I grew a sweet 100 the other year and found the vast amount of waste discouraging. Lots of popped fruit, rotting on the vine, tomatoes dropping from the plant as ai harvest, a black sea of squirming ants under the plant. It reseeded like crazy.
Anybody have a grape-sized tomato plant that has a more useful yield?
DiGiTAL ViNYL (no email) Zone 6b/7, Westchester Co, NY,
Hybrid. It has much better disease resistance and resists cracking. A couple others that I like that resist cracking are Sweet Baby Girl Hybrid T (an early cherry tomato) and Marcellino Hybrid. If you like small yellow tomatoes try Ildi (also called Yellow Grape) or Dr. Carolyn, a pale yellow small tomato with very good flavor.
You can get seeds for these varieties from Totally Tomatoes,
I grew them for the last two years. I had to surround a large tomato cage with three other cages to hold all the branches, and a single plant provided me with around a dozen grape-sized tomatoes starting in early August, and continuing on to early October. Nice, sweet flavor, too. I'm very impressed with it.
I should mention that as the season went on, I did get more cracking fruit, but even tossing out the cracked fruit, my yield was high. And part of the reason for the cracking fruit was I just wasn't harvesting fast enough.
One tomato produced a whole 12 tomatoes? WOW.
I had a similar experience with sweet 100. I liked the red pear tomatoes better, but I don't recall the name. I know they are bigger than the grapes, but I didn't get so overwhelmed towards the end of the season.
FYI, cracked tomatoes can sometimes be caused by uneven watering. If the plants get dried out and then are given too much water the fruit expands too fast and cracks the skin open. Laura
DigitalV> I grew a sweet 100 the other year and found the vast amount of waste
I only had room to grow one tomato. I got one from a produce stand which also had some plants. The first one ripened and it was so bad I pulled the rest of the plant out and dumped it. the green tomatoes one by one ripened and not even my dogs would eat them. my mother swore by "sweet millions" but I dont see the plants for sale. Ingrid
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I agree with your mother. Sweet Millions is a much improved version of Sweet 100. No one around here sells the plants either so I start mine from seeds. I get my seed from Totally Tomatoes,
same as the California "cherry" tomato?
Persephone
I have to say, my yield was tremendous as was the plant. It grew to a six foot high two foot diameter bush with arms continuing to grow and flopping down another four feet over the top of the cage. It was the waste--which I would estimate probably reached 50% that I hated. That any the moldy, slushy rotten ones sitting on the vine propped right against good ones. And when you see a big patch of black ground then notice its moving and then realize it is a million swarming ants--kinda gross.
Thanks DiGiTAL ViNYL (no email) Zone 6b/7, Westchester Co, NY,
It could have been the year--that may have been a rainy year. Other plants in the patch didn't seem water stressed(too much/too little)--actually did very well. Last year I had a lot of problem with cracking on heirlooms, but that was due to my job taking all my time>
It was also a new planting ground, although I gave the tomatoes the best pickings.
They also dropped a lot of ripe fruit. Which was frustrating to see ripe fruit dropped yet split and moldy fruit still stuck on the vine squashed against new healthy ones.
Zone 6b/7, Westchester Co, NY,
They usually call them grape tomatoes in the grocery store. They are smaller than most cherries.
Cherry tomatoes typically start with the size of a large cherry or larger, about 1 to 1.5 inches round. As you get to the 2 inch rounds they usally start calling them slicing tomatoes(unless elongated, then plum). Grape tomatoes are smaller. Typically they are about 1/2 inch round, sometimes slightly elongated, but not really longer than .75 inch. They are your average sized grape.
DiGiTAL ViNYL (no email) Zone 6b/7, Westchester Co, NY,
Cherry tomatoes are small and round like a cherry. Grape tomatoes are small and elongated like a grape. Grape tomatoes can be larger or smaller than cherry tomatoes. In fact, most grape tomatoes I've seen are larger than the typical cherry tomato.
So the primary difference between grape and cherry is the shape.
That distinction makes sense, although I would think these are more marketing terms than scientific (tomatus cherrianus). Never seen a "grape" tomato offered as large as a typical cherry. Sweet 100's were significantly smaller than average cherry tomato I've grown-but are usually referred to in catalog as cherry, often with some adjective adjustment mini-, small, tiny, grape-sized. Until now I've thought of grape-sized as a multiple-in-the-mouth-at-once size where cherry is one-at-a-time. YRMV!
DiGiTAL ViNYL (no email) Zone 6b/7, Westchester Co, NY,
Absolutely.
The "grape" tomatoes at regular supermarkets around here are usually small. But so are the cherry tomatoes.
But if you go to Costco or one of the upscale supermarkets that prides itself on the best produce, you can find grape tomatoes that could be mistaken for small plum tomatoes (although not the plum tomatoes in those store, which are usually as big as your fist.)
I am in the Dallas area and am quite pleased with sweet 100s. I have grown Cherry but it had less taste and were less productive than Sweet
100s. Normal tomato cages kept them off the ground and I used 3-1-2 lawn fertilizer. Several good years in a row now. Sorry, Sweet 100s work for me and I just planted 2 more for 2006.
I wonder if it's a NY thing? I'm a hundred miles or so north of Digital Vinyl and I see the tiny tomatoes sold as "Grape Tomatoes". Luckily when I bought the plants last spring I asked for "those tiny grape tomatoes" and my nurseryman pointed out the difference between what was a tiny tomato and what was a grape tomato.
I grew a single Sweet 100 last year. We had a horridly wet [but hot] summer but my garden is a well mulched sand bed so I had a great year for tomatoes. I had some splitting, but my 8foot plant never had any disease/mold/mildew. I dried all the excess so I kept up with the yield all season.
Jim
We see the same thing here in the midwest. It is just some marketing hype. I think that sellers ought to tell us EXACTLY what we are buying (the true name of the tomato).
Jim,
I am glad that you too had good luck with Sweet 100s like I did. From the sound of this thread, anyone reading it might think this sweet tasting prolific tomato was a bad choice. The "grape" tomato marketing is confusing.
Mike
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