
Tomato Seed Sunday
Tomato Seed Sunday
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…
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!
