Tomato Start FAQs

Heirlooms and Hybrids

I choose the best varieties of both hybrid and heirloom tomatoes to start from seed, but there is a fair bit of confusion behind those terms.

A hybrid plant is the result of a cross between two different parent varieties. Hybridization occurs all the time in nature and that is how most of the genetic variability in nature happens. Hybridization can also happen deliberately and when we do that, it’s called artificial selection. Hybrids are generally developed to bring out favorable characteristics such as flavor, color, shape, disease resistance, and so on.

Heirloom is a fuzzier term, and means that the seeds for that tomato variety have been passed down from one generation to the next.

An important distinction between hybrid and heirlooms is that hybrids will not breed true. If you save seeds from a hybrid tomato such as Big Beef and then plant them, you’ll get a wide variety of tomatoes—some looking and tasting like Big Beef, but most looking and tasting like the hybrid’s parent plants, or even the tomatoes from the previous hybrid crosses.

Heirloom or “open-pollinated” seeds, however, will breed true. If you save seeds from a Brandywine Pink tomato, all of the offspring will look and taste like Brandywine Pink.

A detailed discussion of hybrid and open-pollinated (heirloom) can be found at Seed Savers Exchange.

Determinate and Indeterminate

In the tomato start descriptions, “Ind.“ stands for indeterminate, and refers to tomatoes that continue to grow, flower, and fruit for the entire season, until the first frost. The plants grow quite tall, and so will need to be trellised. The nice thing about indeterminate plants is you get tomatoes continuously for many months.

”Det.” stands for determinate and refers to tomatoes that grow, flower, and fruit in a set period of time: usually 2-4 weeks at the peak of the summer. This is especially nice if you want to make a few big batches of tomato sauce. The plant size is also more manageable for many city-dwellers.

Container-suitable

The tomatoes I call “container-suitable” are the genetically smaller plants. These will still grow between 3 and 5 feet tall, however, so you should provide support such as staking, trellising, and/or a tomato cage.

Technically speaking though, any tomato can be grown in a container if:

• The container is large enough (at least 5 gallons per plant)

• You have full sun

• You pay close attention to your plants throughout the season, especially regarding watering (since pots dry out faster than the ground)

• You give the plant support (tomato cage or stakes)

Many people have success growing cherry and grape tomatoes in containers. The same rules apply, but since these plants will get much taller, you need to pay even more attention to supporting them so they won’t flop over and break.