A Guide to Choosing the Best Tomato Seeds or Plant Starts

You know you want to plant tomatoes, but the list of seeds to choose from in the seed catalog can be overwhelming. Heading down to the nursery can still leave you bewildered with all the different tomato plant starts for sale.

Names of varieties such as Cherokee Purple, Better Boy, Mortgage Lifter, and German Queen can baffle you when you have no idea what the final tomatoes will look like. More questions arise. What are beefsteak tomatoes? Are all cherry tomatoes the same? And what is this I hear about determinate and indeterminate?

A tomato is a tomato, right? Maybe, so long as something grows, you’ll be happy. But, if you are interested in growing tomatoes for specific things such as canning, slicing, or making sauce, it is worth knowing a little about what to look for.

Indeterminate Versus Determinate Tomatoes

Source: CaliforniaGardener/YouTube

If you take a moment to read the labels on plant starts or seed packets (which is always recommended), you might come across the terms ‘determinate’ and ‘indeterminate’. This isn’t something to be ignored.

Determinate Tomatoes– Determinate tomatoes will grow to a certain size, maybe 4-5 feet tall, and then stop. They tend to be bushier than indeterminate tomatoes and will produce all of their tomatoes at the same time rather than throughout the growing season. Once they have produced their fruits, the plants will die back.

Even though they are not vining in nature, they will still need to be supported by cages or stakes to help them stay upright.

Determinate tomatoes are great if you are going to do some canning. These plants give you all of your tomatoes more or less at once giving you everything you need in one go. They are also worth considering if you have a smaller growing space.

Indeterminate Tomatoes– As long as you take care of indeterminate tomatoes, they have the ability to grow, well, indeterminately. They will grow and grow and you will have to keep pruning them back to keep them under control. They will only die once temperatures drop in the fall.

As they continue to grow and vine, these plants will produce tomatoes throughout the growing season. This is great if you are looking forward to a summer full of salads, salsa, and tomato sandwiches.

Paste Tomatoes

Paste tomatoes are much fleshier than other varieties of tomatoes, have fewer seeds, and are much less watery. This makes them ideal for making up sauces as they cook down much more efficiently. The most common paste tomato is the Roma tomato as well as the San Marzano.

They are mostly determinate, producing all their fruits at one time and giving you enough harvest to make a big batch of sauce.

Paste tomatoes are great if you are hoping to make tomato soup, spaghetti sauce, or batches of cooked salsa.

If you are looking for paste tomatoes check out Roma, San Marzana, Amish Paste, Italian Gold, or Opalka.

Slicing Tomatoes

Source: The Gardening Channel With James Prigioni/YouTube

Slicing tomatoes, often from the beefsteak camp of tomatoes, are what you want to grow for making epic tomato sandwiches. They are usually huge, some absurdly so (up to 2 lbs), where one slice can fill a whole slice of bread.

These types of tomatoes usually grow on indeterminate plants and produce fruit through the growing season. They are great to chop up into pico de gallo and salads or to cover your homemade pizza. Just one should do the trick.

Popular types of slicing tomatoes are the truly enormous Mortgage Lifter, the heirloom Cherokee Purple and the classic German Queen.

Cherry Tomatoes

Cherry tomatoes are perfect to have around for snacking in the garden. It’s hard to pass by that vine without plucking a tiny tomato or two. Leave a bowl of them out on your countertop, and they’ll be gone before you know it. They are also great for roasting.

They freeze really well, giving you cherry tomatoes for hot pasta dishes all year round.

The fact that they are so small means that cherry tomatoes produce quickly and churn out pounds and pounds of fruits all growing season. They are mostly indeterminate plants, but there are some determinate varieties.

Some excellent cherry tomato varieties to try are Sweeties, Orange Pear, and Black Cherry.

Heirloom Versus Hybrid Seeds

Source: Epic Gardening/Source

Hybrid seeds come from two parents that have been cross-pollinated to produce a desirable mix of the two. If you want to save seeds from a hybrid plant, there is no guarantee as to what the outcome will be if you plant them. These seeds tend to produce plants that revert back to being closer to one of their grandparent plants.

Heirloom seeds tend to be much older plant varieties. Saving and planting seeds from these plants will result in plants that are true to type.

Related Content:

• Guide to Cooking With Tomatoes: Different Types of Tomatoes and What They’re Best For
• Why Homegrown Tomatoes Are So Much Better for the Planet and You
• How to Grow Your Own Smoothie Garden
• 10 Starter Veggies for Your Beginner Home Garden
• What is Veganic Gardening

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