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Harlequins Gardens

Harlequins Gardens

Boulder's specialist in well-adapted plants

Harlequin’s Gardens reopens March 4, 2021

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Home | Plants | Vegetables | Tomato Starts

Tomato Starts

The list below will include all the varieties we will be carrying this spring (2020). However, we don’t necessarily have all the varieties available at once. If you have your heart set on a certain variety, please call before your visit to make sure it’s in stock.

TERMS:
Days to maturity (days) – the approximate number of days from date of transplanting to date when crop begins to be ready to harvest.

Open Pollinated – A variety from which it is possible to collect and save seed that will produce plants with the same qualities and traits as the ‘mother’ plant.  Care must, of course, be taken to prevent unintended cross-pollination from another variety. All heirloom varieties are open-pollinated. There are varieties that were originally developed as F1 hybrids, but through the patient efforts of gardeners, seed growers and breeders, have been selected and re-selected until a ‘stable’ hybrid has been achieved, transforming the hybrid into an open-pollinated variety.  Some examples are Gypsy pepper, Gold Nugget tomato.

Heirloom – An old variety that owes its present availability to the seed-saving efforts of gardeners (rather than commercial seed growers), often for many generations. All heirloom varieties are open-pollinated.

Hybrid – usually the first-generation offspring of two different varieties, not stabilized and therefore cannot reproduce itself in kind from seed.

Determinate – Bush tomato varieties that spread laterally and should not be pruned, and may be grown with or without staking. Determinate varieties usually ripen their crop within a concentrated time period, so are a good choice for canning or drying. Many are good candidates for container-growing.

Indeterminate – Vining tomato varieties that are customarily staked, trellised or caged, and pruned for largest fruit. Caging/staking without pruning delays ripening, reduces fruit size, but increases production, prevents sunburn, and reduces fruit cracking and rotting. Indeterminate varieties produce and ripen fruit over an extended period until frost.

Cracking – splitting of tomato skin. Large-fruited varieties with low fruit-set and high sugar content are most likely to crack, but even some cherry tomatoes are subject to cracking. To reduce cracking, avoid heavy watering and wide day/night soil temperature fluctuations, and maintain adequate calcium delivery in your soil.

The section below includes all the varieties we will be carrying this spring. However, we don’t necessarily have all the varieties available at once. If you have your heart set on a certain variety, please call us at 303-939-9403 before your visit to make sure it’s in stock.

Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye

Beefsteak, Compact Indeterminate, Open-Pollinated 68 days
Regarded as the best of the Wild Boar series from breeder Brad Gates, this tomato has everything going for it: great heirloom flavor, early productivity, size, disease tolerance, and gorgeous good looks! These are ‘beefsteak’ tomatoes, averaging 9 oz, with the color of port wine and metallic green stripes. Many of our local market farmers have had great success with this variety and make it a mainstay of their tomato production.

Pink Boar – NEW

Open-Pollinated, Indeterminate 70-80 days
This gorgeous 4-ounce gem is port-wine colored with metallic green stripes and is borne on strong, vigorous, healthy plants. A great mid-season producer of smaller, juicy, rich and sweet tomatoes that are perfect for dazzling salads. From famed breeder Brad Gates.

Pruden’s Purple

Heirloom, indeterminate, 72 days
Large, dark pink, wonderful flavor, exceptionally early and delicious Brandywine-type.

Red Robin

Open Pollinated, Dwarf Determinate 72 days
This attractive miniature cherry tomato, studded with bright red fruit, is so compact, you can put it in a 6-inch flowerpot or let it billow over the sides of a window box or hanging basket. Red Robin is a charming ornamental that also happens to set a nice crop of sweet, tangy fruit. Setting all of its crop at once, Red Robin sports 1-inch-diameter round fruits that resist cracking and offer a nice tangy-sweet bite. The semi-weeping plants are well-branched, and the dark green leaves offer some protection from sunscald. Red Robin actually prefers afternoon shade or dappled shade.

