Saving Micro Tom from extinction

Micro Tom is a miniature dwarf variety of determinate tomato plant, it is the smallest recognised variety of tomato plant in the world.  

Micro Tom does not grow the smallest tomatoes, that record goes to some larger tomato plants, Micro Tom grows the smallest tomato plant.  From everything I have read it grows a reasonable number of good sized cherry tomatoes on a tiny plant that grows to 6 inches tall at most.  Many growers claim that Micro Tom never exceeds 2 inches (about 5cm) tall for them.

Micro Tom tomato starting to flower

Such a tiny plant sounds great to use for childrens gardens, or being grown by balcony farmers as well as people who would like to grow some produce on the kitchen window.  Many elderly people who can no longer garden would still be able to tend to micro tomatoes in a window box or similar.  Being so small means that Micro Tom can be grown in a cup of soil on a window and still produce an edible harvest, people who are renting tiny apartments will still be able to grow these beauties.  Even though one will never feed their entire family from micro tomatoes, I think they are still extremely useful.

Having such a unique set of genes also lends itself well to breeding small varieties of tomato or even using as a dwarfing rootstock on which to graft larger varieties.  The days of having a lot of space to allow plants to sprawl are over unfortunately, we need to breed great tasting smaller vegetable plants or graft onto dwarfing rootstock.  Many of the better tasting dwarf tomatoes still reach 4 to 5 feet tall and are simply too large for balconies.  This is where Micro Tom and other micro tomatoes will become increasingly important.

A few years ago, probably about 10 years, tomato seeds stopped being legal to import into Australia due to quarantine restrictions.  This means that whatever varieties we have now (or anything we can breed from them) are the only varieties that we will ever have.  This also means that people may have some old packets of tomato seed in their cupboards that they imported years ago which may be the only seeds of that particular variety in Australia.  It is important that these varieties are not allowed to go extinct in Australia because if they do we will lose them and their unique genes forever.

Micro Tom seedling

I searched for Micro Tom seeds or plants in Australia.  Overseas many seed sellers carry them but nowhere in Australia had them.  I spoke to some seed savers and they had never heard of them.  I started to think perhaps Micro Tom was not here.  After some of the conversations I had with experienced seed savers it started to seem likely that no micro tomatoes were in Australia.

Eventually I found a very generous grower who said he grew them about 10 years ago and could send me the old seeds, but he could not guarantee they would grow.  He used to sell tomato seedlings at markets and would give away Micro Tom plants to kids whose parents bought plants from him.  What a great idea!  They were so small that they can produce fruit even if grown in a plastic cup of soil with drainage holes.  That very generous person actually sent me the entire remains of the seed packet that he had imported years earlier, we can work out how long he has owned the seeds but have no way of knowing how old they were before the seed company sold them to him.

The old Micro Tom seed packet only had about 9 seeds, given the age of the seeds and probable low (or no) germination rates this means I had to make every seed count.  Being so old I did not want to wait another 9 months until Spring while the seeds age even further to sow them in fear that they would then be too old to germinate.  Being the end of Summer it was not the right time to plant tomatoes so I did not want to waste my only chance by sowing them then and having the plant flower when it is too cold to set fruit.

Having such a low number of seeds meant I had to make a difficult decision.  I wanted to ensure my best chances of growing these and bringing them back from the brink of extinction in Australia, so I decided to plant 3 of these precious seeds straight away on January 31 and hope to get them to produce fruit in time, save the rest of the seeds to plant the following Spring and hope they are not too old to grow.  That seems like the most likely way I can have a positive outcome from this endeavor.

I read about growing old seeds and did a few things to help them, out of the 3 old seeds planted 1 germinated about a week later.  I gave them plenty of time (several months) but the other 2 seeds never germinated, but that one seed germinating so fast gives me hope that I may be able to get some of the others to grow in Spring. 

