At long last, lists of tomato seeds harvested in 2019 are ready!
Milestones for the 2019 growing season, everything but tomatoes excluded:
March 12th – First planting of tomato seeds in plug trays (other types started in late February)
May 25th – Last planting of tomato seeds indoors in plug trays
May 15th – First tomato seedlings transplanted into garden (these had to be covered many times because it was an exceptionally cold, wet Spring)
June 8th – Last tomato seedlings transplanted into gardens, except that…
June 9th – Very late killer frost wiped out approximately 800 tender young tomato seedlings
June 15h – Replacement seedlings transplanted for those frozen; and it seems that nearly all tomato vines that did survive frost were stunted and set back by 3-6 weeks in terms of producing ripe fruits.
September 21st – first light frost, with several more light to moderate frosts until…
October 11th – Season ending hard freeze, intense and frantic effort to get everything harvested ahead of this and placed in boxes in the garage. This year turned out to have a growing season of 104 days counting light frost, about 120 functional. Way too short for tomatoes at this elevation, when nights are too cool to help much with ripening except that 90-day window from about mid-June to mid-September.
The typical growing season is 183 days for American Fork, so a full two months were lost due to weather. No wonder 2019 was such a struggle – that and trying to do the work of 10 people…
December 8th – Last of seeds extracted from the main batches of tomatoes
December 27th – Last of leftover/slow to ripen batches processed and seeds extracted. Not all of them looked as good as this one:
Final batches processing and drying:
The week of December 22-27 was very intense with packaging, inventorying and alphabetizing seeds –
December 28th, excess microdwarf tomato seedlings put outside in the frigid weather. Despite several attempts with local online ads, it seems that nobody was interested in these, and I had to vacate the premises.
December 30th – finally finished inventory and data entry. Following is the summary
| No. varieties planted from seed (includes 17 microdwarf varieties planted in December 2018) | 825 |
| Seedlings transplanted into gardens | 2,083 |
| Est. no. seedlings killed by very late frost on June 9th; replaced with other seedlings by June 15th | 800 |
| Est. no. plants died from Curly Top Virus, goats and other pests or diseases besides frost | 190 |
| No. unique varieties transplanted into gardens | 795 |
| No. varieties for which all seedlings died or plants produced zero seeds | 310 |
| No. varieties for which too few seeds (<50) were produced to allow for listing or no permission to list | 26 |
| No. varieties harvested in 2018, stored for 365+ days before seed extraction | 2 |
| No. varieties which were offtype, but seeds saved anyhow | 16 |
| No. varieties that are now new on offer from Delectation of Tomatoes | 240 |
| No. of varieties from which seeds were saved to replenish those already in inventory | 200 |
| Misc. varieties, seeds saved, not listing | 9 |
| Total number of varieties from which adequate seeds were harvested in 2019 for listing, presumed true to type | 449 |
So it is this list of 244 “New to Delectation of Tomatoes” that will be of most interest to other tomato growers, and that list will follow here below.
Some of these varieties will likely be introductions to the tomato world. I am several weeks, or rather months away from preparing descriptions and photos (more than 25,000 photos still to name, for starters…). But please drop me an email if you have any specific questions, to dale@gianttomatoseeds.com.
Here is a link to the full list of tomatoes that I grew, or rather attempted to grow in 2019:
Tomato varieties grown by Delectation of Tomatoes in 2019
The goal was to save seeds from 450 new varieties in 2019; I invested more than $800 to this end. The season felt like a disaster, almost an utter failure. But I suppose that 54% (244 of 450) is an “F” grade, but not an utter failure. Failure is not even trying.
In 2019 I hit and tried hard to exceed my limits of time, resources, motivation, strength, endurance and patience. I planted about four times as many plants as I can comfortably manage, if I have nothing else going on with my life. Farmers markets and related activities took up about 40 hrs per week, so any attempt at saving seeds, weeding, tending plants, seed orders, business meetings, etc. was all on top of that.
Back in 2014 I vowed I would never attempt to do farmers markets and/or CSA’s again, at least not if I were to try to save seeds also. But my biggest curse caught up to me again: excessive ambition.
Anyhow, without regard to hybrid status, etc., here is the list of 244 varieties new to Delectation of Tomatoes:
Artisan Blush Tiger
Artisan Green Tiger
Atomic Fusion
Aunt Ginny’s Purple
Babushkin Potseluy
Balabanovskiye
Barry’s Crazy Cherry
Bart’s Best
Bavrinskiye
Be My Baby
Beauty Lottringa
Bellestar
Belyy Gigant
Berkeley Tie-dye Green
Big Braggart
Big Cheef Pink
Big White Pink Stripe
Bisignano #2
BKX
Black Aisberg
Black Amber
Black Keyes
Blue Cream Berries
Boar’s Tooth
Bolgiano’s Extremely Early ‘I.X.L.’
