Need Compact Habit Tomato Varieties

I'm looking to try container planting this year. In fact, I'm going to try and grow in grow bags. In the past, the taller the plant got, the happier I was. I would like indeterminate or semi-determinate varieties - color doesn't matter. I like funky colored tomatoes and am happy with reds as well. I'd like to do some larger slicers and some cherries. The New Big Dwarf sounds good (I've been thread searching) and I found a few container collections on tomatofest that look promising. Has anyone grown Black Sea Man Heirloom Tomatoes? If you can recommend a shorter variety of tomato, preferably heirloom, that will grow well in a container and be fairly productive, I'd appreciate it. I want to feed the family and can/freeze/store the rest for winter next year. Thanks in advance!

P.S. I'm in SE Oklahoma where drought is a killer and pests are abundant, btw, and last year's crops failed disastrously. I'm going much smaller scale this year (not a market garden this time) so hopefully I can stay more on top of things.

P.P.S. I'm also enamored by Ananas Noire, but I'm sure it will be too tall. Can I top chop it to keep it manageable? Thanks!

Here are links to determinate tomatoes from Johnny's Selected Seeds:

http://www.johnnyseeds.com/c-413-determinate.aspx
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/c-672-determinate.aspx

First, I was forced to go to gro-bags, I chose the 12 gal ones, b;c I could no longer grow the hundreds of plants and varieties each year that I used to, so now someone else has to do all the growing around here. My job is to find the seeds.

I can grow indeterminates in those bags quite nicely if I get those cheap three ring conical plant supports and stick them in the bags when the transplants are small. It gets the plants growing upwards before they cascade down and has worked well for me.

Other than stragiht out determinates I suggest that you go to Tomatoville.com and check out all the new dwarf varieties that have been developed by over 100 folks participaing in the Dwarf Project. They've been able to do two grow outs a year, one in the N hemisphere coodinated by Craig LeHoullier and one in Australia coordinated by Patrina.

You can read almost all of the Forums at Tville with few exceptions such as the 2 cents off topic one and the two seed exchanges, but to be able to post you need to register, which is free.

The first ones went public this past Spring to TGS, Sandhill and Victory seeds and I didn't check to see if they were still carrying them, but if you look at Tville you'll also see that the seed site Heritage is offering all of them right now.

Quite a few more new dwarfs were sent recently to Tania, at her website and I know some of those are also going to be sent to other sites as well. All different from the ones above since these newer ones were just sent to the places that will be offering them this past Fall.

What you've got with those dwarfs are a HUGE extension of what's been available color-wise and shape-wise up until now.

There are several here at DG who are also participants at Tville and know what I mean when I mention the excellence of those varieties.

But if you have to have heirloom dwarfs or dets or semi-dets that's another story, but you can use large enough Gro-bags to be able to grow the indeterminates as well.

Carolyn

Thank you so much for the ideas and feedback. I guess my main concern was stability since I'm starting out with an experiment using reusable grocery bags as grow bags. I've seen mixed results online and wanted to throw my hat in the ring. We have pretty high winds here in OK, but I'm going to put them on the most protected side of the house, so hopefully that will help.

I really prefer indeterminates, so if you've had success, I believe I will just re-pick my favorites and go from there. I'm hoping container gardening helps a bit with the soil pests I've had in the past. I'm thinking I may not go totally organic this year since that hasn't resulted well the last two years. I'll try to be as chemically gentle as possible. I've had good luck growing cherries out here, but my beefsteaks and plums have all been hideously cracked, small or otherwise ugly and unproductive (water issues, I believe) and anything elongated winds up rotten at the blossom end (Striped Romans in particular). I had planned to get the three ring (54" - is that the best way to go? Or are 48" okay?) supports.

Also, while I've got your ear, is there a good way to prevent pin-worms? I've had them two years in a row (we've moved to a different location around the corner now) and as I understand it, it may have been my grass-clipping mulch that invited them in. Any thoughts?

We've had terrific luck with Bush Goliath and Patio F in our containers. Even though they're determinates, we continue to get tomatoes for nearly all summer. http://www.tomatodirt.com/growing-tomatoes-in-pots-large-containers.html

mev, we don't have pinworms that affect tomatoes here in the NE, so better you than me doing some Googling. LOL

Carolyn

Lime Green Salad has always done well for me in a pot or gro-bag

Since you want to experiment with the grocery bag concept, which is interesting, I would consider using one of several dwarf varieties. All tomatoes are very thirsty plants and standard indeterminates designed for garden use would quickly dry out in small containers causing all sorts of problems. I have grown smaller plants such as Patio and Tumbler in 5-gal pails with great success, there are many more dwarf varieties on the market. Regardless, great care must be taken to keep them watered properly.

