Early July view - the driveway garden is in full swing in 2006!

Looking through old gardening pictures is great fun, and daunting (particularly with the ease of digital, and the way that they can really pile up!). It helps to have a focus. Last blog I covered my debut with a digital camera, 2002, and showed some of my first “tomato glamour” shots.

Here in 2022, I am embarking upon the 16th year of the Dwarf Tomato Breeding project. That is hard for me to fathom - time does fly when one is having fun (and eating well from the garden). The project had to start somewhere, and this blog is where it begins. The driveway in 2006 was where the initial set of indeterminate X dwarf hybrids made by Patrina in Australia were grown out for seed saving (it is with the saved seeds that dwarf hunting began, in 2007). I will stick to pictures to keep this blog of manageable length - the captions on the pictures will describe the variety and its lineage.

Pay no attention to the septoria and early blight attacking the foliage. These are the hybrid tomatoes on Bashful - the hybrid resulting from crossing Orange Strawberry with Golden Dwarf Champion. Patrina noted that she thinks it was not a clean cross, which subsequent offspring proved. This is why an orange X a yellow gave a red hybrid. Nothing of excellence emerged from this cross, probably due messy genetics because of rogue pollen. The tomatoes were in the 3 ounce range, round, red and very average in flavor, which really is of no consequence….the whole point is in moving forward to see what the flavors show in the dwarfs to be found.

If Doc looks a lot like Bashful, it is because there was a strong resemblance - medium sized round scarlet tomatoes of no great distinction flavor-wise. Doc was created by crossing Kellogg’s Breakfast with Budai Torpe (a small red fruited dwarf). The problem was that Kellogg had already apparently been crossed with Aker’s West Virginia - another dirty cross, so another mini project that didn’t work out as hoped. All dwarf plants resulting from growing out seed from these tomatoes was scarlet and ordinary in size and flavor.

Here is Dopey F1 hybrid, which represents a cross between the bicolored heart Orange Russian #117 with Golden Dwarf Champion. The hybrid fruit is medium sized, slightly oblate and a medium orange in color. Though quite a bit of work went in to exploring the dwarfs that resulted, only one was deemed good enough to stabilize, name and release - Dwarf Russian Swirl, a very nice medium to large oblate red/yellow swirled bicolor. For some reason, the heart shape from the indeterminate parent never made an appearance.

Here is Grumpy F1 - do you notice a trend? Many of our hybrids ended up giving medium sized scarlet fruit. Grumpy originated with Patrina’s cross between Black from Tula (a really nice Russian indeterminate purple tomato, similar in many respects to Cherokee Purple in outward appearance) and Budai Torpe. The scarlet color was as expected (red flesh and yellow skin being the dominant traits). The tomatoes were plentiful, nearly round, scarlet in color and fair to good in flavor. Grumpy ended up being a bit of a gold mine for early compact dwarfs, with the following as named, released varieties - Sleeping Lady, Dwarf Arctic Rose, Yukon Quest, Bundaberg Rumball, Iditarod Red, Clare Valley Red and Clare Valley Pink - releases out of one cross. Fruit size tends to be medium small to medium, maturity date is among the earliest of our dwarfs, they are quite prolific and flavor is just fine - not among the best, but very nice indeed.

Happy was one of the larger fruited of our new indeterminate X dwarf hybrids, which is not surprising. The parents are Paul Robeson (a good sized chocolate colored beauty) and New Big Dwarf (the largest fruited of the dwarfs to date, and pink in color, as well as delicious. I first read about it from a 1915 Isbell seed catalog from my collection, but a garden friend, Dave, noted it is from 1909 - see the link in his comment after this post). The scarlet color is actually not a surprise - the yellow skin of Paul Robeson over the red flesh of New Big Dwarf. Both parents tend to be irregular and oblate, and that is what the hybrid showed. The real surprise is in the flavor - this was one of the worst tasting of our starting hybrids, but led to some really delicious releases. An important lesson was therefore learned with this family. Releases from the Happy family are Tasmanian Chocolate (oblate medium sized early chocolate), Perth Pride (mid season medium small very tart purple), Boronia (medium sized tasty oblate purple), and Sweet Adelaide (medium to medium large smooth delicious pink). A few others never were completed, such as Tasmanian Red and Tasmanian Pink. My guess is that there are still nice things to be found from this cross.

