The newest category of tomatoes, dwarf indeterminate, provides home gardeners with smaller-sized tomato plants that are ideal for patio or deck. Before sharing more about this tomato variety, it’s helpful to understand the three major categories of tomatoes: 1) Determinate, 2) Indeterminate and 3) Dwarf indeterminate.
For home gardeners with limited space growing traditional tomato plants can be challenging. The sprawling vines of most tomato varieties can easily take over a small garden. Fortunately, there are compact tomato varieties that don’t grow tall making them ideal for container gardening and small gardens. In this article, we’ll look at the benefits of compact tomato varieties, tips for growing them successfully, and some of the best varieties to try.
Benefits of Compact Tomato Varieties
Compact or dwarf tomato varieties offer several advantages for home gardeners:
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Small size Compact tomatoes reach heights of 3-4 feet, compared to 6 feet or more for standard tomatoes. This makes them perfect for growing in containers or small garden plots.
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Less staking With their short stature and sturdy stems compact tomatoes usually don’t require staking or elaborate support structures.
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Higher density planting: You can plant compact tomatoes closer together, maximizing production in limited space.
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Continuous harvest: Unlike determinate tomatoes that produce over a short period, dwarf indeterminate tomatoes yield tomatoes continuously through the season.
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Container friendly: With their restrained growth habit, compact tomatoes thrive in containers as small as 5 gallons.
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Variety of types: There are dwarf cultivars of cherry, slicing, roma, and heirloom tomatoes to suit every taste.
For urban gardeners and anyone with confined growing space, compact tomato varieties enable abundant harvests even in tight quarters.
Growing Tips for Compact Tomatoes
Though dwarf tomatoes are bred to be naturally compact, providing ideal growing conditions will keep them healthy and productive. Here are some tips:
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Sun and heat: Give dwarf tomatoes full sun (at least 6 hours per day) and a spot protected from cool winds. Reflective mulch boosts heat.
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Rich soil: Amend soil with compost or aged manure to provide nutrients for best growth and yields. Container tomatoes need regular feeding.
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Support: Staking or caging isn’t always necessary but provides support for heavy yields. Cages should be large enough to contain the plant’s mature size.
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Pruning: Don’t prune dwarf indeterminate varieties or you’ll reduce fruit production. Pruning isn’t needed for their natural compact habit.
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Watering: Provide consistent moisture, especially when fruits are ripening. Drip irrigation works well. Drought can stunt growth.
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Protection: Compact size makes dwarf tomatoes ideal for protecting with cloches or floating row covers to extend the season.
Follow these tips, and your dwarf tomatoes will reward you with a prolific harvest, even in limited space!
Best Compact Tomato Varieties
Here are some top-rated compact tomato varieties to try in your small garden or containers:
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Tiny Tim: A miniature tomato growing just 12-18 inches tall. Produces clusters of sweet red 1-ounce fruits. A patio container favorite.
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Patio: A very compact determinate tomato topped with small, flavorful red fruits around 2-3 ounces. Max height of 3 feet.
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Mountain Magic: A dwarf indeterminate with large, meaty 12-16 ounce red beefsteak fruits on vines reaching 3 feet.
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Bloody Butcher: An open-pollinated heirloom tomato with deep red, richly flavored 8-12 ounce fruits. Short vines to 3 feet.
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Rosella Purple: A Roma-type salad tomato bred for dwarf size and continuous harvests of 4-5 ounce red fruits.
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Prudence Purple: Uniquely colored heirloom fruits are rosy pink with purple/red streaks. Compact vines to 4 feet yield 1-2 ounce tomatoes.
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Sweet ‘n Neat: One of the best compact cherry tomatoes. Vigorous dwarf vines produce abundant small, super sweet red tomatoes.
This is just a sampling of the many excellent dwarf tomato varieties available to home gardeners today. With the rise of urban gardening and container growing, expect even more compact choices to be introduced.
Breeding Compact Tomato Varieties
The recent increase in dwarf tomato options is thanks to focused breeding efforts by tomato enthusiasts around the world. Two main breeding projects sparked the current boom in compact tomatoes:
1. Dwarf Tomato Project
Volunteers across the U.S., Europe, and Australia are collaborating to develop new open-pollinated dwarf tomatoes by crossing heirloom and dwarf lines. They’ve released dozens of new varieties with more in development.