Al

Here are a few compact OP varieties to consider for use in grow bags or buckets:

Kiev - Semi-determinate, 10-16 oz. red elongated plum-shaped fruit, 80 days, high yield
Lida Ukrainian - Semi-determinate, 4-6 oz. deep red globes, 75 days, high yield
Martino's Roma - Determinate, 2 oz. dark red pear, 75 days, high yield
Sophie's Choice - Determinate, 6-8 oz. red obltate fruit, 55 days, high yield
Earl of Edgecombe - Compact Indeterminate, 6-10 oz. orange globes, 73 days, high yield
Green Zebra - Compact Indeterminate, 2-3 oz. yellowish green w/stripes oblate fruit, 75 days, moderate yield
Japanese Black Trifele, Compact Indeterminate, potato leaf, 6 oz. black pear-shaped fruit, moderate yield
Sprite, Determinate, small red grape, 60 days, high yield

Vita, first I'll star the varieties I introduced and then make a few comments about some of them.


*Kiev - Semi-determinate, 10-16 oz. red elongated plum-shaped fruit, 80 days, high yield

Some of the Kiev s being listed at some vendors are not what they should be which is why Tania has asked me to send her the first seeds I saved from this variety qhich go back to about 1993 seeds or so. May I please ask which site you were looking at for Kiev?

*Lida Ukrainian - Semi-determinate, 4-6 oz. deep red globes, 75 days, high yield
Martino's Roma - Determinate, 2 oz. dark red pear, 75 days, high yield
This one is not a pear, it's roma shaped as the name implies and also has beautiful rugose foliage.

*Sophie's Choice - Determinate, 6-8 oz. red obltate fruit, 55 days, high yield
I think 55 days is pushing it quite a bit. I can see that you copied quite a bit of info from my bppl on heirloom tomatoes, and I called Sophie an early and defined early as bong from 55-65 days and Sophie would be at the upper end of that.

*Earl of Edgecombe - Compact Indeterminate, 6-10 oz. orange globes, 73 days, high yield

Sounds abour right to me

Green Zebra - Compact Indeterminate, 2-3 oz. yellowish green w/stripes oblate fruit, 75 d
ays, moderate yield

Green Zebra used to be an indet as bred by Tom Wagner initially, then morphed into a det and that's what it now despite what is said at some seed sites. Tom doesn't understand what happened. When I was in CA doing a dog and pony show he drove down to meet me although we'd known each other since about 1990, brought me 4 plants, I flew them back East with me and they weren't indet or semi-indet either. Probably a mutational change in plant habit

Japanese Black Trifele, Compact Indeterminate, potato leaf, 6 oz. black pear-shaped fruit, moderate yield
Sprite, Determinate, small red grape, 60 days, high yield

As I said above, I can grow ANY variety in 12 gal Gro bags which I'm now forced to use being in this walker so can't grow the hundreds of plants and varieties these days. But I do find that sticking those cheap 3 ring plant supports in the bags does help a lot.

So I'm not going to list any other varieties. One can go to Tania's site and find a long list of determinate varieties if that's what someone wants to grow. And I also mentioned the newest Dwarf varieties which lots of folks are using for containers and gro-bags.

Carolyn

Add Early Annie to your list. It is awesome. Grew it last year, and is the only variety I am repeating this year. Would have loved to do a few others i loved last year, but want to try some new things. Early Annie is the only one I am repeating. Not the same as Early Girl. It's determinate and gets about 2 and a half feet high, very bushy and productive. Handled our Texas heat wave extremely well. Was the first to produce fruit, and it was a nice blend of tangy and sweet. A little more on the tangy side though. Most fruit were between golf ball and base ball size. After I thought it was done it ended up giving another smaller batch weeks later then started to die. It's extremely hardy.

Black Sea Man is one of my favorite varieties and has a nice compact habit. (Ironically another of my very faves is Ananas Noire, so I guess we're on the same wave-length!

mevnmart, I did pretty well the past two years with: Margo, Phoenix, Celebration F1, Mountain Pride, and Neptune. All determinates and I like those for taste. I grew New Big Dwarf last year and it started out well, but didn't like the heat once the drought started, so I can't say much about it other than I think it would do better with some afternoon shade. I'm trying again this year. It did get taller than most of the determinates. Nebraska Wedding for a yellow always turns out pretty good for me, although I've read that others weren't as happy with the taste as I am. Homestead 24, and Martian Giant Slicer are semi-determinates I've tried and liked up until the drought kicked in. What few tomatoes I got from MGS turned out to be quite tasty. Homestead 24 was a tomato producing beast up until the drought. Again, this year might be better. I didn't grow Better Bush this past year, but the year before it did very well for me and DH really like the tomatoes for BLT's. It will make it in somewhere this year....I haven't grown any in pots, but I've seen pictures of Margo and Phoenix in pots {8~).

Hope this helps a bit. I'm in zone 8b with lots of wind and lots of T-tapes. Yes to the drought and the THW's weren't as bad last year.