Dwarf tomatoes don’t necessarily have small fruit. They can have large or medium-sized fruit depending on the variety. The word “dwarf” refers to their growth habit. Dwarf tomatoes are simply a more compact version of the tomato plant - but with plenty of worthwhile extras. They come with a fascinating backstory in which Australia has a pivotal role to play. So - what’s the buzz about dwarf tomato plants all about?
What, Exactly, is a Dwarf Tomato Plant?
There are many categories of tomatoes, but one of the problems that urban gardeners face is the sheer amount of space they can take up.
Vining tomatoes are typically heavy bearers - but they can grow up to two metres tall and spread as widely. Not for your average suburban garden!
Determinate tomatoes are a little less space intensive: they reach a height of up to 1.5 metres. They still aren’t the ideal solution for people with small gardens and urban farmers who grow produce in pots.
Dwarf tomatoes can be vining or determinate, but they range from 30 cm tall to 1.2 metres tall and are specifically bred for home gardeners with limited space. At the same time, everyone wants that bumper crop, and the best dwarf tomato varieties deliver on this score too.
For those who appreciate unusual varieties, dwarf tomatoes offer a tantalising range of fruit colours. And they offer flavours ranging from earthy, to tangy, and sweet. To top it all, they’re strong plants - bred for adaptability and disease resistance. In short, perfect for the average Joe who just wants to grow tomatoes that taste way better than anything from the supermarket but without too much fuss and bother.
Dwarf Tomatoes: a Love Story
The love story that lies behind dwarf tomatoes, is perhaps the most inspiring thing about this wonderful group of plants.
In today’s world, we’ve become so accustomed to people being “in it for the money” that we’re positively startled when people tackle projects out of passion alone. The folks who spent years breeding dwarf tomato plants share the fruits of their labours out of love for the plants they helped breed and develop.
So, how did this all come to pass? Let's examine the origins and history of dwarf tomatoes, the Australian connection, and what makes dwarf tomatoes so special.
What is the Dwarf Tomato Project?
The dwarf tomato project isn’t a commercial venture. Since 2005, it has been a worldwide, collaborative breeding project in which volunteer tomato enthusiasts contributed their expertise with no expectation of profit. Today, there are over 150 dwarf tomato varieties, and unlike cultivars bred for commercial gain, they’re open-source.
How Plant Breeders Usually Profit
To understand why “open source” is so special, we have to look at how plant breeders profit from plants.
When plant breeders create a new variety, they will usually register it as intellectual property. If they opt for Plant Breeders’ Rights (PBR), other breeders are forbidden from using their plants in their own breeding projects, and royalties are paid every time seeds are sold. Alternatively, they can create a trademark. In this instance, they’re paying for protection of a variety name only.
This isn’t intended as a criticism of commercial plant breeders. It can take years to develop and stabilise a new variety and then they must still work to popularise it. They definitely deserve every cent they get in royalties - but it does mean that you’ll pay more for seeds or plants that are someone else’s intellectual property.
Because hardworking commercial plant breeders want to see returns in exchange for their efforts, they usually target commercial producers, and that leads us to the next important reason why dwarf tomatoes are so special.
Dwarf Tomatoes are Meant for Home Gardeners
Sorry, home gardeners! You aren’t (yet) a major food-producing force despite the rise in urban farming and veggie gardening. Large-scale agriculture still accounts for most of the world’s food harvests. As a result, most crops are bred with commercial farming in mind.
Dwarf tomato plants are different. They were developed for people like you: folks who have a little patch or are growing a potted veggie garden on an apartment balcony or rooftop.
But there’s more to dwarf tomatoes than garden-friendliness!
Incredible Diversity of Dwarf Tomato Colours, Shapes and Flavours
Since the dawn of agriculture, people have been undertaking selective plant breeding. Some of the results have come to be seen as what a food crop “should” look like. For example, most people think tomatoes should be round and red.
But, historically, tomatoes are incredibly diverse. From giant beefsteak tomatoes to golden, near-black, orange, yellow, pink and startling combinations of all the possible shades in one, tomatoes are more colourful than most people realise. That's not even considering all the possible shapes of tomatoes: round, oval, plum, heart-shaped, and beefsteak.
