen it's a sauce and canning workhorse that keeps more flavor than the standard plum types, and its size means less peeling per pound. Grow it for sauce, paste, canning whole, and roasting — and slice a few of the best ones raw just because you can.
Grow it like any tomato — full sun, steady water, regular feeding — with one difference from a supermarket paste type: it's an indeterminate, not a compact bush. It runs 5–8 feet and sets fruit over the whole season, so give it a tall cage or stake at planting.
Because it crops steadily rather than all at once, you'll get a longer, gentler supply — better for cooking as you go, a little less convenient for a single big canning day. Like most heirlooms it has no disease-resistance package, and the long fruit is prone to blossom-end rot, so keep the water even and mulch. Set your zone on the tomato page and the calendar pins your dates.
If you're choosing your sauce tomato: Roma is the easy, compact, disease-resistant determinate that dumps a one-shot canning crop with minimal fuss. Amish Paste is bigger, meatier, and much better-tasting, but it's an indeterminate that needs staking and gives its crop over a longer season.
Want maximum convenience and a canning-weekend glut? Grow Roma. Want a sauce with real flavor — and a paste you'd happily slice? Amish Paste is worth the extra staking.
Amish Paste is easy to read — it ripens to a deep, even red all over, with none of the green-shoulder guesswork of the dark heirlooms. Let it color fully; a paste tomato holds on the vine without going soft, so you can wait for it.
Pick when it's uniformly red and still firm and meaty to the squeeze. Glance at the blossom end while you're there — a soft, dark, sunken tip is blossom-end rot, and those go to the compost, not the sauce pot.
This is where Amish Paste pays you back. The thick, meaty flesh cooks down into a rich sauce with real flavor, and its larger size means less peeling per pound than a Roma — the skins slip off after a 30-second dip in boiling water and a plunge into cold.
Because it fruits over a long season rather than in one flush, you can either cook as you go or freeze batches until you've saved up enough for a big canning day. And unlike most paste tomatoes, the best fruit is sweet enough to just slice and eat.
| Type | Plum Paste (sauce tomato) |
|---|---|
| Days to ripe | 85 days after you plant it outside |
| Color | Red |
| Best for | Sauce, paste, and canning |
Extra fields from seed-catalog listings and university growing guides. Days to ripe and disease resistance shift with your climate and seed source — double-check with your local extension office before you buy.
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Indeterminate — a 5–8 ft vine that keeps growing and setting fruit until frost, so it crops steadily over the season rather than in one flush. It needs a tall cage or stake set at planting.
For flavor, most growers say yes — it's bigger, meatier, and sweeter, and good enough to slice raw. Roma wins on convenience: it's a compact, disease-resistant determinate that's easier to grow and ripens all at once for canning.
Yes — that's its claim to fame. Unlike most paste tomatoes it has enough sweet, full flavor to slice for sandwiches and salads, not just cook. It's still at its best in sauce, paste and canning.
Roughly 80–85 days from transplant to the first ripe fruit — a mid-to-late-season tomato. Being indeterminate, it then keeps producing until frost, so start it early indoors in a short season.
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