Tomato Seed Sunday

Tomato Seed Sunday

Our local farmer Angelie and resident tomato geek Mike Palmer invite you to get ready for spring by getting a crash course in growing your own tomatoes and sow your own seeds together to take home. We’ll have over 150 varieties of tomato seeds to choose from to suit all skill levels of gardeners, even one foot tall micro-dwarf varieties you can grow on a window sill!

 

You can come blissfully unprepared 😊, we’ll have soil, cups, labels and seeds. Gloves would be good if you don’t like getting your hands dirty. Also, if you want to grow a micro-dwarf indoors – you may want to bring your small planter to skip having to transplant later.

 

TYPES OF PLANTS
Red, orange, yellow, green, purple, striped, tie-dyed, metallic sheens, giant, saladette sized, cherry, sweet, smoky, tart, acidic – you name it, we’ve got it! We’ll have the following tomato seed varieties will be available…

 

Indeterminate Plants
(harder to care for)
Vines that can grow very long and require support, pruning and training of vines required (though that can be debated). Heirlooms are usually found in this category, more info on that at the below.

 

Determinate Plants
(less hard to care for)
Vines that grow to a determined length, but still require support.

 

 

Dwarf Plants (not necessarily dwarf fruits!)
(easier to care for)
Technically a determinate, but generally less than 5 feet tall and has a thicker trunk. Basically grows like a bush, needs minimal support and can also do well in planters. Many think dwarf tomatoes give small fruit, but they can easily grow tomatoes that are 1/2 a pound or greater!
Micro-dwarf
(easier to care for)

A dwarf tomato plant that is 2 feet tall or shorter, and can even be grown indoors. They still crave sunlight, regular watering and nutrients. Some varieties are only 8″ tall! Also, don’t expect them to give you anything larger than a cherry tomato.

“Do you have any heirlooms?”

Yes! But that might not mean what you think. Let’s clear up some misconceptions, but first remember this quick fact: tomato plants are self-fertile – they don’t need another tomato plant to pollinate them.

HEIRLOOM TOMATOES DEFINED
An heirloom tomato seed means that you can sow the seed from a fruit and the offspring will produce the same plant and fruit, and that this has been consistently done for over 50 years.

Size of fruit and size of plant aren’t a requirement for being an heirloom. However, many heirlooms are indeterminate vines (grow to an undetermined length, often 8+ feet). This is because that’s what mainly has been handed down, but that’s changed…

HYBRID TOMATOES DEFINED
Nope, these aren’t scary gene spliced seeds cooked up in a laboratory. They’re simply the specific cross-breeding between two different varieties of tomato. Think labradoodles, you know who the parents are and they came together to make something special and new. This is usually done to create a tomato that has special traits like disease resistance, desirable fruit taste or appearance, plant size or many other things.

If you had the patience, you could make your own Hybrid tomatoes by collecting pollen from one parent plant, then removing the pollen from the other parent’s self-fertile flower and adding the pollen in – boom you’ve just artificially inseminated a tomato.

Built-in copy protection: these hybrid plants will create specific fruit, but will not create specific seeds. If you plant the seeds from a hybrid fruit, it will produce random fruit and there is a very low likelihood that it will resemble its parent. You’ll see many hybrids sold at Home Depot for this reason. A company can find a great crossbreed tomato, keep the parents a secret and sell it over and over with a trademarked name. Sungold (a super sweet and delicious yellow/orange cherry tomato) and Earlygirl (a red tomato that gives fruit far earlier than most) are two popular examples.

NEW STABLE BREEDS (future heirlooms)
So say you took the extra time to take those hybrid offspring seeds and grew dozens (even hundreds) of tomato plants, then selected the offspring that most resembled its hybrid parent. Great, now do that over and over – year after year until you have a seed that can be grown and sewn forever and produce the same fruit. Yeah, that could take a while! There’s companies and hobbyists all over the world doing this right now and thanks to their work we have the most diversity in tomatoes in human history.

The Dwarf Tomato Project, for example, is an amazing collaboration between gardeners in America and Australia to crossbreed dwarf tomatoes with heirlooms and other exciting indeterminate tomatoes in half the time, because seeds would be sent between hemispheres as the other country’s spring was coming. This led to having more diversity in a compact plant that could be grown by those not rich in land. and free time, making gardening more equitable.

So heirlooms tomatoes are great, but they’ve just been around longer – that doesn’t necessarily make them better or more unique. Be sure to explore all the great varieties available!

more upcoming events

Thu, Feb 13th6:00 pm
Sat, Feb 15th7:00 pm
Tue, Feb 18th6:00 pm
Wed, Feb 19th6:30 pm
Thu, Feb 20th6:00 pm
Sun, Feb 23rd12:00 pm
Fri, Feb 28th6:30 pm
Sun, Mar 2nd12:00 pm