Many have questioned the origin of tomatoes. There are a couple of wildly popular near wild tomatoes that are reportedly hardy and delicious. The tomatoes are very small. The last time i grew these small cherry type tomatoes, they were a lot of work to pick. They might be best grown in a raised bed. I’m not sure which one of these wild or near wild tomatoes i grew last time. Here are a couple of types to start with. Keep in mind that this forum is full of expert tomato growers who may know of others. Everglades Cherry Tomato and
MATTS WILD CHERRY TOMATO are widely available and sometimes used as rootstocks.
There are studies conducted with wild tomatoes
This is an idea what it is like to grow these wild plants
I sourced a few hundred wild tomato lines spread across about a dozen different species and grew them in 2013. There are some very significant genetic capabilities that we need to explore. One of the species has the most amazing root system I’ve seen. The roots literally could NOT be pulled out of the soil they were growing in. The plant would break before the roots would give. LA2533 has the ph3 gene for late blight tolerance. It is also a very good tasting pea size tomato. Matt’s Wild Cherry mentioned by Clark has ph2 which is less effective but still better than most heirloom tomatoes for late blight tolerance. Cherry tomatoes generally are sweeter than larger fruited tomatoes. This is simple physics, cherry tomatoes have more leaf cover relative to fruit load. I could name a few dozen other lines that are interesting for one reason or another. Solanum Habrochaites for example is adapted to Andes mountain heights up to about 10,000 feet. It is the most cold tolerant of the wild species. It also carries some incredibly valuable disease tolerance genes.
I grew Matt last year. it grew up the fence and into the fir tree from an area with full sun and little water.
it made a whole lot of really good, sweet, tiny tomatoes. it was my garden snack when the peas were done. I grew the basil right next to it so I’d wrap a tomato in a basil leaf and eat it.
for mass production I think it’s too hard to pick and collect them and they’re very small, but to eat, they’re very good and it was a low maintenance plant. the root and stalk are still sticking out of the ground where it was, I’ll be planting a cucuzzi there this year.
How are yours doing? The two that I ended up with in the garden include one red tomato with green shoulders and one yellow-orange one with green spots/stripes. Neither is particularly memorable (in either a good or bad way), but they are perfectly ok tomatoes. Here’s one of each sliced up:
I tried letting the yellow ones get more ripe (fully orange) but they turned to soft mealy mush by that stage, though a bit sweeter, so this seems better and they already taste fine.
I’m growing Matts Wild this year again. I’ve liked it in the past (i remember that and Tessa’s Land Race were small + abundant cherry tomatoes).
Not a wild one, but Barry’s Crazy was a more larger sized cherry and extremely prolific (40-60 flowers per trussle), but I never liked the flavor (maybe I grew in a bad spot though).
Here is a new one I’m trying thats crossed with a wild one:
I planted that one this season, too. It’s set some fruit, though it’ll be a while before any ripen in my cool climate. So far, the plant has remained a modest size. It’s much smaller than the Black Cherry next to it.
I just got my 1st fruits of the season today and ate one. I try and can take a pic with Sungold Select (that open-pollinated version of Sungold) to compare its size. Its definitely a smaller one (but larger than Matts Wild I think).
Still waiting on the first “Florida Wild Everglades” fruit to ripen, they have been slow to ripen despite being one of the earliest to start flowering.
I’m not particularly a fan of “Puerto Cortes” now that I’ve had a few. They are bland, not very sweet or tart, with their only notable quality being a tendency to make my tongue tingle when tomatoes don’t usually do that to me. Here’s a typical one:
They are very vigorous, though. And seem content to grow as a pile of vines even without supports. They are easily 3x larger plants than the Wild Everglades, which are almost like little bushes with thinner, wiry stems. I read that Wild Everglades is notable for producing well into the fall here in the PNW, though, so I’m guessing this is a slow-n-steady-wins-the-race kind of situation. I’ll add some photos of the plants at some point to show what I mean.
Give Lorelei a trial. It is a vigorous sweet red cherry tomato with pretty good flavor. Re Sungold, the flavor is derived from S. Habrochaites, one of the wild tomato species.
