Helen I'll add my two cents. I grew Rosella Purple and several others in the dwarf experiment last year. Personally I wasn't very impressed with any of them. 1-2 was ok. I was going to give one another chance this year but didn't. Have seeds for one that some think is good. May try it one of these years. For me a dwarf would need to perform well in a 5-10 gallon container. If I'm going to use a large container or set them in the ground I might as well grow a standard size plant.
So far I haven't found a blue I really like. J&L Select Blue is the best tasting I've grown so far. I have two plants of it growing this year from seeds I saved last year. Will see how it tastes and performs this year. If I ever find one I really like the taste of I'll share seeds.
It the seeds separate ok I wouldn't be concerned about them. Sometimes I'll rub the lumps between my fingers till they come apart. I've received seeds where a few were stuck together. Jay

Thank you. You answered all my questions. I am interested in the blue tomatoes and blue potatoes because that pigment is supposed to be good for you. In the back of my mind I suspect the blueberry marketing people have done that research. I like to plant a lot of different tomatoes because every year some don't pan out. Part of it is most of my garden is marginal - soil not prepared well enough. It is fun to grow big meaty hearts, striped tomatoes, different blacks. I give most of my tomatoes away and I make salsa out of the rejects. I have enough salsa but an abundance of rejects. I am not complaining about the rain, but I have lots of splitting tomatoes. Gardening is fun and interesting. I think you are right about the dwarf tomatoes. They would work better for pots and I already have too many pots of flowers. When it is dry, watering is not fun.

I'm starting to think that blue tomatoes are an acquired taste. I'm yet to meet anyone who really likes them.

I wonder if they were included in something like salsa with other tomatoes and spices where the flavor would be hidden if their healthy pigment would be destroyed by heating or if it would be of some benefit. Sentence too long but you get it.

Helen I still haven't picked any of the blues yet. Hopefully both plants will withstand the current heat spell. I pulled a plant last night and had one tonight look like it was giving up the ghost. These last two hot spells have hurt my garden greatly. It is separating the men from the boys. The Hopi bean varieties and the Hopi Red watermelon seem to love the heat. The Wood's Mountain Crazy bean does also.
Back to the blue tomatoes. The J&L Select Blue isn't stable. It seems several of the J&L varieties aren't. Each plant has different colored fruit and different shape and size of fruit. I think they would be great in a salad and add color to it. One plant has maroon fruit that are beautiful. Hopefully they will taste fair. I expect it to be another week before I pick any. Wild Boar Farms has several blue selections he has created. Some are supposed to taste good. Keith Mueller has some that are supposed to taste decent. In time there will be some decent ones as there are too many breeders playing with them right now. Jay

Here is a link that might be useful: Wild Boar Farms

Helen, I'd just separate the seeds and keep them. The fact that they stuck together doesn't mean they aren't viable. I've planted a clump of tomato seeds before where 2 or 3 seeds were stuck together, and they all germinated and then I pricked them apart, using a toothpick to separate their roots while they were very small, and potted them up separately and they grew just fine. If you feel like your seeds might not be viable, you could try germinating 10 of them and then calculate your germination rate based on how many of those 10 germinate. Then, based on your germination rate, you could decide if you should save some more seed or if you are happy with the seed you already have.

I have grown several of the tomato varieties from The Dwarf Project, including Rosella Purple, and none of them have produced well for me nor have they had flavor that impressed me. Keep in mind that we have had nothing but drought years since I started trying to grow these varieties so it might not be a fair trial, but that's the weather I have here and it isn't likely to change. Of the varieties I've grown from The Dwarf Project, Rosella Purple produced better than the others, but it didn't produce well enough in 2 or 3 consecutive years to make it worth growing again. I grew it both in large containers (molasses feed tubs, which are about the size of whiskey half-barrels) and in raised beds filled with well-amended loamy clay. Rosella Purple set fruit well in the heat in the ground, and didn't do much of anything in the container, but the flavor was only average at best. For someone looking for a purple tomato that sets very well in very high heat, I think Rosella Purple would fit the bill, but I am very picky about tomato flavor and it just doesn't taste as good as I'd hoped it would.

I've grown Indigo Rose a couple of years and it is just your typical novelty tomato that you might grow as a conversation piece. The flavor is only so-so. I do like having one of them in a large pot by the driveway (beside the red barn so its' color really stands out) where everyone can see it and ask myewhat sort of freaky blue tomato I'm growing. Eating them though? Not enjoyable. They produce loads and loads of fruit, which is a plus, but having loads of bland fruit that is not especially tasty is just silly. What's the point in growing them then? I think I used up the last of my Indigo Rose seed this year and won't plant it again.

With tomatoes, cooking them, particularly when combined with olive oil, is supposed to release some of the healthful compounds and make them more available to your body and more easily absorbed by your body, so I think that the blue tomatoes could be combined in anything you cook---like tomato sauce or salsa---but I haven't done it. I just feed the blue ones to my chickens. I have learned to be careful about blending too many differently colored tomatoes together in sauce or salsa because you can end up with some odd colors....kinda like mixing together too many paint colors and ending up with a muddy color.

Jay, Ditto on the heat here. We have had highs of 107-110 as recently as this past weekend. Yesterday our forecast high was 95 but our weather ignored the forecast and hit 100 degrees anyway. Because the drought continues and the heat is just ridiculous, the plants are really suffering. One fall tomato plant just gave up and died, and it was in a container and I could move it into shade on the worst days, but I just think too many hot temperatures since it was planted in late June or early July weakened it and it couldn't take the heat any more. Another couple of the fall plants look pretty bad and I'm not expecting much from them.

I still have several varieties of tomatoes from the spring planting that look reasonably good and have a chance of producing in the fall if I keep watering, but I'm kinda at the point where continuing to water probably isn't smart. I think the return, in terms of a harvest, wouldn't be enough to make it financially smart to keep pouring water onto the veggie garden. Momotaro is still producing in the front garden and it will get water because it is right beside the asparagus. Several SunGold plants likely will continue to get some water because they are growing near the fig tree in the back garden. All the others, except for the fall tomato plants in containers, likely are done. I'll keep watering those fall tomatoes, but with highs remaining around 100 degrees all week and no rain in the forecast, I don't know that they're even going to get a chance to set fruit before the first frost arrives. Our weather is cooler this week than it was last week, but only marginally so. Only three of the fall tomato plants have set fruit. From those three plants, I have harvested three ripe tomatoes and have another one at breaker stage. That's not much of a return so far given that I have had them in containers and have watered them regularly (at least every other day, and often every day) since I planted them the last week of June or the first week in July.

Our high temperatures have consistently gone 5-7 degrees above the NWS point forecast for our exact location all summer long, and they've consistently been hotter than the highs at our county's mesonet station. It has driven me nuts. I kept thinking that all our thermometers surely were broken, but then bought two brand new thermometers (the old-fashioned mercury type) and put them right beside the digital thermometers (5' above ground in full shade) and they are recording the same temperatures. I guess the fact that a lot of the rain has kept missing us while hitting the area where our mesonet station is part of the reason we're going hotter than expected, and hotter than what is recorded at the mesonet station. If I had known we'd stay so insanely hot and dry in August, I likely wouldn't have bothered planting fall tomatoes. We had a great spring crop, harvesting from the last week of April through the beginning of August, though it mostly has been only SunGolds the last couple of weeks. I'm about done with the garden for this year. I can't control the weather, and the plants can't set fruit in this heat. Being able to water enough to keep the plants alive is one thing but if they aren't setting fruit, it seems like a (pun intended) fruitless endeavor.

Dawn