A Seed Saver's Garden

[LeafMeAlone]

That sounds awesome! Can’t wait to see your 2026 tomato list.

 

[heirloomgal]

The 2026 tomato list, after much pondering and angst, lol. I'm staggered to think I need to actually start putting these seeds in the ground in less than a week! How does the time fly like that? And it seems every year that passes, it goes even quicker. I'm debating what to do for peppers still ....


Tomatoes 2026

Mini’s

1. Mini Dwarf Bonsai Black Pearl
2. Mini Dwarf Candy Berry
3. Mini Dwarf Tigret Yellow
4. Mini Dwarf Orange Hat
5. Mini Dwarf Lil’ Peeps
6. Mini Dwarf Blaue Zimmertomate
7. Mini Dwarf Carrot Top
8. Mini Dwarf Hardin’s Miniature

Cherry Tomato

1. Strawberry Cherry - supposedly the best cherry ever
2. My Dancing Green Fingers & Venus of Willendorf (to compare) - both very elongated green shiny cherries
3. Ampoules Cherry Waterfall, hanging basket type tomato
4. Angora Super Sweet Cherry
5. Garnet Cherry
6. Berry tomato - 5 seeds, mini mini fruits
7. Amethyst Cream Cherry
8. Cinnamon Girl Cherry - from the ‘True North’ breeder
9. Demeter’s Tears Cherry - Olivia’s named tomato, will see if it’s actually stable
10. Indigo Orange Supertruss Cherry
11. L 1 10 K54 84 - Burnt Orange Color, needs a better name
12. Dark Orange Muscat Cherry

In ground

1. Butterscotch Stripes (beefsteak)
2. Minusinsk Lion (big beefsteak)
3. Taiga - multicolor oxheart, part of the ‘True North’ series
4. Tupelo Honey - Bamboo mustard color
5. Copper Olive (cocktail) - green/yellow/orange with blue shoulders
6. Chadd’s Ford (Lg. Cherry or Cocktail) - seems like a lot of variation, not sure what to expect
7. Orange Ghabana - orange & green
8. Black Strawberry - large cocktail, blue shoulders
9. Feejee Improved - brown, small, mini beefsteak
10. Woodstock Girl - Russ’s tomato
11. Marshmallows in Chocolate - deep brown small beefsteak
12. True Colors - multicolor, from ‘True North’ breeder
13. Micek’s yugoslavian - big roma type
14. Fiaschetto di Manduria - roma type tomato
15. Romovay Baba GWR - green beefsteak
16. Orange Cream - creamsicle color in light apricot
17. Kanner Hoell - red slicer, processing
18. Minusinsk Mango - large true yellow beefsteak, top quality
19. Damskie Palchiki - one seed left….
20. Atomic Sunset - stable cross of orange banana X atomic grape
21. Dina Tomato - apricot color small slicer
22. Lyana Rozowy - pink large cocktail
23. Oh Canada - red beefsteak, from ‘True North’ breeder
24. Jabloki Snegu - means ‘apples in the snow’
25. Judy’s Good Heart - pink, oxheart type, clunky

Pots

1. Dwarf Leprechaun Gosha
2. Dwarf - Purple Rain (by Bill Yoder)
3. Dwarf Great Scott
4. Dwarf Arctic Pot ‘n’ Patio
5. Dwarf Johnny jump up - 18 inches
6. Dwarf Prairie Fire - said to be very sweet
7. Dwarf Tatura - means tattoo, ghastly name, hope toms are better
8. Dwarf Jaobloki Snegu ‘Apples in the Snow’
9. Dwarf Uluru Ochre - soulmate tomato
10. Dwarf Lady Madonna
11. Ladybug - 1 to 3 feet

Still on the table:
Parker Hatlee - roma type
Abrikos - very fuzzy, oddball for sure
Bogeywine - red beefsteak
Tons of green varieties that need to be grown
Piennolo del Vesuvio, in yellow - storage tomato
All the Bill Minkey tomatoes....

 

[heirloomgal]

Did my first batch of 2026 tags with the label maker tonight. Weirdly satisfying, lol. What a game changer its been to have such an efficient tool to do that task. I never enjoyed label time, until now. Its like a little game. My cutter blade inside the machine prints has gotten dull though, so I need to click it twice now instead of once, but DH said ( in an interesting tone) that's to be expected since I (according to him anyway, and we all know how men exaggerate) printed 130 feet of tags last year. Personally, I didn't measure. Spouses and all that tab keeping! Brother!

Picked up my bale of starter mix today, Lambert. Feeling kind of excited to fill some trays and get going with planting seeds!