Micro Tom ready for transplant

This one tiny seedling did not grow very fast, but it looked healthy.  I grow everything organically here, but due to the tight time constraints here I decided to buy a small container of fertiliser and have used it on this one plant.  When the seedling got a little larger I planted it into a pot so that I could move it and protect it as best I could.  Then we had some cool nights down to about 2 degrees and I feared an early frost.  Early frost will not kill the plant as it would be under shelter over night, but it may stop flowers from forming fruit and if it does not produce viable seed then there is trouble.

I have read that Micro Tom takes around 50 days to maturity.  Unfortunately this means nothing to me.  The stated days to maturity for tomatoes are generally days from a 30cm tall plant being transplanted until maturity.  Micro Tom never reaches 30cm tall, I transplanted mine at around 1cm or 2cm tall.  An overseas breeder tells me that Micro Tom takes around 120 days to picking the first fruit from planting the seed.  This means if all goes well the first fruit would be ripe around the end of May.  Given the cooler nights and lowering day time temperatures this may be pushed back further.

Micro Tom 3cm tall and starting to flower

I had started to move Micro Tom into the sun during the day and put it under the verandah next to the warmer mud brick for protection at night.  As the days were cooling I think the plant will grow slower, so I left it in sunlight during the day and moved it into the laundry at night.

The laundry is slightly warmer than the verandah and it has access to electricity.  I have a grow light hooked up and this shines on the Micro Tom plant over night which hopefully will help it grow a little faster as it will be getting more light each day.  People often complain about cheap grow lights not having the right spectrum light, but as it is still getting some natural sunlight most days and the grow light were merely supplemental light this should not be too much of an issue.  The grow light emits some heat as well as light, so the plant and its roots should stay slightly warmer over night.

Micro Tom, such a tiny plant with such massive potential

This tiny Micro Tom plant started to flower at around 2cm to 3cm tall, assuming that any of the flowers work and set fruit I plan to save every seed that this plant produces so that I can do a larger grow out in Spring and get enough seed to distribute.  In Spring I also plan on sowing the remaining few seeds in the old packet, hopefully I end up with a decent number of plants and a good number of fresh seeds.

I doubt Micro Tom will grow a great deal taller than this

I dont grow novelty vegetables or ornamental plants very much, I usually prefer productive edible plants.  Some of my favourite plants (such as perennial leeks or yacon) provide massive yields of food throughout the year.  Somehow Micro Tom has captured my heart, I find it to be a delightful little plant and hope that I can bring it back to popularity in Australia.  I grew the plant in the photos using a 7cm pot of soil.

 I also have great breeding plans (once I have saved enough seed that I am not worried about losing this variety) of using it to create new varieties of micro tomatoes that are higher yielding as well as perhaps creating some different coloured micro tomatoes or some with higher sugar contents etc.

I have plans of incorporating the multiflora gene into any new variety of micro tomato, that way balcony farmers should be able to grow exponentially more tomatoes from the same tiny space.  I have a good tasting dwarf multiflora tomato that I want to use as the other parent in this cross.  Incorporating the multiflora gene into micro tomatoes, in my mind, will be the ultimate goal for every micro tomato breeding venture as it will maximise the use of limited space ensuring the largest possible crop from each plant.

I would be keen in the future to breed some parthenocarpic micro tomatoes which will set fruit in cold weather even if the flowers are not pollinated.  I would love to use Micro Tom as a rootstock for a large fruiting tomato such as Giant Siberian Pink and see if I can grow a very small plant with huge tomatoes. Only time will tell if I get around to these projects though.

Micro Tom, getting slightly larger and flowering well

There are many useful possibilities that simply would never happen if we have no micro tomato breeding stock in Australia.  If you have any old packets of vegetable seeds that you have not seen around in a few years please grow them and save seeds as you may be the last in our country to have them.  If this is not possible then please consider donating them to someone else who will grow them and save their seeds.  We dont want to lose too many more vegetable varieties in Australia!

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Best Heirloom Tomatoes part 1

This year I grew a few different types of heirloom tomato, I figured I would write a comparison between how they went in my garden.  There are a few that are not listed here as I kind of want to keep them under my hat for now, or they are not yet stable so their details are not going to be relevant just yet.  Most varieties listed are regular leaf and indeterminate, if anything was potato leaf or determinate I have written it in italics.  If any variety is what I consider to be a dwarf variety I have also included that in italics.