Bonté Tigret
Brad’s Atomic Grape
Bronze Orb
Brown Berry
Bubblegum Dwarf
Budaï Torpe
Bychki Serdtsevidnyie
Canadian Heart
Carnoso Extremenyo
Chelyaba
Cherokee Carbon
Cherokee Lemon
Cherokee Tiger Orange
Chibikko Micro Dwarf
Chinese
Chocolate Cherry
Chudo
Chudo Iz Kazakhstana
Chudo Selektsyi
Chudo Zemli Oranzhevoye
Cindy’s West Virginia
Clare Valley Pink
Clare Valley Red
Clearview
Coorong Pink
Cosmos
County Agent
Dark Galaxy
Dedushka Grisha
Delta Diver
Desperado
Diener
Dixiewine
Domati
Domingo X Libanaise des Montagnes
Dorodnyi
Dot’s Delight
Dragon’s Eye
Drug (Dzhan)
Dwarf Awesome
Dwarf Bendigo Blush
Dwarf Bendigo Drop
Dwarf Bendigo Moon
Dwarf Bendigo Rose
Dwarf Egypt Yellow
Dwarf Fatima
Dwarf Galen’s Yellow
Dwarf Grandma’s Chocolate
Dwarf Grandpa Gary’s Green
Dwarf Jasmine Yellow
Dwarf Maliniak
Dwarf Mary’s
Dwarf Maura’s Cardinal
Dwarf Mystic Lady
Dwarf Ondroszek
Dwarf Peppermint Stripes
Dwarf Sibirski Stambruyji
Dwarf Solokah
Dwarf Sunny’s Pear
Dwarf Suz’s Beauty
Dwarf Zyska
Earl’s Best Canner
Earl’s Red Beefsteak
Early Pick
Enormous Plum
Extreme North
Famous Dutch Girl
Faworyt
Fireworks
Flamenco
Flint Red
French Farmers Market
Fruit Punch
Galina
Garnet X Black Krim
Gem State
Giant Yellow Florentine Beauty
Giant Yugoslavian
Gold Nugget
Golden Jubilee
Good to Gold
Grace Lahman’s Pink
Great White Blue
Gruziny
Hazelfield Farm
Herb Taylor Golden
Honey Drop Cherry
Honey Nails
Inciardi
Irish Pink
Isalnita cu Cutie
Italian Ice
Ivan
Janet’s Jacinthe Jewel
Jenkins Creek
John Baer
John’s Huge Greek Red
Kaleidoscopic Jewel
Kampong
Kangaroo Paw Red
Kazanskiye Malinovyie
Kimberley
King Aramis
Korobeynik
Kozula #25
Krasnyi Petukh
Krasnyi Priz
Krymskaya Pipochka
La Vie en Rose
Landshuter Riese
Lariskino Serdtse
Ledi Di
Legenda Multiflora
Lev
Libanaise des Montagnes X Domingo
Lille Lise
Lillian’s Kansas Red Paste
Lil’s Favorite
Linhart’s Giant
Livingston’s Beauty
Livingston’s Yellow Oxheart
Long Tall Sally
Malinovyi Globus
Manalucie
Margareto
Marianna’s Conflict
Marion
Marjara
Maule’s Success
Melvina
Minusinskiy Gigant Kyashkinoy
Minusinskiy Gigant Rozovyi
Minusinskiy Kistevoy
Minusinskiy Malinovyi Gigant
Minusinskiy ot Baluyeva Yuriya
Minusinskiy ot Medvedkovoy N.A.
Minusinskiy Srednivye ot Starozhilov s Nosikom
Minusinskiy Urozhaynyi Krupnyi
Moonshiner’s Ball
Mountain Princess
Murhurlu
Nipples
Nosiki
Obedennaya Tarelka
Olimp Malinovyi
Omich
Orange Grape
Orange Lithuanian
Ot Sosedki Iriny
Ot Zuraba Kukhinidze
Penny
Pikalevskiye
Pink Petticoat
Pink Pioneer
Pink Siberian Tiger
Plate de Chateaurenard
Plum Regal
Polesskiy Gigant Tarasenko
Polish
President Garfield
Prezidentskiye
Pritchard (Scarlet Topper)
Rainbow Dwarf
Raspberry
Ravenum
Rawlings
Red Giant Banat
Red Target
Redhouse Freestanding
Rimma
Rocket
Rosy Finch
Ruby Treasure
Rufa
Rumplestiltskin
Russian House
San Marzano Gigante 3
Santiam
Santiam Sunrise
Sarandipity
Sgt. Pepper’s X Domingo
Shah
Shoshone
Skrytyie Sokrovishcha Vechnoy Zemli
Soul Patch
Spadaro
Spud Viper
Stick
Stormin Norman
Super Bush
Super Tasty
Surender’s Indian Curry
Sweet Alice
Sweet Beverley
Sweet Pea Currant
Syzranskaya Skorospelka
Taimyr
Taya
Tennessee Persimmon
The Thong
Timmy’s Wild Rajah
Unknown #54 Boar’s Tooth small
Uzhin na Plite
Valley Girl
Vernisazh Chernyi
Vilma
Vinnaya Bukhta
Vinson Watts
Wagner Blue Green
Wild Spudleaf Dwarf
Wilpena
Yefimiya
Yellow Out Red In
Yermakovskiye
Yoshkin Kot
Yubileynyi Tarasenko Krupnoplodnyi
Zarnitsa
Zavtrak Emira
Zhar Goryashchiye Ugli
Delectation of Tomatoes, etc. 