Tomato Paralysis (n): Inability to start tomato plants due to excessive choice of available varieties. Also known as Tomato Dithering Syndrome.
Back when I was a casual gardener, I’d start the season by going to my local hardware store and picking a few seed packages off the rack.
It was a fun springtime ritual: Fast, simple, and moderately effective. It was, in effect, a vegetable beauty contest. I’d come home with the prettiest packs on the rack, and never give it a second thought.
But now that I’m a Serious Gardener, no such rookie move will do. Now I carefully research varieties, trying to find the optimum combination of disease and pest resistance, time-to-maturity, soil and climate needs, flavor, and yield.
And so, with the application of sufficient new-found knowledge and clearly-defined goals, I’ve managed to convert my fun springtime ritual into an arduous chore. Whether I’ll actually get better tomatoes remains to be seen. The only thing I’m sure about is that I have better-researched tomatoes.
Worse, thanks to the internet, my eyes were opened to the literal thousands of tomato varieties available.
And thus I fell into total and complete tomato paralysis. No sooner would I settle on a half-dozen or so varieties to grow when I’d stumble across someone singing the praises of yet another must-have tomato. My careful choices would go right down the toilet, in favor of the newcomer. Rinse and repeat.
This post is the story how I finally overcame tomato lust and got on with my life. It boils down to “look globally, shop locally.”
Tomatoville. Who knew?
Wine connoisseurs. Cat fanciers and dog fanciers. People who raise prize roses, exotic orchids, and so on. Those are all familiar examples, I think.
But tomato fanciers? Who knew?
There are entire on-line communities of individuals passionately dedicated to the cultivation and propagation of rare tomato varieties, and the pursuit of tomato perfection. They discuss tomatoes the way others discuss fine wines. They praise not just some variety, but some exact year and location where conditions produced particularly exemplary fruit.
Welcome to Tomatoville.
In the end, it wasn’t the refined discussions of tomato flavor that caught my attention. (Citrusy, with just a hint of chocolate undertone.) It’s that once you’re become part of the cult, they’ll hook you up with dozens and dozens of suppliers, each of whom might sell seeds for hundreds of different varieties.
For example, one specialty supplier — Tomatofest.com — sells seeds for more than 650 varieties of heirloom tomatoes. Even a mainstream general-purpose seed supplier such as Burpee Seeds offers more than 160 different hybrid and heirloom varieties. And if you still aren’t satisfied, Ebay currently has more than 5000 listings for tomato seeds, including both common and rare varieties. And that’s limiting the search to the U.S.A.
Source: Tomatofest.com
Above, that’s the problem, in a nutshell. How can I choose a half-dozen or so varieties, out of the literal thousands available.
First, develop your tomato strategy
It shows you just how far I’ve come that I can now say “tomato strategy” with a straight face.
In the past, my strategy consisted of roughly equal measures of chance and neglect. After picking the prettiest tomatoes on the rack, I’d set up a dozen tomato cages in sunny spots at the edge of the lawn. I’d plant my dozen plants. And after that, it was straight-up survival of the fittest. I’d eat whatever tomatoes made it to maturity and didn’t get spoiled by the squirrels.
This created an oddly balanced ecosystem. Minimal effort was matched by dismal productivity. I can’t recall ever having more tomatoes than I could eat. But I really appreciated whatever I got.
Now that I’m a Serious Gardener, that type of slipshod planning just won’t do. (Plus, as it turns out, tomato cages are way too short for most indeterminate varieties of tomatoes.)
Now I need an actual tomato plan.
Step 1: Answer the tomato-existential question.
Why grow tomatoes?
In the distant past, I never had to ask this question. I knew why I grew tomatoes. That was the only way to get a decent-tasting tomato. There were no farmers’ markets near me, and grocery stores sold pink, rock-hard things that were almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tomatoes.
Alas, that raison d’être des tomates cultivés chez soi no longer exists. In season, I can buy reasonably tasty tomatoes at the local farmers’ markets. Out-of-season, I can get an acceptable tomato at the grocery store, thanks to improved varieties such as Campari.