Heirloom tomatoes

Many seed sellers tell you the days to maturity, unfortunately what they mean is days from when the seedling is 30cm tall and transplanted into the ground to maturity.  They never tell you how long from sowing the seed until the first fruit.  I know of one variety that is often stated as 55 days to maturity from transplant but 120 days from seed.  Obviously a host of variables can change the days to maturity, but I would find it more useful to tell me from seed to the first ripe fruit which is why I have used those dates here.

Quite often seed catalogues write glowing reviews even for substandard tomatoes with poor taste and low yields, I have tried not to do that and if I dont like it or found something that could be better I have said so.  Some I wont save seeds from or grow again, others have merit so will get another chance or be used as breeding material to develop something better.

Tomato flowers from a productive variety

All seeds were sown the same day on 9 August 2014 without heat, all seedlings were transplanted into the vegetable garden about 7 weeks later when the majority were 15 to 20 cm tall (they were all planted out on the same day, some were larger than others).  I have included the date the first fruit ripened after the variety name.  They are listed in order that their first fruit ripened, sometimes there was a large delay from first fruit to any subsequent fruit, this has been noted.

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Reisetomate tomatoes

Reisetomate (25/12/2014) was overwintered and was the first tomato to ripen any fruit, this is not characteristic of the variety as the seed grown plant took about 2 months longer.  This was the only tomato I overwintered this year.  The deep red fruit are odd lobed shapes that can be pulled apart like the segments of an orange.  The taste is sour and intense and the tomatoes look interesting.  This plant produces a large yield, it has regular leaf and is semi determinate, it is my favourite red tomato.

Snow White tomatoes - usually more pale than the picture

Snow White (07/01/2015) was the first of the seedling plants to grow ripe fruit in my garden, it took about 5 months from sowing the seed to harvesting the first fruit.  Perhaps I will overwinter this and see how early I can get tomatoes next Summer.  The fruit is round and white if it does not get sun and slightly yellow if the sun hits the fruit.  The flesh tastes very sweet and fruity, the seeds/gel taste a little sour which compliments the sweet nicely, a real winner.  This is a great cherry tomato which was loved by everyone who tasted it.  This plant produces a very large yield over a long season, it has regular leaf and is indeterminate.

Juane Flamee, some small

Juane Flamee, some large

Juane Flamee (spelled various ways) (12/01/2015) was the second seed grown plant to produce ripe fruit.  It is said to be one of the best tasting tomatoes, I think it is certainly very good but not overly great, I think people love it because of the high yields it gives.  The fruit is round and orange, as can be seen by the pictures above the fruit size is rather inconsistent.  This plant produces a very large yield over a long season, it has regular leaf and is indeterminate.

Yellow pear, mostly brighter yellow than the picture

Yellow Pear (12/01/2015)  is a variety that I have been keeping for years, it grows nice looking yellow pear shaped tomatoes.  The plant grows huge and is a real survivor that has proven itself over many years of harsh conditions.  The sweet tomatoes are great for eating fresh or in salads and look beautiful.  This plant produces a massive yield (both in terms of number of tomatoes as well as overall weight of tomatoes) over a very long season, it has regular leaf and is indeterminate.

Black Russian, often cracks like this

Black Russian (29/01/2015) is one of the most over rated heirloom tomatoes ever grown, certainly not the best tasting black tomatoes I have ever eaten.  It still tastes much better than anything from a shop.  The fruit is prone to splitting and cracking but that does not matter much.  The plant produced a lot of flowers that simply aborted and produced no fruit even in good conditions with masses of pollinators.  It is said to be an early variety but took about 3 weeks longer than Snow White, Juane Flammee and Yellow Pear.  January 29 was the date of the first ripe tomato, it did not give a second tomato until 14 February which puts it behind Speckled Roman!  The colour of the fruit is amazing and they are a good size, unfortunately the taste, yield and time it takes to mature let it down.  This plant produced a small yield over a short and broken season, it has regular leaf and is indeterminate.

