Tomatoes are one of the easiest and most rewarding of summer vegetables to grow, but if you have limited space, you have a dilemma. You can grow the plants that stay small, but the flavors range from flat to adequate. Or you can grow luscious heirloom tomatoes, but then you have to find a way to cage and control the monster 6-12 foot plants.
Or you can pick door number three: grow dwarf tomatoes that stay under 4-5 feet, can be grown in a 5-gallon container, have a stout central stem so don't flop all over the place, and offer the range of flavors, colors, sizes, and shapes of the best-tasting heirlooms.
This year, for the first time, seeds developed by the Dwarf Tomato Project were available for sale from selected seed companies. The project is the first all-volunteer cross-hemisphere collaborative tomato breeding project. It was conceived about 6 years ago by Patrina Nuske-Small of Adelaide, South Australia, and Craig LeHoullier of Raleigh, North Carolina, who discussed that dilemma on internet forums devoted to tomato growing.
Craig, a longtime tomato enthusiast who collected old catalogs, found one from 1915 that described how one of the few existing dwarf tomatoes, New Big Dwarf, had been created by crossing a small-fruited dwarf with a large-fruited tomato. Patrina, who had only started gardening in 2004, made some strategic crosses of dwarf varieties with great-tasting tomatoes. From these crosses, growers around the world grew out the seeds and selected the tastiest fruits from each generation, which were grown out, more fruits selected, and so on. Other growers have made additional crosses, and development is continuing.
Once a fruit that ranked high in flavor was found, it was time to name it and stabilize the variety. Typically, it takes at least 6 generations – that is, 6 summers – to create a stable variety that will breed true, also called an open-pollinated variety. With over 150 backyard growers in both hemispheres participating, two crops were grown each year, cutting in half the development time.
The volunteers come from the internet forum Tomatoville.com, which Craig has called a website of extreme tomato enthusiasts. Each cross is extensively tracked and described on the website, and each growing season, Craig and Patrina put out the call for volunteer growers among the membership.
Nine varieties made the first cut. The project provided seed to three companies this spring in limited quantities, and most varieties quickly sold out. The vendors and the varieties offered this year were
Craig has identified 6 more varieties that may be ready to release next year, and 6 more for 2013. None of the volunteers are profiting from this project. They simply want more people to be able to grow great-tasting tomatoes.
© 2011 Tanya Kucak