Roma VF

Open-Pollinated, Determinate 80 days
A classic pear-shaped sauce, paste, juice and canning tomato. Large, vigorous, determinate plants produce heavy yields of blemish-free, 4-7oz. deep red plum tomatoes, resistant to Verticillium and Fusarium wilts. Thick-walled fruits are meaty, with few seeds

Ropreco Paste – NEW

Heirloom, Determinate 65-70 days
Productive and early, this old Italian heirloom sauce tomato yields 2-3″ bright red, plump 2-3 oz fruit that have a small point at the blossom end. Suitable for sauce, canning, drying and salads. Very good raw flavor and texture compared to other paste tomato varieties. A good choice for short season or cool summer locations. Can out-yield Roma, especially in cool summers. Resistant to Fusarium and blossom end rot. No staking is required, as plants are 24-36” tall and produce their fruit in a concentrated set.

Rutgers VF

Heirloom, Determinate 80 days
Old-time flavor that is more acidic than sweet from globe fruits saturated with bright red color. Large, vigorous and productive plants produce early. Crack resistant. Widely adapted for hot climates. Great for canning and slicing.

San Marzano Redorta

Heirloom, Indeterminate, Open-Pollinated 78 days
Here’s a case where a Super-Sized food is a good thing! We offered San Marzano Redorta for the first time in 2017, and got rave reviews. A very large paste tomato with even better flavor than the renowned San Marzano, but twice the size – weighing 8 – 10 oz, and at least 4” long.  The large, vigorous, disease-resistant plants grow to 4-5’ tall, and are very prolific, both in heat and in cooler weather. SM Redorta is an excellent paste tomato that is great for canning, salsas, sauces and roasting, and delicious enough to eat fresh off the vine! The flavors are even richer than San Marzano, with a balanced sweetness and tanginess with a touch of salt. Thick walls have lots of meaty flesh with an easy to peel skin and a small seed cavity. Named for the Pizzo Redorta mountain outside Bergamo, in Northern Italy.

Sasha’s Altai

Siberian Heirloom, indeterminate, 59 days
These slightly flattened 3”, 5-8 oz bright red fruits are incredibly early, sweet, flavorful and prolific, consistently winning blind taste tests. It performs really well in the foothills, where the growing season is short. Bred by a home gardener in a small Siberian town, Sasha’s Altai has a good story behind it, so if you ever get to hear seedsman Bill McDorman speak, be sure to ask him about it.

Siberian

Heirloom, Dwarf 50 days
Yes, it’s true – fruits ripen only 50 days from transplant, and they’re really delicious!! The bright red, perfectly balanced sweet and flavorful little tomatoes, ranging from 2 to 5 oz., are borne in clusters on compact plants. They’re wonderful for salads, slicing and drying. ‘Siberian’ has been a great favorite at our tomato tastings, and I grow it every year. The dwarf plant sets fruit very early; it is reportedly capable of setting fruit even at 38 degrees. A great choice for small gardens, large containers, and cooler, short-season/high altitude gardens.

Siberian Pink Honey (aka Pink Honey or Rozovyimyod) – NEW

Russian Heirloom, Indeterminate 72-78 days
Our friend and customer, Jim Y., has been growing this luscious oxheart-shaped tomato in his Boulder garden for several years and urged us to try it. We can attest to its rich, sweet flavor and meaty texture, which make it perfect for salads and sandwich slices. The vigorous plants are very productive, bearing fruits that weigh 12 to 14 ounces, with some smaller ones, especially late in the season.

St. Pierre

Open-Pollinated, Indeterminate 74-80 days
A traditional French salad and canning tomato, a staple of markets in France and very popular elsewhere in Europe. The 4-5ft. tall plants produce high yields of 4 to 6 oz deep red tomatoes. They are very flavorful, perfect for salads, slicing, sandwiches, sauces, and canning. St Pierre does well under adverse weather conditions including cold weather and dry conditions. It is easy to grow and an excellent choice for home gardens.

Stupice

Czech heirloom, compact indeterminate, 65 days
A great potato-leaf variety that comes from the former Czechoslovakia. So early, so productive, so tasty, and such a healthy plant, tolerant of cold and heat! One of the best early tomatoes, this is among the earliest. Excellent flavor for an early type; these produce lots of 2” red fruit over a very long season. Highly popular in areas with short summers.

Sungold Cherry

Hybrid, indeterminate, 57 days
Candy on a vine! Plentiful, plump, tangerine-colored, 3/4″ fruit, verysweet and juicy. The earliest and most famous cherry tomato, usually winning 1st place at our Taste of Tomato event, and a customer favorite. Fully ripened fruit have best flavor but are very prone to cracking. Vines can grow very large and are extremely productive until frost.

