I can't give you any recommendations from personal experience because I am growing dwarfs for the first time this year. You are right that there are a lot more to choose from now. Over 100 have been bred in the last 12 years by the Cross Hemisphere Dwarf Tomato Breeding Project (DTBP) alone. What color/size tomatoes do you want to grow?

Based on some research and reviewing recommendations from other growers here and at the TV forum I am trying the following varieties this season. All of them have pretty good sized fruit in the 6 to 12 oz. range.

Dwarf Beauty King - red with gold stripes

Dwarf Black Angus - purple

Dwarf BrandyFred - purple

Dwarf Rosella Purple - purple

Dwarf Mr. Snow - ivory

Dwarf Tasmanian Chocolate -Mahogany

Dwarf Wild Fred - purple

Victory Seeds offers all of the varieties from the DTBP.

Dwarfs that I have grown and loved:

Dwarf Rosella Purple

Dwarf Mr. Snow

Dwarf Wherokowhai

Dwarf Sweet Scarlet (I found it tangy and great for cooking, others love it raw)

Linda

Linda: how high and wide do these dwarfs grow? Are they determinate varieties? I think I will try the dwarfs this year.

Tasmanian Chocolate

I haven't tried too many, but my best producer was Tennessee Suited. I'm growing it again this year, plus a few others.

Thanks. Good to know. I will definitely the dwarfs this year. I prefer the indeterminates since they produce steadily instead of a whole bunch at a time.

I have grown some of the dwarf tomato project tomatoes. Of those I really liked Tasmanian Chocolate and Rosella Purple. I also recommend Extreme bush, and Snow Fairy - both of those have given me a lot of good tomatoes on smaller plants. These are ones I'm growing again this year..

I've grown just 2 varieties of dwarf... Purple Heart was excellent tasting and productive, does need support; mine collapsed after reaching about 3 feet but still produced a lot of tomatoes. Arctic Rose which did not grow very well for me but I have heard other growers like it. I'm north of San Francisco where the summers are usually on the cooler side and dry.

I agree with LoneJack, Victory Seed is an excellent source for seeds.

eta: Purple Heart produced good sized tomatoes. Medium sized, I'd say.

Of course, keep in mind that you will need to take all of the above recommendations with a "grain of salt" --- tomato flavor of a particular strain can vary widely depending upon a person's particular culture/growing conditions. Flavor can even vary from year to year depending upon what kind of growing season Mother Nature throws at you. :-)

Yes, I also liked Purple Heart and mine needed support too, but for some reason my plant didn't produce very many tomatoes. I got my seeds from victory seeds too and recommend them.

calamondindave,

Surprising, your experience. I was shocked at how many tomatoes my small plant produced. The tomatoes did get quite a bit smaller as the season went on...

I've grown many of those listed above and then some. The nice thing about the dwarves is an abundance of varieties available to suit your likes in a tomato flavor.

Even better, you can grow a dozen varieties or more in the space a full sized indeterminate needs. It is unrealistic to expect the quantity of a full grown indetermination in a smaller pot, but having tomatoes all season,...earlies, mid, late....and not just one 'taste' profile.

They will grow in a one, 2, 5, 7 gallon grow bag easily. 5-7gallon pot will obvious fill out a bit more and produce more fruit. 2 plants in an earth box do great.

I like variety as well as my favorite beefer types for aBLT. I can pick a few larger fruits a day and keep a bowl full of cherries all summer.

Certainly your seasons weather, soil, plant food, care and tending will always play a roll in the success of your fruit...but these were carefully bred to stay compact in height with thick stems...from seed they are less likely to bolt and get leggy.

rhoder551,

It could have due to my fertilizing routine that the plant grew more than produced, I'm still learning how to grow tomatoes correctly. I will say that the tomatoes it did produce were tasty, and I did save seeds so maybe I'll plant a couple this year and give them (and me) another chance. How did your Arctic Rose taste? I have heard a lot about that variety as well.

The Arctic Rose taste... I don't think I got any good tomatoes from the plant so I don't know but I have read good things. My plant seemed stunted and the tomatoes were very small and misshaped. It is possible the plant had a disease. I planted in the ground and my garden always has problems with gophers and voles eating roots, that could be another factor. I am going to try it again this year and plant it in a container.

I personal only recommend dwarf indeterminates (like Husky cherry Red F1) and varieties like Sub-arctic Plenty. I'm not a huge fan of tree-type dwarfs, currently. Nodak Early (related to Sub-arctic Plenty) had a really small plant for me last year, and it seemed to have potential. Snow Fairy is decent as far as tree-type dwarfs go.

