Our Tomato Seedling Varieties

• Slicing Tomatoes
• Paste Tomatoes
• Sandwich Tomatoes
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Large Tomatoes
• Small Tomatoes
• Early Tomatoes

From mid May to early July, we offer a wide range of tomato plants for your garden or container. Our heirloom and hybrid varieties are all from local seed companies, so may not be familiar to you. Here we offer variety descriptions and planting suggestions which we hope will help you grow exactly the tomatoes you would like to see in your garden.
See our Tomato types explanation below.

PASTE TOMATOES. Paste tomatoes have a dryer, less juicy consistency, great for making sauces and paste. The same feature also makes them good for sandwiches and salads because they have less of a tendency to drip. Not all paste tomatoes are plum-shaped, as our varieties testify.

• Hogheart. [HH] *op An heirloom paste tomato we have been saving seed from since 1985. Five to seven inches long and pointed, hogheart is the size of a small banana, with excellent flavor, fresh or cooked. Great on sandwiches or for drying. Determinate. Mid-August.

• Snakeroot Golden Arrow [SGA] *op A golden paste tomato similar in shape to Hogheart. Makes a lighter colored sauce or can add color to salads and salsas. We have breeding these ourselves since 2001, selecting for large long tomatoes with a shape similar to the Hogheart tomato. Currently about three quarters of the tomatoes produced are the long heavy ones we are aiming for, the rest being long and thin or plum shaped like a Roma tomato. All are very firm and meaty.

CHERRY TOMATOES. All our cherry tomatoes grow large plants with grape-like clusters of fruits. Though not especially early, any of them will give you the keys to tomato heaven! All are indeterminate.

• Yellow Pear Cherry. [YP] *op A teardrop shaped indeterminate heirloom, grows up to ten feet high trellised in our greenhouse. A flavor and color treat.

• Red Pear Cherry. [RP] *op Like Yellow Pear, only red, and fruits tend to be somewhat larger and more tomato flavored.

• Gardeners Delight. [G.Del] *op An indeterminate heirloom producing one-inch round fruits of outstanding rich sweet flavor. Tendency to crack if overwatered.

• Sungold [SG] F1 Bright tangerine orange with intense tropical flavor. Large indeterminate plants produce early and continue thru season. Tendency to crack if overwatered, but flavor is worth it.

• Black Cherry [BLKCH] op 3/4 inch dark purple cherry tomatoes with mahogany color tones. Sharp woodsy tomato flavor. Tendency to crack if overwatered, but flavor is worth it.

EARLY TOMATOES. Who can wait for that first tomato picked from the garden? Although not the most prolific producers by the end of the season, early varieties are the first to provide you with that long-awaited treat.

• Moskvich.[MOSK] *op This cold tolerant indeterminate heirloom is a real taste treat. Its good sized early juicy tomatoes are usually the first tomato we bring to market. Moskvich starts producing large tomatoes, and keeps up until frost with gradualy diminishing sizes, but still good flavor. Early August.

• Valley Girl. [VG] F1 A cold-tolerant determinate hybrid that is among our earliest. Medium-large crack-resistant fruit for two weeks followed by two more weeks of smaller fruit. Early August.

• Frosty's Heart. [FH] *op An heirloom pink heart-shaped tomato, second early, prolific. Medium sized, smooth silky texture.

• Valencia. [Val] op Bright orange tennis ball size globe shaped tomato, great yielder, lower acid than red varieties.

MIDSEASON AND LATE TOMATOES. The reason for growing some later varieties is that they produce nicer and larger tomatoes than the early varieties.

• Big Beef. [BB] F1 Indeterminate. Workhorse producer of near-perfect 10 oz. red beefsteak tomatoes. Wide disease resistance. Large, vigorous vines.

• Japanese Black Trifele [JBT] *op OG Indeterminate. Heirloom pear-shaped and burgundy color. 4–6 oz. excellent rich flavor. Harvest when shoulders are green for best flavor.

• Lillians. [LIL] *op This indeterminate heirloom grows very large rich tasting lemon yellow tomatoes, some irregular, some perfect. Less acid than red varieties. A pretty addition to salads. Potato-leaved. Early September.

• Pruden's Purple. [PRU] *op An indeterminate heirloom producing large irregular pink fruit about three weeks earlier than Brandywine, which it resembles. If you like tomato sandwiches, this is the one you want. Prone to cracking in wet seasons. Potato-leaved. Late August.

• Paragon [PAR] F1 Vigorous determinate. Large, firm tomatoes with good flavor.

• Peron Sprayless [PERON] op Extremely disease-resistant and crack resistant strain, introduced from South America in 1951. Indeterminate, 7 ft. vines. Firm, baseball sized tomatoes. Excellent flavor, midseason. Bears till frost.