2. Cross Hemisphere Dwarf Project
Started in 2005 by tomato breeders in Australia and the U.S., this project also uses heirloom and dwarf parent lines. Their teamwork accelerates variety development.
These projects exemplify the wonders of crowd-sourced plant breeding. Backyard breeders are creating a wealth of adapted tomatoes for spaces of all sizes.
How Dwarf Tomatoes are Bred
The dwarfism that makes these tomatoes compact results from a simple recessive gene. When crossing standard and dwarf tomatoes:
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First generation hybrids (F1) exhibit dominant standard size.
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Second generation (F2) segregates with 25% dwarf plants.
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Dwarf plants are selected and crossed for 7+ generations until stabilized.
While the dwarf trait is simple, breeders select for other essential traits like disease resistance, yield, color, flavor, etc. It takes years to finish a variety, but the results are worth it!
Grow Dwarf Tomatoes for Yourself!
Now that you know the benefits of compact tomatoes and how they’re bred, why not try growing some dwarf varieties yourself this season? With their restrained vines and continuous harvests, they’re the perfect solution for small gardens and patios.
A few dwarf tomato plants can produce an abundance of full-sized fruits for salads and sandwiches all summer long. With minimal staking and care, dwarf tomatoes are an easy and productive option for urban and container gardening.
Let us know how your dwarf tomatoes grow on our Facebook page! We’d love to see photos and hear about your favorites. Happy tomato gardening!
Three Varieties of Tomatoes
Determinate tomato varieties have a determined height and after a certain point, they stop growing. They have a compact bush habit and will usually grow from 2 to 4 feet tall depending on the variety and growing conditions. These varieties also have a determined fruiting period because they produce flowers and fruit mostly at the tips of their branches. After blooming they will not get any taller, and most vegetative growth will stop. They tend to produce a large crop over a short time period, usually around 3 to 4 weeks. After the main harvest, only an occasional fruit is produced, and the plants tend to die off.
Determinate types are never pruned because it would drastically reduce the harvest. Determinate tomatoes are popular with home gardeners as they can readily grow these tomatoes in large containers or in small gardens. Staking may be needed to support a large crop. Commercial canners also enjoy these tomatoes because the fruit tends to ripen all at once for more efficient harvesting. Favorite determinate varieties include ‘Celebrity’, ‘Bush Early Girl’, ‘Bush Beefsteak’, ‘Roma’, ‘Principe Borghese’, ‘Silvery Fir Tree’, and ‘Tiny Tim’ (a very short variety).
Indeterminate tomato varieties are tall. Their size is not determined and the vines will keep growing taller throughout the growing season. The production period is not limited to a brief burst of production; the tomatoes produce all season. Vines may grow to be 6 or 8 feet tall, or more. They should be tied to a substantial stake or supported with a stout cage. Indeterminate tomatoes may be grown in large containers, but again, they need to be staked or caged to support the vines and fruit. Some gardeners choose to prune to keep the vigorous vines within bounds.
Favorite indeterminate varieties include ‘Brandywine’, ‘Big Beef’, ‘Mountain Magic’, ‘Delicious’, ‘Matt’s Wild Cherry’, and ‘Sun Gold’. The number of indeterminate tomato varieties available is much larger than that of determinate varieties. The indeterminate varieties have a large and wonderful range of colors, shapes, sizes, and often intense, unique, complex flavors (especially in the heirloom or old-time varieties). However, their large unruly vines make it a challenge to grow in the small garden or on the patio.
Dwarf indeterminate tomato plants are unique in that they have a very thick central stem, leaves that are usually dark green and crinkly (rugose), and very compact growth. To me, they look as if a giant hand squished a larger tomato plant to a smaller size. The spaces between the leaves (internodes) are very short. Some people call these varieties tree-type tomatoes or indeterminate short internode (ISI) tomatoes. Height varies from 2 to 4 ½ feet. Their fruiting habit is similar to the indeterminate varieties in that they will continue producing tomatoes until frost kills the plant. The fruit yield may not be as much as the true indeterminate tomatoes, but dwarf indeterminates may be grown closer together and in large size pots (5 gallons or larger).
