Dwarf tomatoes

Now in late June, reporting on dwarf tomatoes. Three are not from the Dwarf Tomato Project - historic Dwarf Champion, German determinate historic Extreme Bush, and mid-50s Soviet open pollinated Alpatieva 905A. Extreme Bush and Alpatieva have some green 25cent size fruits. All are blooming. These are all about 20 inches tall.

Alpatieva 905A
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Extreme Bush
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BrandyFred is odd looking, blooming but nothing set yet, about 18 inches tall.
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Tanunda Dwarf Red, setting fruit now, also about 20 inches tall.

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Since the lowest leaves are near the ground,
I’m mulching plants that are in actual soil using brown paper (grocery bag). Ones in potting soil mix aren’t getting that because those mixes are so artificial Im hoping they are not infested with infectious tomato diseases.

The ones in containers are generally taller than the ones I planted in the ground - Dwarf CC McGee, Dwarf Johnson Cherry (setting fruit), Clare Valley Pink. Those are in the range of a foot to 18 inches so far. To compare, most of my conventional height indeterminates are 36 to 48 inches tall. Among those, fewer fruit have set, except Sugar Rush Cherry which has some ripening tomatoes, in time for my July 4th goal to eat a home grown tomato here in my often cool-ish maritime Pacific NW climate.

Last year, Early Girl Bush, a determinate hybrid, was probably my best producing plant, with medium size, good tasting tomatoes from early to late summer. I think it was only about 3 feet tall. It may not count as officially “dwarf”, but I think that variety will be worth another try next year.

The most important features will be tomato quality and productivity. My “Master Plan” for next year will be to add two more raised beds, with irrigation, for more disability accessible growing. If these dwarf and short growing determinates meet the challenge, I expect they will replace most of the regular heigh varieties in my garden in 2022. Also, one of my goals is focus more on varieties that I can save seeds for. Most of these, historic varieties and Dwarf Tomato Project varieties are candidates for saving seeds, as well.

I hope this is helpful. It’s difficult finding unbiased comparative information about these varieties.

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This was my 2021 experience with dwarf and “container friendly” tomatoes. My goals are good tasting tomatoes, good production, reduced work, minimal disease, and some novelty.

From “Dwarf Tomato Project” -

Dwarf CC McGee - True rugose potato leaf indeterminate dwarf. grew well in ground, not much disease, left off my irrigation so it didn’t thrive. Stayed under 2 feet tall. Delicious pale yellow tomatoes but not a lot of them. Needed Stake.

Brandyfred - True rugose potato leaf indeterminate dwarf. grew well in 10 gallon container. I had a brown paper mulch on this one and hand watered. Almost no disease, I did cut off low spotted leaves. Stayed under 3 feet tall, needed stake. Delicious Brandywine flavor tomatoes, large, maybe eight tomatoes over the summer.

Dwarf Tanunda Red - Indeterminate dwarf rugose regular leaf. Grew OK in 10 gallon container. Hand watered. Not the most productive, tomatoes were small, salad size, good flavor. Needed Stake.

Dwarf Clare Valley Pink - Indeterminate dwarf rugose regular leaf. Also was off my irrigation in the ground so not a fair test. Brown paper mulch. No disease to speak of. Small, salad size good flavor tomatoes but not many. This and CC McGee were in same bed as my Romas which were much more vigorous. Needed stake.

Dwarf Johnson Cherry Indeterminate Dwarf rugose regular leaf, pink cherry tomato. Stayed about 3 feet tall. These were in ground with taller tomatoes. Decent production of typical cherry size tomatoes, mild but good flavor. Not the super sweet super zingy I expect with a cherry after being spoiled by Supersweet 100 and Sungold but really quite nice. Needed stake.

Not Dwarf Tomato Project but still container size.

Dwarf Champion Improved - Indeterminate dwarf rugose leaf. Heirloom variety. Grew in 20 gallon container along with Extreme Bush Dwarf, had paper mulch and hand watered. grew about 40 inches tall. Small slicing size tomato, not huge. Pink, good flavor, not a stand out but will try again. No disease. Needed stake.

Extreme Bush Dwarf - Grew in several containers. Determinate dwarf. Heirloom variety. Odd looking plant due to harmless physiologic leaf curl. Highly productive, salad size red tomatoes, true tomato flavor. Quite tasty. Needed staking, No disease to speak of.

Alpatieva 905a - Very dwarfed, only about 20 inches tall. Determinate dwarf. Grew in container, hand watered. Very early, good tasting salad size tomatoes. Unfortunately, complete destruction of plant, very early, by blight. This was the most exciting (so early, so dwarf, so tasty) and most disappointing (disease magnet).

All of the above are open pollinated, so seed saving is possible. The potato leaf types have open flowers so might not be true to type if honeybees transfer pollen. I never saw bees on them.