Tigrella, the colours are far more vivid than the picture

Tigrella (04/02/2015) is a great little tomato, it looked beautiful and tastes great.  The round stripey fruit had a dark seed cavity and were pretty consistent in size, most were a little larger than the picture.  The taste was a little stronger and more sour than Juane Flamee and it produced less tomatoes too.  The plant produced a reasonably large yield over a long season, it has regular leaf and is indeterminate.

Roprecco Paste, most were a bit larger than this

Roprecco Paste, a good tomato

Ropreco Paste (06/02/2015) is a good tomato, it looks much like a Roma tomato and tastes like a great Roma tomato.  The tomatoes are a good size and nice shape, most were slightly larger than pictured.  I liked to eat these fresh or in sandwiches, they can make a decent sauce, soup or paste due to their rich tomato taste.  This plant produced a reasonable yield over a short season, it has regular leaf and is determinate.

Malakhitovaya Shkatulka, delicious!

 Malakhitovaya Shkatulka (06/02/2015) is a great tomato which I cant believe is not grown more commonly in Australia.  The size and shape of the fruit lend it to slicing for sandwiches etc, the taste is absolutely amazing, probably the best tasting tomato ever grown.  Everyone who tasted this loved it.  It is difficult to tell when they are ripe from a distance, but simple enough when you are close enough to touch them.  I wish that it was higher yielding as they taste so great.  Birds leave the ripe fruit alone as it is green.  The name of this variety is kind of fun to say but difficult to spell.  This plant produced a medium to low yield over a long season, it has regular leaf and is indeterminate.

Julia Child, large pink soft fruit

Julia Child (08/02/2015) grows the softest tomatoes I have ever seen, the flesh is like soft butter.  It has very few seeds and a nice taste.  The pinky red round tomatoes are large and rather pretty.  They are perhaps too large as they hang on the plant for a long time ripening and may be attacked by insect pests etc during that time.  The plants itself looked lush and ornamental, it could grow by the front door and would not look out of place.  This plant produced a high yield over a long season, it has potato leaf and is indeterminate.

Unnamed red cherry

Unnamed cherry tomato (08/02/2015), these were given to me at a fete, I didnt want to grow an unknown variety but accepted them as I did not want to be rude.  I disliked them last year but figured I give them another go this year as a comparison.  The plant looks nice as do the trusses of 6 small perfect round red cherry tomatoes.  This plant is why I try to never grow unknown varieties of tomato unless they are someones family heirloom or something that someone has assured me is worth growing.  They tasted terrible (comparatively) and are low yielding.  I will not save seed from this horrible plant and will not grow them again.

Hillbilly - very glossy

Hillbilly

Hillbilly (12/02/2014) has firm flesh that is reasonably dry and smells great.  Tastes similar to a store bought tomato but much better, it smells fruity somehow.  The fruit is uniform in size and shape, good size for slicing onto a piece of bread.  The orange/yellow glossy fruit is interesting to look at but may cause people to turn up their nose as it is not red.  Probably not my favourite tomato this year but still pretty good, far better than most people have ever tasted.  This plant produced a medium yield over the season, it has regular leaf and is indeterminate.

Giant Siberian Pink

Giant Siberian Pink

Giant Siberian Pink (12/02/2014) these grew some large tomatoes!  Wow, look at those things.  They were pretty uniform in large size and most were very round.  I am not overly fond of large tomatoes as they hang on the plant so long to ripen and a lot can go wrong during that time.  They look suspiciously like Julia Child, I could not tell them apart by sight, but the texture could not be more different.  Firm flesh, it has a lot more seeds than Julia Child.  This plant produced a medium to large yield (medium number of fruit, super large size) over the season, it has regular leaf and is indeterminate.

Unnamed Red Stuffer

Unnamed Red Stuffer

Unnamed Red Stuffer (12/02/2014) red round medium sized fruit that is hollow.  The seeds stick together in a tight clump in the middle and are simple to remove making this a good stuffing tomato.  They tasted much like a store bought tomato before they were completely ripe, their taste intensified a lot after they ripened properly.  Even though this is a stuffing tomato it still went well on a sandwich.  I dont think this variety is stable yet.  This plant produced a medium yield over the season, it has regular leaf and is indeterminate.