Non-Commercial Heirloom and Heritage Tomato Genes: Diversity and Taste
The older, heirloom or heritage tomato varieties tend to fall into the more space-intensive indeterminate and determinate tomato categories. Some of these varieties fell out of favour commercially for a variety of reasons, none of which relate to their flavour and vigour.
Perhaps they took longer to ripen, ripened unevenly (farmers don’t want to send pickers out too frequently) or the fruit sizes were too variable for commercial packaging. According to tomato experts, some of the richest tomato flavours were lost in the process of selecting the best varieties to suit commercial growing and large-scale distribution and sales.
The result of all this is that several heirloom tomato varieties aren't used in mainstream agriculture and became novelties for home gardeners. Consumers buying produce from commercial outlets were left with a bog-standard range of colours, shapes and flavours.
But some home gardeners still loved the heirloom varieties, particularly for their range and intensity of flavour. There was just one problem: these plants were simply too big for most modern gardens.
The dwarf tomato project’s volunteer breeders sought to solve this common issue. They used neglected yet worthy heirloom tomato genes to create compact plants. And they’ve included a wide spectrum of the diversity that the tomato gene pool allows for. It’s a remarkable achievement!
Dwarf Tomato Origins and Legacy - and The Australian Connection
Gardening is all about sharing, but Craig LeHoullier from North Carolina and Patrina Buske from Australia took collaboration between gardeners to the next level. Both of them were avid heirloom tomato growers, and they chanced to meet in an online gardening forum.
They agreed that the fabulous heirloom varieties were simply too big for the average modern gardener.
There were already a few, very rare, dwarf tomato varieties out there, and their flavour was far better than the next-most compact alternative: determinate varieties. After Craig found a 1915 seed catalogue featuring the results of a cross between a dwarf tomato plant and a large-fruited heritage variety, inspiration struck.
If a dwarf tomato with large fruit had been created in the past by crossing heirloom dwarf and large-fruited varieties, why had this direction never been pursued? He shared this inspiration with Patrina, and the Dwarf Tomato Project was conceived!
Tomato Enthusiasts? Yes, They’re Out There!
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Craig and Patrina soon discovered they weren’t the only tomato enthusiasts with an interest in plant breeding. After all, tomatoes are the world’s favourite vegetable! And yes! People love tomatoes so much that they’ll participate in an international tomato breeding project without any expectation of making a profit.
Volunteers came from the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and they all shared the vision of using natural breeding to create dwarf tomatoes using heirloom tomato varieties.
It’s the time-consuming, natural method of plant breeding that’s been with us since the dawn of agriculture. Choose two worthy varieties with desirable traits, crossbreed them, and see what you get! Then reselect and repeat across generations of tomato plants until you get the perfect result the natural way.
Since the participants were working in both the northern and southern hemispheres, they could fast-track results by fitting two growing seasons into a single year.
The Dwarf Tomato Project: Ordinary People Making Gardening History
It’s a never-before-seen gardening phenomenon: a group of volunteers working across borders and hemispheres on a single plant breeding project. Craig and Patrina have searched everywhere to see if something similar has ever occurred before. It hasn’t!
There were no botanists here. No horticulturists. No “professional” plant breeders - just people who loved tomatoes and a plant-breeding challenge. The results were stunning! Within the first year, the team had uncovered 40 promising crosses - but they didn’t stop there.
Low-Maintenance Dwarf Tomato Plants for Everyone
The results of this project, which announced its wind-down at the end of 2023, have been remarkable. Apart from creating an enormous range of tomato varieties, the project has catered to the modern need for compact, low-maintenance tomato plants.
They did it the old-fashioned, down-to-earth way. There were no laboratories and there was no cross-species GMO gene manipulation. Each of the crossbred varieties could have occurred in nature - the only difference was that it didn’t happen by chance.
So here’s what we have now: dwarf tomato varieties that don’t need tons of space. They don't need trellising. They don’t need or want pruning. They have a high fruit to foliage ratio (read, great harvests) and a long bearing season. And, most importantly, they have all the flavour and diversity that has been inadvertently bred out of commercial varieties in exchange for convenient large-scale production and uniformity.
Indeterminate Tomatoes vs Dwarf Tomatoes
Experienced gardeners growing dwarf tomatoes for the first time will immediately notice distinctive differences. The seedlings are more compact from a young age. They have sturdier stems. And even the foliage is a little different: darker-green with a puckered-up (rugose) look.
