Everglades Tomato
I stumbled upon this tomato and it looks to be fantastic for an area that i want to turn into a wild food forest for me and the chickens. I basically want to grow stuff here that needs little or no maintenance… the land is undesirable to garden anyways. From what i gather it will do good for me here in zone 6B. Thoughts? Also open to other things like this that provide lots of food for very little maintenance or input.
Sounds like a nerd that never grew a garden until he got married and now
he’s excited to share the things he’s ‘discovering’ with the world.
But an everbearing tomato in zone 6?
Not unless you have a heated greenhouse.
Maybe everbearing isnt the right word… but a tomato that produces from spring til first frost…then reseeds itself and starts all over again is the word i was looking for… maybe Invasive Tomato would be a better term?
@krismoriah, thanks for showing that interesting plant. It has a Wikipedia entry that’s interesting too.
Tomatoes do come up volunteer all of the time. Maybe you could grow a less invasive currant or cherry tomato. I don’t know about any bearing in the Spring. My earliest tomatoes usually start in July but I have a cool climate situation.
im ok with invasive for this particular plot. The more fodder for the chickens the better. being able to walk and pick food from this plot for myself is a bonus.
My thinking is to get a big stand of this going then go in and slash a couple of wheel barrows full of vines and fruits and dump in the chicken yard… eating a handful of them as i slash is the bonus.
@Bear_with_me i dont see the wiki page…link?
This is an interesting bit of info on it…
"These delectable tomatoes have now been grown in all 50 states, Canada, Mexico as well as several Caribbean islands "
I have a yellow ‘cherry’ tomato that volunteers and comes back year after year…at least it does in slightly disturbed soil, not sure about in a wooded setting though.
I would say there is nothing particularly impressive about these myself. Many currant types are also S. pimpinellifolium and I grew one last year called Mini Parvula (possibly a cross). Previously I’ve grown Ted’s Pink Currant.
I’ve found many cherry types to be just as sprawling and vigorous, the “pimps” weren’t significantly earlier than any of the cherry tomatoes I’ve grown and frankly I don’t think they taste as good as most cherry types and are more of a pain to pick. They often tear instead of popping off at the stem, so can be messy and don’t keep as well. I didn’t see any more volunteers growing where these have been than I have seen with most cherry types. The video seems greatly exaggerated, which is on par with YouTube videos.
If it was me, I would just scatter a bunch of cheap cherry tomato seeds (or just collect a bunch from store-bought cherry tomatoes) and let some come up this year and leave enough so that you are sure to get volunteers. You get larger, better-tasting tomatoes with very similar properties based on what I’ve seen when growing them.
@Fusion_power has grown pretty much every tomato type every known so maybe he’ll have some good insight.
The Everglades tomato goes around about every 3 or 4 years. It has been discussed ad infinitum. Short version, not a particularly good tomato, not a particularly disease tolerant tomato.
A few years ago, I got some S. Pimpinellifolium seed from TGRC and one of them was particularly well adapted to my area. Birds ate the fruit and scattered the seed including in a drainage ditch by my neighbor’s house. They “went wild” and started re-seeding and producing tons of pea size fruits. They had such good flavor he would walk by and pick them by the handfull. The city was not so impressed. They sprayed to kill the “weeds” and wiped them out.
On a separate note, I released a cherry tomato last year that is somewhat worth growing. I named it Lorelei. There are several other cherry size tomatoes that are worth growing such as Matt’s Wild. They won’t make a tomato sandwich, but are decent for snacking and salads.
I don’t think there is any such thing as a cherry tomato that is nothing less than an invasive species.
Since you mentioned you are open to other things, I’d suggest considering ground cherries (AKA husk cherries, etc.) as well. They definitely become permanent through reseeding every year. I planted 4 years ago and more pop up every year. They’re easy enough to weed out when you don’t want them. They’re also a bit easier to harvest since you can just shake them and pick up what ever falls to the ground.
These arent for my personal garden… they looked appealing because of them being prolific and wild which is somewhat the end goal for a useless piece of ground that i want to grow things for chickens that need very little attention.
There is a guy on Ebay selling wild landrace tomatoes too… but if any cherry tomato does the same thing then im open to that too.
Looks like any of indeterminate tomatoes would fit the bill. I like Black Cherry tomatoes, they are bigger than regular cherry tomatoes, but not self seeding. Planting them every year. They are growing like crazy, I keep pruning them and removing suckers.
I know i grew Super Sweet 100 tomatoes about 4 years ago and i still see them pop up…because i composted all of the bushes in the fall… im not sure if i will ever fully be rid of them.
So makes sense now… pick a more desirable indeterminate and it will do the same thing…
I am growing Black Cherry and SunSugar in the spring…so may as well go with those.
I love Black Cherry also. (But, it doesn’t re-seed).
i grew A
unt Mollys and Niagara ground cherry last summer. both tasted very good. i grew them in the greenhouse so i shouldn’t have any volunteers. i will grow them again next summer. my nearly 2 yr. old niece loves them. once we showed her how to find them, she would help herself. also loved my alpine strawberries.
I just read this description and it sounds like what im after.
Matt’s Wild Cherry-The most vigorous and prolific tomato plant I have ever grown! Massive vines yield constant loads of small, bright red cherry tomatoes. The original seed was collected in the wild near Hidalgo in eastern Mexico. It will often reseed on its own in your yard. Delicious, sweet flavor.
Also GoldRush and Wild Sweetie seem to be in the same ballpark as going bonkers.