Updated on Sep. 25, 2024
These may be the best tomatoes you've never heard of. Each one is a winner and a delight to grow, so have fun deciding which ones to try first!
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With thousands of varieties of America’s favorite garden crop to choose from and more coming every year, how can you pick the right tomato? Size, growth rate, use, disease resistance and, of course, taste all play a part.
Let’s start by clarifying some terms you’ll find on nursery tags and seed packets.
Days-to-maturity (DTM): The average number of days from transplanting until you see the first fruit. These ranging from about 45 to 90 days. Your climate in a given season affects this timing.
Determinate: These fruit once and stop growing. They include plum, Roma and several slicing types. These are convenient for preserving in a sauce or dried. Usually, a standard tomato cage is enough to hold them.
Heirloom: Insect-pollinated plants chosen for desirable traits by gardeners, their saved seeds produce the same fruit the next year. While new open-pollinated plants are bred all the time, heirlooms are at least 50 years old. They’re known more for flavor than disease resistance.
Hybrid: Plants cross-bred for desirable traits like compact size, color and disease resistance. Hybrids are distinct from genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) because there’s no gene-splicing involved. If you see the label “F1,” it’s a hybrid.
Indeterminate: Most tomatoes are indeterminate, which means they keep flowering and growing until frost. Some varieties, including cherry tomatoes, can grow to 10 feet in a season.
The following are some new and unusual tomatoes to try.
This type may be new to you, but current tomatoes prove the adage that good things come in small packages. Their pea-sized fruits, packed with intense flavor, are abundantly borne in trusses, making them exciting additions to flower arrangements. They often sprawl wildly, but not ‘Candyland Red.’
This All-American Selections winner, offering glossy red fruit all season long, grows politely with its neighbors in the vegetable patch.
If you’re gardening on a balcony, patio or in any tight urban quarters, consider this tomato. Growing only 18 inches tall, ‘Patio Choice’ cherry tomato, an All-American Selections winner, is perfect for hanging baskets or a three-gallon pot.
Despite its stature, determinate ‘Patio Choice’ can produce up to 100 golden yellow cherry tomatoes with a mild and sweet flavor at harvest. It’s beautiful in salads and delicious for snacking, roasted or dried. Best of all, it fruits in about 45 days.
Stunning on the plate and in the garden, ‘Purple Zebra’ is a real head-turner. The 2-1/2-inch fruits are bronzed-orange with green stripes and a velvety red interior.
Fruiting at about 80 days, this 2022 All-American Selections winner is tasty and highly resistant to many diseases. Judges on the panel appreciated its beauty and praised its “deep-bodied, almost dessert-like flavor.”
While typical indeterminate tomatoes can grow eight feet or more, overwhelming tomato cages and needing almost daily tying-in to their supports, ‘BrandyFred’ is a dwarf, reaching only four feet tall — ideal for a standard cage.
With the renowned heirloom Brandywine as a parent, its flattened globe fruits are 10- to 16-ounce red-purple slicers with a “rich, well-balanced and delicious flavor,” according to the breeders. Its other parent, ‘Fred’s Wild Dwarf,’ offers vigor, resilience and compactness. Matures in 75 days.
‘Taiga‘ is a beautiful oxheart type tomato (so termed for its heart-shaped fruit). It features a mélange of yellow, green and orange inside and out, with a sparkling and complex sweet flavor. The texture is smooth with few seeds, so it’s great in sandwiches or sauces.
Prized by chefs for its beauty, uniform shape and flavor, it produces large fruits starting in mid-season at about 78 days. You’ll notice the leaves are shaped more like potato leaves than the dissected tomato leaves you may be used to, but many delicious heirlooms produce these kind of leaves.
Bred by home breeder Karen Olivier in British Columbia, it’s a great choice for gardeners with cool nights or shorter seasons.
At first glance, you may think this type of tomato was painted with touches of blue to nearly black. They were first bred at Oregon State University with a wild tomato containing the same pigment that makes blueberries blue. Plus, these offer the same antioxidant health benefits as blueberries, supercharging your salad’s nutrition and visual appeal.
‘Dancing with Smurfs,‘ from home breeder Tom Wagner, turns heads and wins hearts once you taste its red and blue cherry tomatoes. Wait until the blossom end gets even redder for full flavor, beginning at about 85 days from planting. Another bonus: ‘Dancing with Smurfs’ tomatoes have a long shelf life.
‘Galahad’ is an AAS award-winner with everything you want in a tomato. It’s perfectly round, red and delicious three-inch fruits appear at only 70 days.
With a sweet and mild flavor, ‘Galahad’ makes a great choice for sandwiches or canning. Selected for its vigorous and sturdy growth, it resists several diseases. The fruit also resisted cracking under rain better than other tomatoes.
‘Brad’s Atomic Grape’ is a mind-blower, resembling no tomato you’ve ever seen. A grape tomato with a slightly pointed end, the prolific fruits are a crazy quilt of colors. Emerging as lavender with purple stripes, as they ripen they become green, red and brown with blue stripes.
Cut them to reveal the lime green interior for a stunning plate presentation. The lightly sweet flavor keeps coming all season on these wispy-looking yet productive vines.
