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The Seed Exchange

Favorite compact heirloom cherry tomato?

15 years ago

Hi all.

I like growing cherry tomatoes, but I don't like not being able to save the seeds of some of the yummy, sweet, compact and productive varieties like sweet baby girl, etc.

I grew Tumbling Tom Yellow, and it was productive as well as compact but its flavor was tart, not sweet. And its disease resistance was so-so.

There should be several heirloom cherry varieties out there which are tasty, compact, and disease resistant. But what are they called?

Do any of you folks have a recommendation for an heirloom cherry tomato that is productive, disease resistant, compact, and has a great sweet yet 'tomatoey' flavor?

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Comments (5)

Chemocurl zn5b/6a Indiana
15 years ago
I like growing cherry tomatoes, but I don't like not being able to save the seeds of some of the yummy, sweet, compact and productive varieties like sweet baby girl, etc.
There is some debate as to just how old a variety must be to be an heirloom. Besides the Heirlooms, you might also consider others that are just open pollinated, yet not old enough to be considered Heirlooms.

I'm sure many tomatoholics over at the Tomato Forum could come up with numerous varieties that are open pollinated, and yummy, sweet, compact and productive.

Tomato Forum
I'm an admitted tomatoholic myself, but am not all that familiar with sweet compact cherries.

Sue
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plant-one-on-me
15 years ago
I grew a nice little tomato called Garten Perle that was small and had lots of nice little tomatoes. It could actually be grown in a hanging basket. Send me a note off list. Kim
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If it were me I think I'd look at the links Dave gave, b'c the question about cherry tomatoes has been asked many many times. And I know I've posted about cherry tomatoes many times here in most of those threads, but there are always new ones to consider so I'll name just two new red ones that I like. Durmitor, from Serbia (seeds at Victory Seeds) Nano Ciliega, from Italy (seeds from Tania) If you don't know about Tania's superb tomato data base I'll put the link below. If you know the name of a variety click on shortcuts at the top, then use the alphabetical method of finding the page for that variety, which has basic traits, opinions of others, and most with pictures as wekk as seed sources, when available. She features over 4,000 varieties and you can also choose to look at thelink, on the first page, for JUST cherry tomatoes. Hope that helps, Carolyn Here is a link that might be useful: Tania's tomato database
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I also had the same experience last summer as the gardener in Oklahoma, only I'm near Fargo, North Dakota. Despite our very short growing season, I found this "compact" tomato, which supposedly doesn't require staking or caging to be the Godzilla of the cherry tomato world. Using the square foot gardening method (pinching out the side shoots), my single Koralik plant grew rapidly up the 6-foot support and then traveled the entire length of the bed--another 8 feet! The vines produced right up until frost and were loaded down with a ridiculous number of massive clusters of the best tasting cherry tomatoes I've ever eaten. This was easily the most impressive tomato I've ever grown. However none of the descriptions found online for Koralik match the tomato I grew. So is there some other Koralik? I got mine from Lazy Ox Farm.
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clay_lady
14 years ago
I raised a tiomato called Sweet Pea and that is about the size of the tomato-- It was great-- 1st to produce and was still producing millions of timy tomatoes at frost-- wonderful flavor and sooooooo cute--- I took some to the county fair and oh the comments they got-- everyone had to try them-- I left a small basket of them for people to try
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Ann
14 years ago
My favorite - so far - is a yellow cherry called Blondkopfchen. Does really well even in the hazy, hot and humid weather around DC.
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robertz6
11 years ago
I like the Dr. Carolyn yellow cherry tomato. It has been very productive for me. Once after a two inch rain, two to three hundred fruits on just one plant split. People think it has low acid, whether its true or not I couldn't say.

Do you mean compact in terms of fruit size or plant size? The fruits are small, the plant gets big, not a small bush type. Indeterminate, and a heirloom.

My favorite cherry tomato of them all was a large fruited red, not as sweet as Sweet 100, but with more taste. Got it from one of the mail-order catalogues, but can't recall which one. Fruit was just a shade smaller than a ping pong ball.
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