Dwarf indeterminates should be staked because good fruit production tends to make these plants top-heavy. Pruning is not recommended. By growing different dwarf indeterminates you can get good production and an increasingly large choice of colors, sizes, shapes, and fine flavor. The dwarf indeterminate tomato varieties are not yet widely available in nursery centers. If you want to try some dwarf indeterminates this year, your best bet might be to grow your own. Varieties worth trying include ‘Perth Pride’, ‘Dwarf Wild Fred’, ‘Sleeping Lady’, and ‘Rosella Purple.’
The History of the Dwarf Indeterminate Tomato
In 1850 Alexander Livingston founded one of our nation’s first seed companies. Up to that time, tomatoes were considered poisonous by most of the general public. Livingston helped to popularize the tomato in this country, introduced one of the first reliable tomato varieties, ‘Paragon,’ in 1870, and went on to introduce 30 additional tomato varieties.
In a field of Livingston’s ‘Acme’ tomato, one unique plant was discovered and introduced as ‘Dwarf Champion’ by the Maule Seed Company in 1889. ‘Dwarf Champion’ produces 3 to 8-ounce fruit on tree-like, four-foot plants. In 1896 Livingston himself listed the plant in his catalog and described it as follows:
“A single plant of it was found some ten years ago (1886) in a field of our Acmes. It is well adapted for forcing in vegetable houses, because of its dwarf and compact growth, the plants growing stiff and upright, with stiff-jointed stems, the foliage of an unusually dark green color, thick and corrugated.” Tomatoville forum
‘Dwarf Champion’ was crossed with the largest tomato variety known at that time, the ‘Ponderosa,’ a red, meaty, 1-2 pound beefsteak variety. The result of this cross was the ‘New Big Dwarf.’ Fruit on the ‘New Big Dwarf’ weighs up to one pound and the dwarf, bushy plants are two to four feet tall. ‘New Big Dwarf’ was introduced in 1915.
These varieties are the first of an entirely new class of tomatoes, the dwarf indeterminates – they keep producing fruit continuously and grow like the indeterminates, but are not nearly as tall. Up until just recently, very few dwarf indeterminates were discovered or developed. Then in 2005, Patrina Nuske-Small of Australia corresponded with North Carolina tomato expert Craig LeHoullier. They considered the possibility of crossbreeding the existing dwarf indeterminate varieties with heirloom (indeterminate) varieties to produce new types of dwarf indeterminate varieties. The Cross Hemisphere Dwarf Tomato Breeding Project was born.
Flowers on a dwarf indeterminate plant are pollinated with pollen from an heirloom indeterminate plant. The resulting hybrid first-generation plants (called F1 plants by scientists) are all very uniform in all characteristics and are non-dwarf. It is not until the second generation, or F2 generation, that genetic characteristics start segregating out. The dwarf characteristic is a recessive (hidden) trait so, in the F2 generation, about 25% of the plants will be dwarf. Because other traits that the breeders are looking for may be dominant or recessive, continued selection goes on during each growing season. It takes from 7 to 10 generations to stabilize a new variety from the hybrid cross so that the seeds produce plants that are reliably true to type.
5 Tomato Grow Mistakes To Avoid
FAQ
What tomato varieties don’t grow tall?
Favorite determinate varieties include ‘Celebrity’, ‘Bush Early Girl’, ‘Bush Beefsteak’, ‘Roma’, ‘Principe Borghese’, ‘Silvery Fir Tree’, and ‘Tiny Tim’ (a very short variety). Indeterminate tomato varieties are tall. Their size is not determined and the vines will keep growing taller throughout the growing season.
How do I keep my tomato plants from getting so tall?
Which tomato plants stay small?
Determinates are tomato plants that grow in a bush habit. This means they are likely to stay short and probably won’t require staking. Determinates are the best tomato varieties for container growing.
What are the low height tomatoes?
Traditionally the two dwarf tomatoes grown both commercially and in the home garden have been Scorbies Dwarf and Russian Red, however the latest newcomers include Small Fry, Tiny Tim and Tumbling Tom Red. (Keep an eye out as there are usually new varieties every year.)