Ruthless gardening: Dwarf tomato project

[untonuggan]

I read about the Dwarf Tomato Project in my mom's American Horticultural Society magazine (which comes to my house for free, it's a good magazine, but I would not necessarily put it at the top of your "spending moniez" pile).

anyway, the dwarf tomato project was a collaborative multi-gardener project to create tomatoes for small spaces. most tomato plants like to sprawl everywhere/require a lot of ineffective "caging" and whatnot, and even in a small space do not produce a lot of tomatoes. it is basically citizen science in action. the seeds are now available through several heirloom seed companies (but the seeds themselves are open source, which is a whole different topic if you want to delve into it). the tomatoes are based off heirloom varieties, so there are a lot of cool purple ones and such if that's your thing.

one of the coordinators of the project has a list of all the dwarf tomato project varieties and where they are available on his website.

Anyway, I know this is way too late in the (US) season to start tomato seeds, because actually it's more like "stick tomato seeds in the ground a couple weeks ago" in my zone, BUT i pass on this information while I'm thinking about it and also because you can get some seeds in Australia -- which is a big thing because of the seed import ban that I hear is there for good reason -- and I have *no idea* when you start tomato seeds in AU. (not sure about elsewhere in the globe.)

Comments

[tyger]

That's super cool! :D (I think here it's like six months from nowish? IDK exactly but it's definitely spring sometime, so.)

[lilacsigil]

You start tomato seeds in late September in my area but that's probably the latest in Australia! I have the space so that I don't need dwarf varieties at present, but this was super interesting and yay for open source seeds!

[yvi]

My husband starred them in January, here in Germany. They are already one metre high and carrying tomatoes :-)

[redsixwing]

Duuuuude!
How cool is that!

In my zone we're still freezing at night, so it's "start tomatoes inside a month ago, transplant when weather starts behaving," but I'll keep these in mind for next year.