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Dwarf Tomatoes : They Aren't as Small as You Think

When most gardeners see "dwarf tomato" in a seed listing, they naturally think of small plants with small tomatoes. You might have seen those miniature plants sold in small pots, in full-bloom with tiny fruit - a treat for a windowsill but not a real source of food. But we're here to convince you to take another look.

Dwarf tomatoes just have short plants. They have a wide range of flavours, colours, and - surprise - a full range of fruit sizes: some up to half a kilogram!

In our Seed Library we have four classifications for tomato growth:

Indeterminate - the vines keep growing and sprawling until frost
Semi-determinate - the vines slow their growth late in the season to a lesser sprawl
Determinate - the vines grow into a manageable bush shape, then fruit tend to ripen all at once
Dwarf - the plants grow as a short "tree", no taller than four feet and sometimes much shorter

They all have advantages and disadvantages

Indeterminate varieties have the original wild tomato growth habit. In South America, where tomatoes grow wild, the vines can grow very large, sprawling on the ground and on nearby plants, and usually bearing many clusters of small fruit that ripen one after the another. Today's familiar indeterminate varieties have been bred for centuries to have larger fruit, and the best flavours and assortment of colours that generations of seed savers could find. They still have long vines, and their tomatoes ripen in bunches, one after another as the vines keep growing. Until frost, in Canada that is.

During the last few centuries of domestication, growers noticed that shorter plants often tend to bear earlier tomatoes. By selecting shorter plants, seed-saving gardeners and farmers developed determinate varieties, with most early introductions in the late 1800s and new varieties popularized in the 20th century. For years, the conventional advice was that indeterminate varieties were good for home gardeners who could trellis the vines and enjoy a large harvest in a small footprint because they could grow the plants vertically. Also, the tomatoes would ripen a few at a time starting at the bottom and continuing along the vines, so a home gardener could enjoy a few perfectly ripe tomatoes every day. Determinate varieties were said to be best for large-scale growers who couldn't trellis vigorous vines effectively, and also wanted to harvest many fruit all at once.

Today, our biggest question from gardeners trying to choose a tomato variety is:

What can I grow in a small space, in a rooftop or patio planter, or in a container?

And Dwarf tomatoes are the answer! Perfectly sized for containers, planters, and usually sturdy enough to stand on their own like a small tree, you can grow Dwarf tomato varieties with very little effort, in a small space, and you don't have to settle for tiny fruit.

The Dwarf Tomato Project, aligned with the Open Source Seed Initative, has been breeding and introducing new dwarf tomato varieties that have a full range of colours, flavours, and sizes.


Learn about the Dwarf Tomato Project	Learn about Open Source Seeds

Where can you find dwarf tomato seeds?

Our own members save and share dwarf tomato seeds, and they'll gladly send you some for your garden. Check our Member Seed Exchange and just search for "Dwarf" at the top. You'll find lots of great choices.

You can also use our Canadian Seed Finder. Just choose TOMATO in the drop-down list and search for "Dwarf" in the variety control. Most dwarf tomato varietes have the word "dwarf" right in their names so you'll find great sources this way.

We also want to highlight Tatiana Kouchnareva's wonderful Canadian TOMATOBase, where dwarf tomatoes have their very own page.

Here are just a few varieties from Tatiana's list to get you dreaming about next summer!

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