For 2022, I have high raised beds set up, and will put in a support system early. They will be drip irrigated and have brown paper mulch. They all need to be staked but not as much as non-dwarf types. I used brown paper mulch in 2021 for Romas, which did great and no disease, minimal irrigation. So I think that should help.

For 2022, I’ll use my home-saved seeds from Dwarf Champion Improved, Dwarf CC McGee, Dwarf Brandyfred, Dwarf Johnson Cherry, Dwarf Extreme Bush. I already bought seeds for other types, not Dwarf Tomato Project but possibly sharing the same brachytic ancestor, heritage, roughly century old open pollinated varieties - Livingston’s Dwarf Stone, Burpee Golden Dwarf Champion, and New Big Dwarf. I will also grow two very modern, disease resistant, determinate hybrids that are not “dwarf” per se but should be fairly compact bushes, Bush Early Girl (I grew before. Bush Early Girl, one of my most highly productive plants, good tasting, no disease without special protection) and Bush Early Boy. I have space for about a dozen plants. I like saving my own seeds - free, no supply chain issues, you know what you get, no postage - but some hybrids are hard to beat.

I think some of the dwarf types and other compact varieties have a lot of promise for accessible gardening. In 2020, I had more from my Early Girl Bush than I did from Better Boy, and in 2021 the best flavor and largest tomatoes, although not productive, were Brandyfred and Dwarf CC McGee. Dwarf Extreme Bush kept us supplied with sandwich and sliced tomatoes for most of the summer, with excellent flavor. They still need support, but much less, and the open pollinated ones probably mostly need paper or plastic mulch and non-splashing watering method to avoid disease. I think I’ll have a better system in place with high raised beds already built, a sort of 2 or three level horizontal trellis, brown paper mulch and drip irrigation. I might try to make a Sungold into a “bush” by pruning off the top at, say, a foot tall then pinching out the branch tips so it’s sort of like a determinate, because those are such good cherry tomatoes.

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Thank you for posting this report. Last year was my first time growing a dwarf tomato (Bushsteak). It was unintentional (a freebie seed packet) but they did much better in containers than non-dwarf varieties. A very nice slicer tomato. Kept producing well into Fall. I’ll be growing more dwarfs this year.

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@urbangardener, it’s challenging to find much non-hype info out there, and there are so many types. You can search on “Dwarf Tomato Project” for info on some. Victory Seeds has what I think are good descriptions and histories that are not too much hype. But I think it pays to share experiences. Since the stems are shorter, their lower leaves are closer to the ground and more effort is needed to avoid splashing soil onto the leaves. That’s why I use a brown paper mulch but plastic would work. Also ground level watering, either drip irrigation or hand watering so the leaves mostly stay dry. Growing in containers, if potting soil is fresh and doesn’t contain garden soil, disease is also less likely. Also modern hybrids may have better disease resistance. However, there is also something nice about saving seeds, which they say doesn’t work out for hybrids. Plus I like the heritage types a lot. Thanks for the info about Bushsteak.

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Thanks for the info, I will read up on them. I just re-read the description of Bushsteak and it is determinate. In my experience, the ripening was very staggered spanning a couple of months. One of them was planted in a hay bale and did pretty well.

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Curious if anyone has any variety recommendations for those that might do well in Northern Colorado or a similar climate? I have a list of about 40 from the Dwarf Tomato Project that I will probably try to trial here next year, but I figured I’d ask.

I’m a firm believer in regionally adapted seeds, so a variety that grows well and tastes well for someone in a far-off place might not do well or taste good for me here.

Good flavor in dwarf tomatoes is a bit rare. Russian Red, Perth Pride, and Boronia are worth growing. There are half a dozen others that are available from various sellers that also have good flavor.

This is my 2022 experience with brachytic dwarf, open pollinated tomato varieties. This year I grew them in a tall raised bed, about two feet high. I gave each a 1/4 cup dose of Dr. Earth vegetable fertilizer when I planted them. These had drip irrigation, and a cardboard mulch covering all of the soil as well as covering the drip emitters. I used stakes to keep the plants vertical, definitely needed.

I used that strategy to avoid splashing soil borne disease onto the leaves, as well as reducing my own labor by a lot. I always do a crop rotation, this year’s beds with alliums, beans, and greens get tomatoes and peppers next year, and vice versa. The soil is organic, supplemented with bone & wood ash, coffee grounds, crushed eggshell, and biochar. Weather was generally hot, dry, smoky.

Here is what the bed looked like in June, before they really took off and grew.

The sharpie labels on cardboard didn’t last. The cardboard lasted all summer. Butcher paper, used on other beds, rotted away too quickly.