Absent that basic motivation, the tomato-existential question might probe more deeply into humankind’s relationship with Nature. The ultimate goal of the home-grown tomato may be living sustainably and in harmony with the environment, or perhaps reaping the spiritual benefits of gardening, or even to gain the ability to see the beauty of Creation in the growth of a single seed.
But in reality, I have a far more practical question: What am I going to do with all those damned tomatoes? If I’m dead set on having 30 to 50 tomato plants this year, answering that question before I plant them is probably a good idea.
Maybe you grow tomatoes so that you can pick them at peak ripeness and flavor. Maybe you like home-made tomato sauce or home-dried tomatoes. Maybe this is a way of saving money over store-bought tomatoes. Possibly you want to try exotic heirloom varieties not otherwise available to you.
And maybe I can just fuzzy-think my way past this, and never really answer the question. It’s my garden, and “I like tomatoes” should be a sufficient, if shallow, answer.
That said, if you’re putting in more than a handful of plants, you need to answer the practical question of what you’re going to do with all that produce. Even if you’re not crystal clear about why you grow (as opposed to buy) tomatoes, you still need a plan for whatever-it-is you decide to grow.
I actually do have an answer to this question. Sure, tomatoes taste good. But what I really enjoy about growing them, versus buying them, is the abundance. I love the excess. I would never consider going to the grocery store and buying more tomatoes than I could possibly eat. But if my garden produces a ridiculous excess, I’m chuffed. I get a huge kick out of having so many tomatoes that I have to preserve most of them.
Step 2: Appreciate all the dimensions of tomato space.
Before I became a Serious Gardener, tomatoes came in three types:
- Big ones, a.k.a. slicing tomatoes.
- Little ones, a.k.a. cherry tomatoes.
- Weird ones, a.k.a., any color other than red.
Now that I’ve spent some hours getting educated, I can list at least the following different dimensions that span the space of available tomato varieties. I’m not going to take the time to explain in detail what each term means. But, in essence, this section summarizes more-or-less everything I have learned about differences among tomato varieties.
- Determinate versus indeterminate (and, unhelpfully, semi-determinate). In general, determinates grow to a given size and fruit all at once. Indeterminates just keep growing and fruiting until something kills them. You need to prune and stake the two types differently.
- Paste versus other. Paste-type tomatoes have more solid “meat”, smaller seed cavities, and contain less moisture. These are preferred for sauces and drying, but maybe aren’t as flavorful for eating fresh. (Try a grocery-store Roma tomato and you’ll see what I mean.) That’s as opposed to tomatoes destined for eating fresh or some proxy for fresh (e.g., canned), which, by and large, have larger seed cavities and more fluids.
- Time to maturity (short-season versus long-season). Some short-season tomatoes claim to produce ripe fruit in as little as 40 days from setting out the plants. By contrast, some long-season varieties will take pretty much the entire summer to reach maturity. Unsurprisingly, short-season tomatoes tend to have smaller fruit, but there are short-season slicing varieties.
- Cold-tolerant. No tomato varieties are frost-tolerant. But some will grow well even with cool nighttime temperatures, where others won’t thrive until nights are consistently above 50 F. Hence, the common advice for planting tomatoes is not merely to wait until danger of frost is past, but to wait until nights are consistently 50F or warmer. Here (Virginia Zone 7), that’s a difference of about five weeks — April 22 for a commonly-cited last frost date, versus June 1for the median date on which nights have consistently stayed above 50F over the past 30 years. My point being that the short-season cold-tolerant tomato may give you fruit months earlier than a long-season cold-intolerant tomato, due to both the earlier possible planting date and the shorter season.
- Heat-tolerant. Many tomatoes don’t do well — and won’t set fruit or ripen fruit — when daytime temperatures consistently exceed 85F or so. But some varieties do fine in the heat. If you live in a hot climate, and want late-summer tomatoes, a heat-tolerant tomato might be a reasonable choice. (You can also shade your tomatoes, see Post #G11.)
- Disease resistance (for a wide range of diseases), of which I guess early blight, late blight, and mildew would be at the top of the list. But in addition, some are more resistant to blossom end rot, a problem that (as I understand it) is typically associated with too little calcium in the soil.
