I grew new big dwarf last year and we liked it - this year I’m going to try Perth’s pride.
What are your favorite dwarf tomatoes and why?
Thank you.
Rosella purple is my wife’s favorite tomato, and my second favorite. It is so smokey and rich that it tastes like bacon on a sandwich. It is softer so I would cut it thick. Very meaty. Oblate red/ purple tomato with meaty interior.
My favorite is Lemon Ice, but the plants are smaller and tend to be less robust against disease. Bright and acidic, with deep MSG umami flavors. Excellent slicer and dicer since it can be firmer. They also store really well. Heart shaped, yellow tomato with very few seeds. The smallest plant of the dwarves I grow, but medium sized tomatoes.
I still reccomend Tasmanian Chocolate since it seems so bullet proof here, and it is very productive while being richly flavored, though not as intense as Rosella. Very juicy.
I’ve had a couple of green ones, green emerald giant was the best one but I don’t like them as much. Much less pest and disease pressure on the green ones.
Dwarf eagle smiley basically isn’t a dwarf. Flavor and production is great on them, much like sungold but with more acidity and less fruity flavor.
Wherokowhai was pretty bland for me, though it did look cool.
Loxton lass was pretty mild and didn’t produce well.
Sweet scarlet didn’t produce well for me and were not as good as Rutgers.
Sneaky sauce was mild and not good fresh.
Stoney Brook heart made gigantic tomatoes that were the sweetest I have had. It made good sauce, but was pretty bad fresh and a lot of them had BER.
Melanies Ballet was good, but not as good as Rutgers. Well balanced and very productive.
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None are all true dwarf. All three are new but not newer indeterminate bar one. Which is a fairly old type.
Dirty Little Chicken. Great production. Very good tartish taste.
Very close to it is Lucinda. Very good tart taste and complexity. But with a cool carrot leaf plant. Superb production again.
And yet another high flavor greenish. Dwarf Saucy Mary. Super juicy. A step up is flavor over the other two.
All 3 handle the heat well. All are bigger then cherries and can get 6-7 once. The only other green tomato I like is Absinthe. Which is a big plant.
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I agree with @Wethinkyoushouldgrow that Rosella purple is a winner. Just be careful to be buying the dwarf and be aware there is also a rosella that is an indeterminate cherry that is somewhat similar to black cherry/chocolate cherry but smaller fruited. I think there is also a Rosella crimson dwarf, but I haven’t tried that one.
I’ve grown a bunch over the years and the one I’ve been most consistently impressed with is Tennessee Suited, which is a striped dark tomato with great flavor and texture and reasonably good disease resistance. It is a very pretty fruit as well. Another that I’ve grown several years in a row and liked is Walter’s Fancy, which has variegated foliage so it is interesting visually and has very nice pale yellow 6-12 oz fruit. I generally find most yellow tomatoes to be on the blander side, but this is one of the better yellows I’ve had and is more flavorful to me than other yellows like Kellog’s Breakfast, Brandywine Yellow, etc. Not a dwarf, but my all time favorite yellow is Limmony.
While I like the stocky look and growth of the dwarfs it does appear to come at a cost here in the humid Mid-Atlantic. The dense growth seems to be more susceptible to blights, etc. since the air doesn’t circulate through as easily and some of the foliage often touches other leaves. Tennessee Suited and Walter’s Fancy seem better than many of the others I’ve grown in that respect as well, but several, such as the well reviewed Brandy Fred, I gave up on after trying them a couple years and not getting much of a harvest before they died.
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Thank you for the pics!
Do you happen to have seeds to trade or buy of those two?
I have a lot of seeds of different things, anything you are looking for?
Last year was my first time growing dwarfs, did two Tasman Chocolates in 5gal pots I scrounged up. Had them on my sunny deck in dry, relatively cool climate with morning fog. I got them from my county master gardener’s annual sale
They were by far my most prolific producers even with heavy rodent damage. Arguably they were the best tasters of last year as well. I’ve moved to a hotter, sunnier climate but will still be trying them again
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