• Brandywine [BW] *op The benchmark for real tomato flavor. Indeterminate, potato-leaved. Pink, large, thin skin, meaty fruit, produces better in cool weather.

• JTO 99197 [197] F1 Early blight resistant vigorous determinate. High yielder of large globe shaped fruit.

• Delicious [DEL] *op Very large meaty red tomato of excellent flavor. Once named by Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest tomato, it will overlap your sandwich on all sides. Indeterminate.

A word about tomato types

There are several ways of classifying tomatoes. There are vine [indeterminate] vs. bush [determinate]. There are paste vs. slicing. There are regular vs. cherry. Some tomatoes are hybrids, others heirlooms. And of course, large vs. small.

Lets first look at the way the plant grows. Tomato vines that keep on growing longer and longer until frost kills them are called indeterminate, because it is indetermined how long the vine will grow. These are often grown on a trellis (NOT just a cage!). They will typically get six or eight feet long during a season, and may have many productive suckers which may be pruned off for earlier and larger fruit.

Plants which have vines that grow only a few feet before ending in a flower cluster are called determinate. They are smaller plants, but yield just as well since they have productive suckers which grow a few feet before also ending in a flower cluster. And the suckers have suckers, and so on. Determinate varieties are often grown in cages to support them.

Trellising and caging are done to keep the tomato fruits off the ground, hence cleaner and less prone to insect or rodent damage. However, many folks [like us!] grow both kinds on the ground. Mulching the ground with plastic, leaves or hay keeps the fruit off the ground and helps retain soil moisture.

Paste tomatoes have less juice, making them easier to use for making sauces and tomato paste, since they cook down more quickly. However, their flavor is good as any, and their less juicy interiors make them ideal for sandwiches and salads. All our paste tomatoes are determinates. Slicing tomatoes are regular tomatoes, real chin-wetters when you bite into them.

Cherry tomatoes are a whole separate type of tomato, higher in sugars than non-cherry types. They are sweeter just before becoming fully ripe; more tomatoey flavored when fully ripe. Generally 1/2 to 1 inch in diameter, cherries tend to grow in clusters like grapes. All our cherries are indeterminate types.

We refer to large tomatoes as anything larger than a baseball, some being large enough to more than cover a slice of bread. As a rule, larger tomatoes are later than smaller ones, though there are important exceptions. Small tomatoes (tennis ball to golf ball size) tend to ripen earlier and produce more fruit than larger varieties.

Heirloom tomatoes are varieties that have been handed down for generations of gardeners. Someone years ago discovered a great tomato and started a long line of seed saving that has lasted to this day. Since tomatoes tend to self-pollinate, there is very little cross-fertilization caused by insects, so it is easy to keep varieties distinct. You may save seeds from any variety labeled heirloom and know that next year you will get the same tomato. Almost all heirlooms are indeterminate. Hybrids are varieties that have been purposely cross pollinated to produce offspring with a desired features. Crossing is done by hand pollinating tomato flowers, making the seed somewhat more expensive. Hybrids are often referred to as F1, meaning first generation. Second generations of hybrids tend to go off-type, so saving a hybrids seeds will give a wide range of tomatoes.

Protect your early tomato plantings with individual greenhouses or cloches using either of these two low cost methods:

1) Cut the bottom off a gallon milk jug, then slide it down over a stick stuck into the ground next to your tomato plant, so that the jug covers the plant. The stick keeps the jug from blowing off, and the jug provides several degrees of frost protection, plus warmer days and nights. Because the cover is not on the jug, daytime temperatures inside wont get too hot. When the tomato outgrows the jug, danger of frost is likely past.

2) Place a tomato cage around your tomato as soon as you plant it. Then place a clear plastic trash bag over the tomato cage, using the prongs of cage to skewer the bag to the ground around the plant. Then cut a slit across the bottom of the bag (now at the top of the cage) and hold it open with clothes pins. If a cold night is forcast, use the clothespins to close the opening at the top, but remember to open it again before mid-morning on sunny days to keep your plant from baking. The larger size of this cloche allows the protection to stay in place well into late June to protect the tomato plant from occasional chilly nights and cold windy days. For added protection include a few jugs of water inside to warm up during the day and give off heat at night.

Singles & Six-paks

We offer all our varieties in six-paks. We also have a limited number of six-paks of mixed varieties. For those who wish to grow in containers—or who have room for just one more tomato plant—we have pots of single tomato plants of many of our varieties. In late June and early July, we offer large plants in eight to ten inch pots.

Get your tomato seedlings from a local organic farmer!

We offer varieties we grow ourselves, so we know they do well in central Maine.

Save your plant labels so you'll know what to ask for next year.

We invite you to our farm to shop or see how we grow our quarter acre field of tomatoes and two hundred tomato plants in our greenhouses.

File name: OurTomatoes.shtml
Version: Friday 24 December, 2010