Sleazy A sliced - I had to show both, because this was one big tomato, as well as one delicious hybrid! The hybrid was created by Bruce Bradshaw (a California gardener) by crossing the purple indeterminate Carbon with New Big Dwarf (he actually messed up on one pollination, which resulted in Sleazy B - a smaller pink hybrid that used Dwarf Champion as the dwarf parent). The hybrid, as shown, came in at one pound or more, with delicious oblate pink tomatoes. Only one named variety made it to the finish line, but what a tomato it is - Dwarf Wild Fred, a truly delicious medium large purple with flavor very similar to Cherokee Purple. No releases emerged from Sleazy B.

Here’s Sleepy hybrid, another unimpressive medium sized red tomato that ended up being a real bonanza for some of our favorite dwarf releases. It also provided a color mystery. Sleepy came from Patrina’s cross between Stump of the World (a big potato leaf pink beauty with superb flavor) and the red dwarf Budai Torpe. Despite the boring scarlet hybrid, the joy emerged once we started dwarf hunting. Sleepy ended up leading to Rosella Purple (many people’s favorite tasting dwarf, a Cherokee Purple dead ringer), Rosella Crimson (whose flavor can often approach Brandywine), and Wilpena (a large red potato leaf variety that isn’t as well known as it should be). We have some named types that never did get finished up. The mystery - crossing a pink with a red….where did the purple come from! This represents the magic of tomato breeding and the chance of unlocking the genetics and having a recessive trait show itself when least expected!

Here is a pic of Sneezy F1 hybrid on the vine

And this is Sneezy cut open. The bright yellow tomatoes (with a bit of outer pink blush when very ripe) were in the 6-8 ounce range, smooth, nearly round, and just absolutely delicious. Sneezy came about when Patrina made the lucky decision to cross the spectacular potato leaf green slicer Green Giant with historic Golden Dwarf Champion. Out of this emerged a most remarkable set of some of our best flavored dwarf releases - the green fruited Dwarf Kelly Green, Dwarf Beryl Beauty, Dwarf Jade Beauty, Summertime Green and Dwarf Emerald Giant; the yellow fruited Dwarf Sweet Sue, Summer Sunrise, Summertime Gold, Barossa Fest and Summer Sweet Gold, and white Dwarf Mr. Snow - all in all, 11 of our creations came from this cross, and all are a joy to grow and eat.

Last comes Witty hybrid, bred by Patrina by crossing Cherokee Green with Budai Torpe - a yellow skinned, green fleshed indeterminate slicer with a small fruited red dwarf. The hybrid actually was one of the better tasting, with smaller, round scarlet tomatoes. Several of our underappreciated but really worthwhile releases came from Witty - the smaller, round fruited Kangaroo Paw Yellow, Kangaroo Paw Green and Kangaroo Paw Brown (Kangaroo Paw Red remains elusive - it keeps changing colors on us after we think it is stabilized), and the lovely slicing tomato Sean’s Yellow Dwarf, which I often suggest to people new to the dwarfs, for its reliability, earliness, flavor and beauty.

I hope you enjoyed going down Dwarf Tomato Project memory lane with me. The picture quality isn’t great and I didn’t have nearly as many prime shots as I hoped for. But they did serve the purpose in laying out how this all began.

late June 2002 view of my garden - this was our 10th garden in Raleigh, prior to moving most of the tomatoes to the driveway.

I’ve never been a particularly good photo-documenter of my gardens. Prior to digital photography, there simply isn’t much at all that was captured. It really is a shame, particularly for the 1987-1990 stretch when I really took the deep dive into heirloom varieties.

2002 saw the very beginnings of growing in the driveway - this shows mostly peppers and eggplants.

The Nikon Coolpix purchased in 2002 meant more pictures, but not always the most timely and best organized. I didn’t always use the best size (meaning lower resolution), but in taking a tour through my 2002 pics, there are a few worthwhile things to share.

The real Red Brandywine - regular leaf, scarlet fruit, medium sized, nice smooth form

In 2002, my garden held 78 different varieties. Looking through the varieties, it is clear that many grown then continue to be my favorites - Cherokee Purple and Cherokee Chocolate, Ferris Wheel, Brandywine, Yellow Brandywine, Red Brandywine, Aker’s West Virginia, Halladay’s Mortgage Lifter, Lillian’s Yellow Heirloom, Speckled Roman, Stump of the World, Lucky Cross, Nepal, Black from Tula, the Livingston varieties Favorite, Magnus and Golden Queen, Peak of Perfection, Burpee’s Matchless, and Anna Russian. Seeds saved that year are now 20 years old and I will likely try my hand at germinating some, though they are 4 years older than the oldest seeds I’ve managed to germinate.