I had emailed Craig… Dwarf tomato project guy… a while back and said I’d be happy to grow out tomatoes looking for more dwarf interesting plants. He followed up the other day that he’ll be mailing seeds. So I’m excited to see what he sends and what it turns out.
I’ve given myself space (on paper at least) for about 79 dwarf tomatoes. May knock that back to 40 depending on what he sent. I have alot of other tomatoes planned and other things I want to squeeze in. We’ll see.
I’m going to compare them to the other tomatoes and see if they are actually easier to manage with staking up etc. Last year I had a row of t posts with 4 strands of twine across them and one twine up at each plant. That worked pretty well but having to move the t posts will get annoying.
I’m hoping that dwarf plants will be maybe good enough to hold their own and if not, can I get by with just like the rebar type posts? I use them for sheep fence so they’d be useful aside from just tomatoes… they aren’t that pricey… easier to put in and out than t post…
I’m considering crossing dwarfs to the Promiscuous stuff as well. Dwarf x big hill. Dwarf x Exserted Orange. Dwarf x habrochaites. Dunno. Probably going to see how the plants are going before planning any manual pollinations.
The best flavored tomato I’ve ever eaten was a dwarf variety. It’s called Mr snow. Unfortunately in my climate it is not very productive and seems extremely prone to disease. I usually grow it every year just so I can eat a few, but I typically only get two to three good tomatoes off of one plant.
This season I’ve grown out about 30 dwarfs I got from Patrina (co-DTP instigator) without any stakes or trellising On the whole they fruit way too heavily to be self supporting, so they flopped everywhere, with a fair bit of crawling insect damage. Flavour was very good on every line. Some were a bit shy in production.
I grow dwarf Mr. snow every year. It has an incredible fruit like taste. Production is low, but they don’t take much space. People really enjoy the dwarf plants I have found.
I managed to make my first dwarf cross in the winter of 2021-2022 and grow out the F1 in 2022. Mission Mountain Morning F1 x Aztek micro dwarf. I have four dwarf F2 plants from the cross that I am making crosses with. It is kind of fun! I have some other dwarf crosses in the F1, so should have several lines segregating out dwarfs in 2024. Also am making some new crosses with dwarfs.
Maybe cross it with something that grows really well for you, and see if you can select for offspring that will give you the flavor you love and better survivability?
Since you’re planning to grow Mr. Snow every year, I bet backcrossing the healthiest plants from such a cross to Mr. Snow every year would be a great way to achieve that goal.
I have several new dwarf crosses I am excited about for 2024. Some of my favorites are crosses with Payette and Sandpoint dwarf tomatoes from Idaho State Universities tomato breeding program. They were supposed to be resistant to a viral disease curly top virus from some early modern tomato breeding with wild species- and then somehow they ended up dwarf. It makes me feel like I am restarting the regional tomato breeding program which was last done by Art Boe who worked at both Idaho State and North Dakota State and last released a tomato variety in 1990 from North Dakota State.