I grew from my own saved seeds, the varieties Dwarf Champion Improved, Dwarf CC McGee, Dwarf BrandyFred, Extreme Bush, and Dwarf Tanunda Red.
I grew from bought seeds, New Big Dwarf, Livingston Dwarf Stone, Dwarf Golden Champion, and non-dwarf but determinate Bush Early Girl, Bush Early Boy, Reisentraube, and Sungold. I pruned the Reisentraube and Sungold to grow in a bush shape, contrary to all tomato growing wisdom out there, but I wanted reasonably compact plants.

I didn’t keep great records, but my impressions and memories are below.

First, Extreme Bush was again the earliest of my tomatoes, highly dwarf (under 18 inches tall), produced salad size, very good tasting tomatoes all summer long.

I don’t know why, but Early Girl Bush and Bush Early Boy were not that early or productive for me. Especially Early Girl Bush in the past was a real workhorse. They also didn’t have the flavor of the open pollinated ones.

Image below, the yellow one is Dwarf Golden Champion, the orange ones are Sungold, the biggest id Tanunda Red (one of the smaller fruits on that plant), the red ones on the edges are Improved Dwarf Champion, and the red ones mixed with Sungold are Reisentraube.

I often could not stay outside to observe (long story, this area allows outdoor brush/grass burning, I’m downwind of that, and is often too polluted for me to spend a lot of time outdoors, even when there are no forest fires). However, my impressions are -

All of the dwarf types stayed under two to three feet tall. There were no disease issues using these methods. All had similar production, although some tended to be too late for me to get full use (New Big Dwarf, Livingston Dwarf Stone, Dwarf CC McGee)

Of the yellow tomatoes, Golden Bush Champion had more tomatoes earlier, and they were more useable, compared to Dwarf CC McGee. Flavor of the two was similar. The Golden Bush Champion (yellow, pictured above) were nice round tomatoes. CCMcGee were really lumpy, OK for some uses but not as easy to slice.

Tanunda Red were easily the largest and most productive, excellent heirloom flavor. Improved Dwarf Champion were fairly small, perfect round, pink tomatoes, good production and very good flavor. BrandyFred were easily the richest flavor, big tomatoes, not a lot of them, maybe a dozen over the season.

The bush-pruned Reisentraube tomatoes were very productive, very tomato-flavored (not just sweet/sour of a lot of cherry tomatoes), and very productive. They were bigger than Sungold. Sungold was very productive as a bush pruned vine, no complaints. People love Sungold although for me they don’t have a classic tomato taste. It’s still really vigorous and was a challenge to keep pruned as a bush.

One wasn’t in the main bed, Dwarf Johnson Cherry. It did not do well, bet neither did other species of plants that I grew in that same locally bought raised bed soil mix. So I think the problem was the soil, not the variety.

My conclusions for 2022-

Grown as I described, there were no disease problems at all. (Side note, I grew sauce tomatoes the same way, except I let them sprawl on the cardboard. Also no disease problems). Also no weed problems, and despite some disability on my part, the plants were much easier to maintain than non-dwarf tomato plants. Production was good, with more than enough for fresh eating for two, all summer long, plus many tomatoes to give away and five tomato pies.

For next year, I again saved seeds for BrandyFred, Improved Dwarf Champion, Tanunda Red, Extreme Bush, Dwarf Golden Champion and Reisentraube.

I’d like to shift production to a bit earlier, so I ordered seeds for Chocolate Champion (70 days), Dwarf Moliagul Moon (75 days), and Puck (40-50 days). Even though the tomatoes are very good, I’ll probably not grow Livingston Dwarf Stone (85 days), New Big Dwarf (90 days), or Dwarf CC McGee (“late season”). I think I’ll also not bother with Bush Early Girl or Early Boy Bush, which didn’t do well for me and had no advantages over the open pollinated, brachytic dwarf indeterminate types. I do think I’ll repeat my bush pruning experiment with Sungold and Reisentraube, and might add to that Ukraine Purple which I like a lot too.

Since my rotations can be intense and space is limited, I’m also growing a winter green manure crop of Nemagon mustard, for organic matter and for the pest / disease risk reduction. I also chopped a crop of marigolds and turned them under, before planting the mustard. I’m not saying that I know these things work, but I figure the organic matter at least is beneficial and I’m at least not bringing in potentially herbicide-contaminated or disease-containing compost.

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Not a dwarf, but I guess a ‘semi-determinate’… as close to a ‘dwarf’ as I’ m probably gonna grow… ‘Garden Gem’ from the UofFL breeding program has performed very well here for the past 3-4 years. Vines max out at about 3.5-4 ft, heavy production of medium size ‘Roma’ type tomatoes with GREAT! flavor… and they keep exceptionally well, both on the vine and in storage.

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I ordered Extreme Bush and Dwarf Stony Brook Speckled. Both already were delivered. I plan on starting them in Feb.

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@wildscaper

Drew,

I ordered some Tiny Tim Tomato seeds i plan to use with aquaponics and hydroponics. Need small plants for obvious reasons