Yellow

Yellow (12/02/2014) beautiful medium to large yellow fruit sometimes with green shoulders.  The plant was one of the first to flower but the fruit took a long time to ripen which is a negative as the fruit hangs so long.  The flesh was soft and moist, they taste pretty amazing and are low acid.  This is one of the most useful and best tasting tomatoes that I grew this year.  I think this variety is stable now.  I really like this variety for a number of reasons.  The fruit splits a little but that doesnt seem to affect the storage time.  This plant produced a medium to large yield over the season, it has regular leaf and is indeterminate.

Speckled Roman, more beautiful in real life

Speckled Roman

Speckled Roman (13/02/2015) stunningly beautiful looking red roma style tomatoes with yellow/orange stripes.  Each tomato has unique swirls, stripes and patterns inside the fruit with very few seeds.  It has a deep rich tomato taste, it is meant to make a great paste or sauce and I love it on a sandwich, much like a great tasting roma tomato that looks amazing.  I prefer this to Roprecco Paste as it tastes better, looks better, has larger fruit, and is indeterminate.  Roprecco paste seems to have a higher yield than this one but this provides fruit over a longer season instead of all at once so ther is a trade off to be made.  This plant produced a decent yield over the season, it has regular leaf and is indeterminate.

Pineapple some had much more red

Pineapple tomato

Pineapple (17/02/2015) not quite round, yellow orange (to red) bicolour that looked nice.  Some fruit were as large as the Giant Siberian Pink, others much smaller.  The inside of the fruit was also pretty with swirls of colour through the yellow.  Some tomatoes had a thick core that had to be removed before eating, others from the same plant did not.  Flesh was very firm, dry and contained few seeds.  This plant produced a good yield over the season, it has regular leaf and is indeterminate.

Reisetomate - not quite ripe

Reisetomate fruit

Reisetomate, every fruit is unique and beautiful

Reisetomate (19/02/2015) first fruit from seed grown plants ripened about 2 months after the overwintered plant.  Fruit ranges in size/shape/number of lobes quite a bit.  I love this tomato, it tastes so intense, even a little on a sandwich with a more bland tomato livens things up a lot.  The deep red fruit has odd lobed shapes that can be pulled apart like the segments of an orange, the flowers and fruit look very unique and interesting.  This plant produces a large yield, it has regular leaf and is semi determinate.

This post is getting a bit long, I have been writing it since December though.  I will end here and continue this post in Best Heirloom Tomatoes 2014-2015 part 2

I may sell some of these seeds, if you are interested please look on my For Sale page.

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Snow White heirloom tomatoes

This year I am growing a bunch of different varieties of mostly heirloom tomatoes, some are incredibly difficult to find while others are far more common.  I will try to write a post comparing them all later in the season once they have all ripened or decided not to ever ripen.  For now I want to tell you about one of the best tasting cherry tomatoes I am growing which is called Snow White.

Cherry tomatoes are good, but many lack any real taste, they are often good for kids who like sweet things.  White tomatoes are good, but many tend to be a little insipid, that being said there are some amazing white tomatoes around.

I had heard that Snow White was one of the best tasting tomatoes ever bred and one of the best cherry tomatoes around, this had me intrigued.  I have also heard from others that it is nothing special and I would be better off growing other varieties.  A very generous grower sent me some seeds last year, how could I resist growing this and seeing for myself.

Snow White cherry tomatoes

The plant grew well in my garden while a few other varieties did not even survive, it flowered early and was one of the first tomatoes to ripen in my garden.  It seems to have a lot of flowers and unripe fruit on the plants at all times, being an indeterminate variety it should continue to fruit right up until frosts. 