Of course, you can’t expect the harvest you’d get from a sprawling 2m-vine from a 1 metre tall plant. But, if you don’t have space for enormous tomato vines and time to prune and care for them, dwarf tomatoes are the answer.
Get a crop out of a few plants in 25 to 30 cm pots grown on your balcony or patio. Get loads of tomatoes from a small garden bed You can even dot them around in your ornamental garden.
Dwarf Tomatoes in Australia
The Australian connection in the breeding and development of dwarf tomato plants isn’t just something to feel proud about. It has practical advantages for Australian gardeners too.
Quite simply, many dwarf tomatoes were developed in Australian conditions. With plant breeders looking for good performance in local environments, you can be sure that your dwarf tomato varieties have a good chance of performing well in your garden.
Look out for those homegrown names! Here are a few to get you started:
10 Australian-Bred Dwarf Tomato Varieties to Try
Maralinga: Reddish chocolate brown mid-size tomatoes with deep red flesh and rich flavour
Tasmanian Chocolate: Brick red, medium-size fruits with a mild, sweet flavour
Kookaburra Cackle: Red-brown, small to mid-sized fruits with deep, purplish-red flesh
Loxton Lad: A large-fruited, sunset-orange variety with a citrusy tang
Kangaroo Paw Yellow: Small, rounded, sunshine yellow tomatoes. There are other “Kangaroo Paw” colours to enjoy too! Green, brown and red varieties add to the range.
Uluru Ochre: The luminous colour of Ayers Rock at sunset, these meaty tomatoes have medium to large fruits
Tasty Wine: Deep red, beefsteak-style, medium large tomatoes famed for their rich flavour
Coorong Pink: Simply beautiful pink tomatoes with a mild, sweet flavour
Blazing Beauty: Medium to large mid-orange fruits with intense, tangy flavour
Summertime Green: Fresh lime-green medium to large fruits. Surprisingly sweet!
What About All the Other Dwarf Tomato Varieties?
Of course, we lean towards the Australian dwarf tomatoes, but Dwarf Tomato Project contributors around the world have created varieties that thrive in Australian conditions. We should know! We’ve tried many of them in our own patch!
So, if your imagination is captivated by the intriguing shape and colours of the unique “Pepper-Like Stripe” or the deep plum blush of “Striped Antho,” don’t hesitate to try them. There are good reasons why we selected every variety in our range of dwarf tomatoes, and easy care is near the top of the list.
What Happened to The Dwarf Tomato Project?
With nearly 160 dwarf tomato varieties carrying the best of heirloom tomato genes, the Dwarf Tomato Project began winding up in 2023. But, it will be a process rather than an event. As co-founder Craig LeHoullier notes, there are still some upcoming varieties that will be ready for release soon.
As for reaching its goals, it’s clear that the Dwarf Tomato Project far exceeded theirs! From simply wanting to produce dwarf tomato plants so that people could enjoy heirloom colour, variety and flavour direct from their own home gardens to producing upwards of 150 varieties is a giant leap.
As for the dwarf tomato varieties, they won’t be going away anytime soon. In fact, Patrina, Craig and the people who worked together on the Dwarf Tomato Project hope that their dwarf tomatoes will become the heirlooms of tomorrow.
Dwarf Tomato Growing Tips
There’s not much you need to know before growing dwarf tomatoes. Part of the joy of growing them is that there isn’t a lot to do.
The smaller-fruited varieties may not even need support - but despite their sturdy stems, the larger-fruited, heavy-bearing varieties will need some help. Use stakes or create a mini-tomato cage to hold them up.
If you’re growing your tomatoes in pots, 30cm pots or equivalent sized grow bags will be ideal. Looking for something smaller? Check out micro-dwarf varieties!
Don’t prune out the suckers as you would when growing the big, vining varieties. Craig notes that you’ll likely only reduce your harvest if you do. That’s one less thing for your gardening work list.
Of course, you’ll want to start with the right varieties, and we’ve got a veritable rainbow of dwarf tomatoes for you to choose between. Our experience with growing dwarf tomatoes? It’s a joy! And those flavours really are exceptional, ranging from the tangy to the sweet, they’re never bland. These are “real” tomatoes, as a friend once said - so dig in and get started!