I've got a Galapagos Island tomato that is quite indeterminate, but the foliage and vines are small (and the plant is compact as a result). I like it a lot.

Stick isn't a dwarf, but it has a cool leaf-type that doesn't interfere with other plants much, if at all.

Shule, the dwarf tomatoes we are speaking of are indeterminate.

sleevendog,

I was replying to the OP.

However, I didn’t know that any of the varieties other people besides myself were talking about were dwarf indeterminate. I don’t know how I missed that when looking at some of those varieties in the past. Thanks for the tip.

However, some of the breeds mentioned in this thread aren't indeterminate, but rather determinate: i.e. Arctic Rose, Dwarf Purple Heart, Extreme Bush, Tennessee Suited, and Sweet Scarlet Dwarf. (Some I mentioned in my own posts are probably determinate and/or semi-determinate, too.)

The followed varieties mentioned in this thread are supposed to be indeterminate: Dwarf Beauty King, Dwarf Black Angus, Dwarf BrandyFred, Dwarf Mr. Snow, Dwarf Wherokowhai, Dwarf Wild Fred, Rosella Purple, and Tasmanian Chocolate.

I don't see whether Snow Fairy is determinate or indeterminate, but when I grew it, it had a tree-type shape, and the fruits didn't ripen all at once.

Dwarf Beauty King is said to be a dwarf semi-determinate on one site (and a dwarf indeterminate on another). I’m guessing a lot of those listed are probably semi-determinate. Some people don’t believe in semi-determinate tomatoes, though; so, maybe that’s why they call them indeterminate, since they like to draw the line between the two. But, people don’t all draw the line in the same place for the same characteristics (so you never really know what you’re going to get if all you know is the growth habit).

I looked at this site: https://loghouseplants.com/plants/shop/tomato-tasmanian-chocolate-super-dwarfs/

It says, speaking of super dwarfs, which include Tasmanian Chocolate and probably a bunch of others, “Finally, a collection of dwarf tomato plants that combines the best characteristics of both the determinate and indeterminate plant habit.”

That sounds like semi-determinate.

IMO, Dwarf indeterminates should be almost (if not) exactly like miniature versions of indeterminates in the way they grow and produce, with the exception of potentially having rugose foliage (not like a mix between determinate and indeterminate, nor like a best of both worlds scenario). But yeah, people will call them what they will, and I don’t mean to try to stop them. I think there are ways to handle the ambiguity issue without having to change anyone’s mind about anything.

To add more context to my other post, it's good to realize that some people consider all determinate tomatoes to be dwarfs. So, whether or not you were talking about dwarf indeterminates, it’s still a reasonable thing to have said in a thread about dwarf tomatoes (unless the OP specified dwarf indeterminate).

I should probably add that my post wasn't in the context of container gardening (I missed that the OP specified that, apparently). I have grown some dwarf indeterminates and some determinates (and/or semi-determinates) in containers, though, and they most did fine (but it's hard to compare them without more examples of how determinates do in containers in my garden). I grow the vast majority of my tomato plants in the ground.

When I had a very good experience with Sub Arctic Plenty, it was in a large container (~18 or 20 gallons; I had two other tomato plants in the container with it; they were both Husky Cherry Red F-somethings, with one being extremely dwarf and the other being a regular indeterminate); Sub Arctic Plenty didn't do as well in the ground with black plastic the next year. Galapagos Island did fine in containers (but I prefer it in the ground, as it produced more and looked happier). I've only tried F2+ versions of Husky Cherry Red in containers (we grew the F1 in the ground).

Anyway, though, I know a lot of people like determinates, and I might like them better in another garden, or if I grew them in containers more often—or if I acclimatized them more (via seed-saving). I quite suspect that I would like them more in the ground if I mulched them, however. (It seems to work with peppers, to help them perform as well as those in containers; to date, I've grown most of my peppers in containers, since they struggled by comparison in the ground [unmulched].)

I suspect that Snow Fairy, Nodak Early, and Extreme Bush would do well in containers (but I've just tried them in the ground). Someone else in the thread mentioned Snow Fairy and Extreme Bush already. Payette's another I've grown in the ground that you might consider; it might be a good one for containers.

As far as dwarfs go, I've only grown New Big Dwarf. They taste great, but are very finicky. Lots of mis-shapen fruit, BER at the drop of a hat. Still, I'll be growing them again this year assuming the seeds are still good. I'm stingy that way.