Variety Compare
Pick 2-4 cultivars and compare days to maturity, habit, fruit type, color, zone, and grower notes side by side — printable.
Pick 2–4 varieties (max 4) to compare days to maturity, habit, fruit type, color, zone minimum, and grower notes. Data from public seed-catalog listings.
| Attribute | Sun Gold | Brandywine | Roma | Early Girl |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kind | tomato | tomato | tomato | tomato |
| Days to maturity | ~57 days | ~90 days | ~75 days | ~62 days |
| Habit | indeterminate | indeterminate | determinate | indeterminate |
| Fruit type | cherry | beefsteak | paste | slicer |
| Color | orange | pink | red | red |
| Fruit size | 1 oz | 1–2 lb | 2–3 oz | 4–6 oz |
| Min zone | Zone 3+ | Zone 3+ | Zone 3+ | Zone 3+ |
| Grower note | Extra-sweet orange cherry; extremely productive, crack-resistant. | Heirloom favorite; huge pink fruits with rich flavor. Needs a long season. | Classic paste tomato; meaty, few seeds, great for sauce. | Early slicer; dependable yields in short seasons. |
| Source | Johnny's Selected Seeds | Seed Savers Exchange, Burpee | Burpee, Johnny's | Burpee |
Days to maturity are catalog values and vary by climate — confirm with the seed packet. Open any variety for its own page: Sun Gold · Brandywine · Roma · Early Girl
What the inputs mean
Pick the cultivars you want to compare. The tool aligns their published attributes into a single table so the differences are in one place rather than spread across several pages.
How to act on the answer
Compare days to maturity first against your own frost-free window — a variety that needs more days than your season provides will not finish, regardless of how good it is. Then compare habit against your space and support: a determinate or compact habit suits containers and small beds, while an indeterminate or vining habit needs trellising and a longer season. Colour and fruit type are the preference choices; zone range and days to maturity are the constraints.
What this tool cannot know
The comparison uses published variety descriptions, which are the breeder’s or vendor’s own claims, and performance varies with soil, water, and season. Two varieties that look identical on days to maturity can behave very differently in a hot summer or a cool one, so treat the table as a shortlist and try more than one variety in the first year.
Where it fits in the season
A calculator is only as good as the location data behind it, so two other pages usually belong in the same session. The ZIP lookup establishes your zone and typical frost dates, which is the baseline that variety compare is reasoning from, and the monthly zone checklists turn the same baseline into an ordered set of jobs for the current month. If you are working from a specific planting plan rather than a blank bed, the garden plan templates carry published spacing and crop lists you can feed straight into the planner.
Everything on this page runs in your browser from data shipped with the site. There is no account, nothing is uploaded, and the numbers you type are not stored on a server — which also means a printed sheet or a screenshot is the only copy you will have if you close the page. See all garden tools →
Related guides
Watering guide · Fertilizing guide · Composting guide · Raised bed guide · all topic guides →