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A Community Grow-Out Story: The Petitbec Tomato

Stephen March, October 2025 

My name is Stephen March and I am located on the South Shore of Montreal. I have been gardening for about 15 years off and on, however my interest really took off during COVID for a variety of reasons (age, working from home, wanting to be a better human being / more self-sufficient etc). During this period, I jumped head first into indoor hydroponic gardening, focusing on fruit and vegetables that my family consumes, while adding IT automation using Internet of Things (IoT) devices that I designed. Across my various experiments for indoor gardening, I was on a quest to find plants that produce larger amounts of biomass for the smallest foot print, and that do well in container gardening applications (as this closely resembles my hydroponic gardening environment). In addition to growing more food to reduce the cost of living for my family, this also gives me an effective mental health approach during winter months where I was previously missing all of the time I spend in my garden outdoors.

In talking with some other friends who have more of an agricultural background, they pointed me to the Seeds of Diversity program and a lot of the core messaging for the program resonates with me. I am a firm believer that protecting our biodiversity will be one of the key factors in enabling our food security for generations to come, and I was also excited with the prospect of being able to grow plants "in the off season" and possibly help propagate more difficult plants (in a controlled environment).

Fast forward to this particular grow-out, and I saw the Petitbec tomato as a possible variety which would do well outside in my soil gardens, and indoor in my hydroponic garden. In particular, the tomato was said to be prolific in producing small round salad type slicer tomatoes, on a small plant, that produced early, was resistant to common bacteria and pests in the region. This was definitely my experience with these tomatoes.

I started the seeds indoors in a seed cell tray, on a heating mat, with a dome and got a 100% germination rate (it figures, I started 12 plants, and they all sprouted). We had an exceptionally warm start to the year, so I put them outside in the soil on May 7th, which is a full 3 weeks earlier than I normally plant. The fact the plants had started off in my indoor hydroponic lab, with a great deal of LED lights, fans, and a strong nutrient regiment, meant that my seedlings were in great shape and already sturdy.

Outdoor in my suburban backyard, I have both a soil garden, and hydroponic setup. For this particular grow, I planted all Petitbec in my soil boxes that are supplied with a bioplus auto-irrigation kit I purchased from Dubois Agrinovation - not far from where I live. The seedlings were planted in soil, rich with compost, augmented with bonemeal, chicken manure, and my own "pre-compost" that I make from a vitamix foodcycler in my hydroponic indoor garden all winter long (from plant trimmings).

I then forgot about the plants since they were in good shape, loaded with nutrition and on auto-watering. It wasn't until about mid-July (I think?) that I decided I should have staked the plants, and they would have benefited from having a cage. In staking the plants, improving air flow, and co-planting other plants that I normally do (ie: basil, calendula, egyptian walking onions, etc) - I noticed that the plants were in remarkable condition from having essentially forgotten about the 12 of them, and let them grow into a bush. Fruit production was early and steady. This year, I produced 92 lbs of tomatoes from my outdoor garden, that we weighed (we eat a lot, directly off the plant), and the Petitbec were the perfect size for the family (and a few squirrels) to snack on.

I would best describe the taste of the tomato as a "tomato tomato" - meaning there was nothing remarkable about the flavour .. just a good solid slicer tomato that works well in salads ;) The fruit being small, almost perfectly smooth and round, detaches easily from the plant when it's ripe. Generally I am in the habit of picking tomatoes at their breaker stage as this allows my family the option of seeing the tomatoes that are "almost ripe" on the counter, and plan meals accordingly.  As I type this on October 15th, I still have a few of the Petitbec plants that are giving me ripe fruit, which is crazy to me, because we're seeing cold temperatures dip to around 0, and have had a couple of nights of frost. I have fellow growers and family around the Maritimes, and throughout Ontario and Quebec, and have started to share the seeds that I have saved, as the little plants were very hardy for me, and big producers.

I have experience growing over 50 different varieties of tomatoes, and especially into the micro-dwarf and dwarf varieties for hydroponics. I will add this particular variety to my regular lineup because of the ease of growing the plants, and its versatility. A neighbour and I did a "taste test" with her kids, where we brought along close to 20 different varieties of tomatoes to compare the flavour profile of the different types. It wasn't the best tasting tomato compared to all others in its class, but it did rank in the middle, and still leagues above anything "fresh" you can find from local stores or stands from farms, given it was picked and eaten directly from the vine. The fruit generally stored as well as my best tomatoes, but given the sheer volume that were produced across the 12 plants, I didn't keep as close of an eye on that aspect.

All in all, I would recommend this tomato to any grower (novice to advanced) as it just thrived for me in this 2025 grow season.

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Stephen March is a gardener and seed saver in Montreal, and a participant in our 2025 Canadian Tomato Community Seed Growouts.

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