Grafted varieties are also becoming much easier to find, and different root stock can be grown to provide the opportunity for gardeners to create their own grafted plants. There are two key considerations to make this a worthwhile investment. The whole point of using a grafted plant is to prevent a disease agent in the soil from inhibiting success of the plant. So, consideration 1 is knowing what specific diseases inhabit your soil and give your tomatoes trouble - then using a rootstock that resists or tolerates the disease(s). Consideration 2 is caring for the upper part of your plant (above the graft line) well, since anything that attacks the plant from above could negate the benefit of the graft. Be sure to mulch well, minimize wet foliage, provide good air circulation and remove blemished foliage as it appears.

Plant stature (fulfilling needs of the space-constricted gardener) concerns are finally being considered, as gardeners realize the unwieldy growing character of most of the delicious heirloom types. The two options for more easily controllable tomato varieties are determinate (emerging in the mid 1920s when a “self topping” variety called Cooper’s Special appeared), and dwarf in stature. Though dwarf (also known as tree type) tomatoes have been around in limited numbers since the mid 1800s, little was done to further expand the options until the work of Tom Wagner, Ken Ettlinger, our own Dwarf Tomato Project and the various other dwarf projects that are ongoing. We’ve come a very long way in the last 50 years or so in this arena.

What’s next? There are some possibilities. We’ve certainly moved into a bit of “fad” type themes - tomatoes with stripes, tomatoes with the blue antho colored shoulders, What is most valuable, however, is to continue what we’ve begun with our Dwarf Tomato Project in terms of trying to vision what gardeners will need. To expand gardening, it is important to take space needs into consideration. There is some good work happening with microdwarfs - plants that are a foot or so tall and can be grown in very small containers. Flavor will always be a top priority, and we are now learning to accept as many colors as possible so we can “play with our food”. I think that the next logical step is to focus on disease tolerance, trying to get a handle on what is attacking crops where and carrying out the breeding work to install the genes into new varieties that will best fight the diseases. It isn’t very easy work to do, and takes time.

To finish up this three part series, I will reiterate a really important observation…we who are gardening at this time have the largest array of tomato varieties to choose from when compared to any point in history. We are lucky…go forth and fill your gardens with whatever sounds good to you after perusing catalogs, or reading SSE yearbook descriptions. Give my favorites that I list in Epic Tomatoes a try and let me know what you think!