 

[heirloomgal]

ETA:

Just read about this. Truly terrifying.

https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/expert-reaction-soils-exposed-to-glyphosate-might-also-be-harbouring-hospital-superbugs

 

[Artorius]

@heirloomgal, Is there a Baranski Plum among Bill Minkey's tomatoes?

Russian tomatoes from the Minusinsk Basin are great, they are one of my favorites. In the Minusinsk city, Tomato Day is celebrated every year and then local gardeners present their heirloom selections. The main attraction is the competition for the largest tomato, the prize is a car. The winning tomatoes often weigh over 2 kg. So far I have managed to collect about 150 heirloom tomatoes from this region.

 

[Dahlia]

@heirloomgal, Is there a Baranski Plum among Bill Minkey's tomatoes?

Russian tomatoes from the Minusinsk Basin are great, they are one of my favorites. In the Minusinsk city, Tomato Day is celebrated every year and then local gardeners present their heirloom selections. The main attraction is the competition for the largest tomato, the prize is a car. The winning tomatoes often weigh over 2 kg. So far I have managed to collect about 150 heirloom tomatoes from this region.

Has anyone ever grown the rare heirloom tomato called Blue Beauty?

 

[heirloomgal]

@heirloomgal, Is there a Baranski Plum among Bill Minkey's tomatoes?

Russian tomatoes from the Minusinsk Basin are great, they are one of my favorites. In the Minusinsk city, Tomato Day is celebrated every year and then local gardeners present their heirloom selections. The main attraction is the competition for the largest tomato, the prize is a car. The winning tomatoes often weigh over 2 kg. So far I have managed to collect about 150 heirloom tomatoes from this region.

No, I checked & that one isn't in there. Have you grown the Minusinsk Mango variety? I was just speaking with the lady who sent it to me and she said it was incredibly good. I plan to keep my eye out for these Minusinsk varieties now!

 

[heirloomgal]

Had the oddest experience outside today. I was trying to make it to my treehouse outdoor shelf, where I've got all my starter pots stored. I really put this off because the snow is so deep and I didn't want to go through the hassle of snowshoes. I'm sure in places it's nearly up to my hips. But when I finally did go out I quickly saw that the snow has become very hard, it was -20C last night. I was able to walk right on top!

My huge currant bushes had just the tips of the branches sticking out from the snow cover, and so I walked right OVER the 4 ft+ shrubs. That was seriously a weird feeling. I got to my shelf with all the pots and panicked that the top of the shelf had come loose and gotten lost in the bushes heaven knows where, its a 6 foot shelf. And then it dawned on me....I'm standing next to the top of the shelf, there is no missing piece. I'm just super high up!

So I carefully walked over to the flowering crab apple tree, feeling very brave on this snow that was now feeling like a pair of stilts. That crab tree is over 40 years old, and big. Too big, its needed cutting or trimming for years. But the ladder can't quite reach the branches that I need to cut. I have not wanted to risk swinging a Sawsall while trying to reach awkwardly from a rickety ladder. But on the snow, I could hold the big branches right in my hands! I think tomorrow I'll trim it standing inside the tree canopy! Dream come true!

 

[heirloomgal]

More on the glyphosate post above. I honestly have only ever thought of it as a weed killer.
I had no idea that it was an anti-biotic. I've steered clear of those nearly my whole life, minus one strep infection.

From the Healthy Practitioner, Stephanie Grutz -

Glyphosate is an antibiotic. Let that sink in.
Most people think glyphosate is just a weed killer, but in 2010, Monsanto patented it as a broad-spectrum antibiotic. That means it doesn't just kill weeds. It kills bacteria. Including the beneficial bacteria living in your gut, and in your soil.
In 2018, Bayer acquired Monsanto and took over the patent, along with billions in lawsuits tied to its health effects.

Here's what most people don't talk about:
Glyphosate doesn't just affect YOUR body, it starts in the soil.
When sprayed on crops, it binds to minerals in the soil and destroys the soil microbiome, the billions of microorganisms that make soil alive, fertile, and nutritious. Healthy soil = healthy plants = healthy humans. When we kill the microbes in the soil, we strip the nutritional value from our food before it even reaches our plate.

Soil health = Human health.
The microbiome in your gut mirrors the diversity of the microbiome in healthy soil. When glyphosate wipes out soil microbes, it sets off a chain reaction that ends inside you... disrupting your gut bacteria, your immune system, your hormones, and your brain.

 

[Alasgun]

Tell it Sister, and keep reading. You’ll find where they go over un-ripe grains spraying the “Round-up” to ripen the grain. Gives producers more control over the crop allowing them to hurry it along.

To date, no one has ever shown me a “valuable use” for herbicides!

Mike