I was not impressed with Orange Zinger. It resembled more of an unripe red cherry when ripe and flavor was just OK. Continue with the two Orange varieties you currently grow and you'll be more pleased.

This is a digression, but I'd love to hear your real-world experience with Mexico Midget. Where is it on the flavor spectrum? Does it have sprawling, shrubby habit like Coyote? How large does the plant get?

Me too! I'd love to hear more. I tried to grow Mexico Midget one year, but it turned out to be incorrect. I understand that it's difficult to save seeds for some reason, and people say that it's best just to dry a fruit to save seeds.

Linda

Most of the seed saver places seem to have an artificial Mexico Midget that is too large to be authentic. My seed is directly from Craig LeHoullier who introduced it. I sew mini-greenhouse tubes 10 feet tall and two feet wide out of row cover. Each plant grown for seed is in a pot and entirely enclosed in its own mini-greenhouse tube, pot and all, after dousing well with insecticide. (Both MM and Coyote are self-polinating.) I saved fermented seed and also non-ferminated.

The most unusual thing about MM is extremely slow germination: it took 4+ weeks for the first seeds to germinate. Within 6 weeks, almost every seed had germinated. However, one pot labeled MM and set aside germinated about 4 months later. I think rumors about bad germination rates may relate to the slowness of germination, not to the rate. Maybe people give up before the seeds finally start.

I read that MM has won taste tests, and no wonder. The tiny little quarter-inch tomatoes have big, big taste: extremely sweet, comparable to Sun Gold. Lots of friends who tasted it have asked for seed. Two different friends first said they don't bother growing from seed. After tasting MM and Sun Gold, they asked for seed. (I buy plenty of hybrid Sun Gold seed to distribute every year.)

Production is not great because each bract of fruit has only about 6-8 tomatoes. But then the bract continues to grow and produce another bract, then continues to grow and produce again. That makes the plant grow exactly like Coyote - impossible to train to a single main stem. Each stem is rather spindly, but there are lots of them, sprawling all over the place. I tie the branches of both Coyote and MM between stakes with a Florida weave.

If you want seed, wait until I have test-germinated, and contact me through regular gmail. My gmail is the same as my user name in gardenweb. (I do not want to type it out here.) I will test MM in Dec and Coyote in Feb. Coyote germinates in normal time. I should know by mid-Jan how much good seed I have.

What is the size of your MM fruits? Smaller than 1/2"?

I never get even a single MM fruit as big as a half-inch. I once read that they are about the size of a pencil eraser, and that is a perfect description. Quarter inch or one-third inch.

But they pack a great wallop in taste. Those tiny little fruit have tremendous taste.

I love to put them on top of a gift basket of various cherries because they are so cute, and when someone tastes one, their face lights up. But they are so tiny that they they fall between the cherries and do not stay on top very long.

Barrie. Thanks so much. I eliminated it from my list.