The plants themselves are nothing remarkable, they grow about 6 feet tall here like many other varieties but I assume that they could grow a lot larger.  They have regular leaf and everything looks normal enough.  It would be nice if they were a dwarf plant or if they had potato leaf or something, but in the end none of that really matters.  The plants grow well under adverse conditions, provide large yields, but it is the taste that truly matters.

The first tomatoes I picked may not have been properly ripe, the seeds in them were not properly formed so it may not have been pollinated properly, or perhaps they get better as the season progresses, all I know for sure is that the first few were not indicative of this variety.  When I tasted them they were ok, nothing special, it is probably fair to say that the taste was a bit confused.  Considering that they were bred by Joe Bratka who is an excellent tomato breeder that has been described by those who know him as confused or eccentric I was not overly surprised.  The flesh was sweet and tasted a bit fruity, almost like a bland peach.  The seed part tasted like a regular cherry tomato, good but not great.  Overall it was good but nothing special, if the rest of the tomatoes tasted like this I may not want to grow this variety again.  The tomatoes ripen to a very pale yellow if they are in the sun or white if they do not get any sun on the fruit. 

Snow White tomatoes - yellow in the sunlight

Visually they looked good enough, they produced a lot of tomatoes, but due to the fact that there are thousands of varieties of tomato available in Australia I do not want to waste time or space if the taste does not blow me away.  I would rather keep trying to find something amazing. 

Then there was a week with no new ripe tomatoes, I was ok with that as they were not that great and the weather was odd.

Then the plant started to ripen again so I ate another tomato.  WOW.  They really blew me away.

Perhaps the first fruit were not great but since then they have been fantastic.  The tomatoes look much the same as the first ones, perhaps slightly larger, but the taste is amazing.  The flesh part tasted like delicious fruit, perhaps a peach or sweet ground cherry or something similar to that.  If I was to remove the seeds and blind test people I doubt that they would even recognise this as a tomato.  The seed part tasted like a good cherry tomato, a little acid but not too much.  The two parts together compliment each other well.  I love this tomato, I want more of them, I walk past the plant a few times each day in the hope that another one has ripened. 

Snow White hidden in the back of this part of the garden

The kids love this tomato, in my mind this is one of the best sweet tomatoes that I have eaten.  They are low acid so good for people who normally can not eat tomato.  I probably wouldnt use it to make paste or sauce or for cooking (although many people claim they are great for this) but happily eat them fresh or in salads.  They are remarkable.

I would almost go as far as to say that they are unique, but they are not.  Apparently the man who bred these also bred a few others which were much the same or exactly the same or just renamed this variety.  It doesnt matter too much, what does matter is that these are amazing and I plan to grow them again and hopefully grow a few more plants so I get more of them. 

Why are these tomatoes rare?

I have often wondered why this kind of thing is not more common, if they are so great (and these tomatoes do taste great) why are they not available at the supermarkets.  People often talk about home tomatoes being better because they are picked perfectly ripe instead of mostly green, or that they are fresh, or that they are too soft to be transported, and a few other things like this.

I am sure this is part of the answer, but I think one of the biggest problems is marketing.  People think of tomatoes as red, they are wary of any other colour.  Bright yellow tomatoes have started to become better known and appreciated in salads for their attractive colour.  Some of the brown/black ones have started to come in, but they have backing from a multinational company who holds a lot of power.

These are white tomatoes, they mostly ripen a pale yellow.  Many people think pale colour means tasteless or not fully ripe.  The difference between white tomatoes and yellow tomatoes is that the white ones have translucent skin.

Some people have asked me if yellow tomatoes taste the same as normal tomatoes.  I dont know how to answer them.  Where do I even begin?

Unfortunately this means that the average person will never try these amazing little tomatoes unless they grow them at home as they will not be seen in supermarkets anytime soon.  Some of the best tasting varieties of tomatoes ripen green, many people will not even try them, that is their loss.

Where to get Snow White tomatoes

Seeds of snow white tomatoes are reasonably simple to find in Australia.  Snow white tomato seed seems to be carried by a few different sellers as well as ebay.  I have saved seed from my plants and will most likely sell some on my for sale page with other heirloom vegetables and perennial vegetables.

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