- Hybrid versus open-pollinated (for eventual seed-saving).
- Typical yield.
- Fruit size (currant, cherry, grape, … , large slicing tomatoes).
- Fruit shape (round, elongated, pear-shaped, … ).
- Plant size (dwarf and “patio” tomatoes, up to sprawling indeterminate tomatoes).
- Color. You name a color found in nature, you can probably find a tomato to match. Red, orange, yellow, of course. But white? Brown? Green? Yep. Even blue, if you limit it to dark blue.
- Sweetness or brix.
- Other aspects of flavor.
Step 3: Formulate a plan.
This is where you must answer the question “What am I going to do with all those tomatoes?”.
Here’s my 2022 tomato plan. My goals are to have:
- A steady supply of tomatoes for eating out-of-hand for the entire summer.
- A modest amount of non-paste tomatoes to freeze or can.
- An abundance of paste tomatoes for making dried tomatoes.
The plan is as follows:
- Some early-season, cold-tolerant tomatoes, to be planted out just after my likely last-frost date (March 22).
- A large number of paste tomatoes with different times to maturity, to be planted out circa June 1 (the likely last-50-degree-F-nights date).
- A handful of heirloom tomatoes reputed to be the best-tasting varieties possible, with staggered start date.
- One or two heat-tolerant tomatoes to follow the early-season tomatoes once they are done.
All told, I’m planning to have between 30 and 50 plants growing at once.
I started one tranche of short-season cold-tolerant tomatoes a couple of weeks ago. They are just at the point of putting out their first true leaves, so today I’m going to start a second tranche.
It’s still a bit early for starting any others, but I went ahead and started a mix of paste tomatoes last week. They are just starting to sprout. I’ll plant them a bit early and see if they survive. And I’ll start another round of seeds circa April 1, planning to have an excess of plants, just in case the first ones get frozen.
I’ll start the “good tasting heirlooms” at different times, beginning around May 1. I’ll start the heat-tolerant varieties at that time as well.
Step 4: My cure for tomato paralysis? Buy local.
Even with a fairly well-formulated plan, you still have to pick your varieties. And this is where I ran into tomato paralysis. Within any of the categories above, there’s a huge selection of varieties to choose from.
First, I made a list. Within each of those categories (early season, paste, high-taste, heat-tolerant), I started looking for recommendations. Prize-winning tomatoes. Success stories with early tomatoes. Recommendations from people who make hundreds of pounds of dried tomatoes every year. And so on.
I made the command decision not to grow cherry tomatoes this year. I realize that, in theory, you can get the same yield from a cherry tomato as from a full-sized tomato. But last year, it seemed like much more work to stake them and pick them, for the amount of tomatoes I got.
And then — with just one exception — I shopped my local sources and bought what they had, from that list. That’s how I finally cut down my choices enough so that I could get to a reasonable number of varieties. I took what was on the shelf in my local garden center and hardware stores, and what was offered by a YouTube gardener, in my zone, whose advice I have found exceptionally helpful (The Rusted Garden).
The sole exception was one hybrid that seemed very attractive, but was only sold by Burpee Seed. And so, one variety came from a traditional national seed vendor.
If nothing else, I’d bet that my local vendors get a mix of seeds well-suited to this climate. Seeing something actually on the shelf seemed to be a way to vet the notion that that particular variety is likely to grow well around here. By and large, retailers aren’t in the business of trying to set you up for failure.
For the record, here’s what I’m growing this year. Just a few of each, but it adds up. (FWIW, properly stored, tomato seeds will remain viable for years.)
- Early Season/cold tolerant
- Glacier (55 days)
- Siletz (75 days, reported very cold-tolerant)
- Fourth of July (49 days)
- Paste
- Big Mama hybrid (Burpee)
- San Marzano
- Hungarian Italian Paste
- Amish Paste
- High taste
- Aunt Ruby’s Green German
- Chocolate Stripes
- Cherokee Purple
- Heat tolerant
- Arkansas Traveller
- Floradade
There’s only two things that money can’t buy …
… and that’s true love and home-grown tomatoes.
