Two tomato types to try

I've been asked to try out some tomato varieties by Baia Nicchia, a small seed company from near San Francisco. They're reputed to be cool tolerant, so I guess they wanted someone in a cool climate like the UK to try them out.

The varieties are called Spain (pictured left, and named after the Spanish flag) - "a striking sausage-shaped tomato with yellow stripes over red" and Maglia Rosa - "a beautiful egg-shaped tomato decorated with a mottled pink skin".

The plan is that I grow them and report back on how they perform, which I'll endeavour to do. I'll also try to save some seed which I'll offer to Horticultural readers when the time comes.

I love growing new and interesting tomatoes, so it'll be great to try these out. I also have my eye on some yellow cherry tomatoes called Galina from Siberia listed on the Real Seed Company's tomatoes page, and the Marmande tomato as raved about by Jane Grigson in her classic Vegetable recipe book.

Comments

[Patrick]

Galina is an heirloom variety (I grew it last year, but blight got the plants before I could save seeds), and is really nice. The Real Seed Company specializes in heirloom seeds, and I would trust them to sell you varieties you could save the seeds from. I don't know about the other tomatoes.

Marmande is an heirloom variety, but that is no guarantee there isn't also a F1 hybrid version floating around as well. Like most companies that also sell F1s, the Italian seed company does not clearly label all of their seeds indicating if they are open pollinated (or heirloom) and thus suitable for seed saving. I wouldn't count on being able to save seeds from this tomato.

As far as Baia Nicchia, there is no indication that any of their seeds are open pollinated, and I would expect none of them are. I have never heard of the two varieties you are trying, and they are not listed in any of my heirloom tomato lists. Searching the Internet doesn't give any indication that they might be heirloom either. I suspect they made the tomatoes themselves by crossing heirloom varieties, and so they are really F1s. It doesn't mean they won't be interesting or they won't grow well, but they probably won't be suitable for seed saving.

Of course you can always save seeds from F1 plants, but they will be genetically unstable and probably nothing like the parent plants.

[Fred Hempel]

Hi all,

Although Patrick made a good educated guess as to the nature of our varieties, it happens to be incorrect. We only sell true-breeding varieties, except for Sun Gold (a variety for which we must purchase seeds every year). Many of them are classic heirlooms, but the two discussed in this blog were created via traditional crosses of two true-breeding heirloom tomatoes. Subsequently they were re-selected for 7 generations, and are now "true-breeding".

In the coolest foggiest regions near San Francisco, like on London, many tomatoes don't grow well. That's why we decided a few years ago to figure out which ones do grow well, and to start trying to create new varieties. "Spain" and "Maglia Rosa" are the result of those efforts.

Our main business is to sell organic seedlings to gardeners in the San Francisco area and organic fruits to high-end restaurants. We are just starting up a mechanism for seedling sales in the USA, but we do not take credit cards. Thus, we will not be able to sell seeds to UK gardeners this year. However, if you are in the UK, and you email us and give us your UK address we will send you a small packet of seeds.

All we ask is that 1) You share seedlings with your friends/neighbors/allotment mates, and 2) At the end of the year you email us and give us a general report on how/where you grew the plants, and your general impressions of the plants.

Cheers,
Fred

[Patrick]

Fred: I stand corrected. Best of luck with your new varieties and your business. I will be watching with interest what bloggers say about them.

Jane: What I said about Seeds of Italy still stands. Don't assume seeds you buy are true breeding, unless they are clearly labelled as such or you otherwise have reason to know. The best thing is to buy them from a company that specializes in open pollinated seeds or get them from another gardener.

[Patrick]

I have some more information about the Marmande tomato from Seeds of Italy.

I have a book that is a Seed Savers Exchange publication called Garden Seed Inventory, dated 2004. It is a list of all US and Canadian seed companies that offer non-hybrid seeds, and the seeds they offer. I didn't think to look in this book before, because I didn't think a European company would be listed.

Anyway, there is a US based company called Seeds from Italy (www.growitalian.com) that is a retail outlet for the same seeds that Seeds of Italy sells. Notice the 'from' instead of 'of' in the company name. In 2004 Seeds from Italy offered more than 300 varieties of seeds in the US, 174 of which were non-hybrid. The Marmande tomato was one of the non-hybrid varieties!

Personally, I would still buy my seeds from a company that is more open about the true nature of the seeds they sell, or get them from another gardener. I think however if you bought these seeds from Seeds of Italy you could probably save the seeds...