Super Sioux / Super Lakotah

Heirloom, semi-determinate, 71 days
This versatile tomato has old-fashioned flavor, combining complex, earthy flavors and sweetness with a pronounced tartness. The 4oz. round, bright red fruits are meaty and thick-walled, crack-free, and are great for sandwiches & burgers, canning and sauce. Very dependable and highly productive, continuing to set fruit even in extended hot, dry spells as well as cool weather. ‘Super Sioux’ was developed by D. V. Burrell Seed Growers of Colorado and is an improved version of the old variety ‘Sioux’ which had been bred at the Nebraska Experimental Station and introduced in 1944.

Supersweet 100

Hybrid, indeterminate, 65 days
With the same great flavor that made its predecessor Sweet 100 a garden standard for many years, Supersweet 100 has extra sweetness and better disease resistance (Verticillium and Fusarium wilts) and reportedly offers the highest Vitamin C content of any tomato. Bright red, 1″ globes are amazingly sweet and ripen prolifically on long pendulous clusters right up to frost.

Taxi

Open-Pollinated, Determinate 65-70 days
Considered by many to be the best early, lemon-yellow tomato, especially for short-season gardens. Compact, dark green, 2’ by 2’ vines produce a concentrated early set of blemish-free, bright lemon yellow, meaty, 4-6oz. baseball-sized fruits with mild, acid-free flavor. Taxi is widely adapted, easy to grow, and a heavy yielder over a 3-4 week period.

Thessaloniki

Greek heirloom, indeterminate, 75 days
Beautiful, smooth, round, red, baseball-sized (5 to 8 oz) tomatoes with outstanding, rich, balanced, classic flavor. Resists cracking, blemish, sun scald and rot. Great for slicing, salads, canning and keeps well. Plants are very productive and very dependable, and Eve always includes Thessaloniki in her tomato patch. If you have room for just one indeterminate tomato variety, this may be the one!

Thorburn’s Terra Cotta

Heirloom, Indeterminate 75 days

Our friend Thomas brought this very rare and completely unique tomato to our 2018 Taste of Tomato public tasting (where this remarkable new-old variety took second place in the Slicers category) and we’d never seen anything like it! Incredible color, flavor and history! Introduced in 1893 by J.M. Thorburn & Co. seedsmen of New York, this sensational tomato has glossy/waxy terracotta brown skin, orange-pink flesh, and green seed mass. Dr. William Woys Weaver has spent years growing out and selecting from the seeds he was gifted one hundred years later! His patient and artful work has restored this stunning and delicious, juicy slicer, which produces heavily during early/mid-season and then drops off quickly once cool weather sets in. Reviews from gardeners in Colorado reveal that this variety seems to like our hot, dry summers, whereas complaints of cracking came from growers in the wetter upper Midwest and Northwest. When cooked, it will yield a beautiful pumpkin-orange sauce with a floral aroma. Read the back-story, written by Dr. Weaver in 2012, at https://www.heirloomgardener.com/plant-profiles/edible/terra-cotta-tomato-zmaz12wzfis

Tiny Tim

Cherry, Dwarf Determinate, Open-Pollinated 45 days
Very popular since its introduction in 1945, Tiny Tim was bred specifically to be grown in containers. Bushy plants are typically only 12” tall, 14” wide, with more tomatoes than foliage. Heavily laden branches may need support. For a period of about 1 month, it produces a heavy crop of bright red, 1” round cherry tomatoes with

Tommy Toe

Cherry, Indeterminate, Heirloom Open-Pollinated, ~70 days

Tommy Toe is a great old heirloom from the Ozark Mountains that produces huge numbers of large, 1.5 oz red cherries with old fashioned flavor reminiscent of heirloom ‘beefsteak’ tomatoes. The large, vigorous plants will need staking/trellising to control.

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  • Plants
    • Annuals
    • Bulbs
    • Fruits
    • Groundcovers
    • Herbs
    • Perennials
      • Plants for Pollinators List
    • Natives
    • Roses
    • Vegetables
      • Garlic
      • Fall Vegetable Starts
      • Tomato Starts
      • Pepper Starts
      • Other Vegetable Starts
    • Xeriscape

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Harlequin’s Gardens is closed for
the season until early March 2021.

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303-939-9403 (Retail)
staff@nullharlequinsgardens.com

4795 North 26th St
Boulder, CO 80301

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The plants we grow are organically grown. All the plants we sell are free of bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides.