Tomato for a school garden

[Raymondo]

I'm involved in a school kitchen garden project and am looking for a suitable tomato.
It has to:
1. provide fruit over the growing season and not all at once,
2. be of compact habit so the littlies (5 & 6 year olds) can manage it and
3. be a cherry or small 'roma' type as these seem less susceptible to the dreaded Queensland Fruit Fly, a major pest of soft fruits in eastern Australia.
edit (16th May):
4. I should have added that OP is preferable as it is to be a seed-to-seed garden. In other words, the kids will save seeds and grow them the following year.

Any suggestions would be most appreciated.

[rnewste]

Hey Raymondo,

As kids have the attention span of a mosquito in a New Jersey swamp in July, I would recommend Stupice as one that will "grab their attention" and produce something that will demonstrate the life cycle in short order.



Ray

[jenn_sc]

How about Yellow Pear? They're awfully cute and will produce LOTS of tomatoes. Kids would probably like them.

Jennifer

[Ruth_10]

As Ray suggests, something early like Stupice or Kimberly would fit the bill.

[oc tony]

I'd recomend Sun Gold. It has very good diasese resistence & it is early & productive.

[feralcatfriend]

How compact? Matt's Wild Cherry, aka Wild Cherry, only gets about four or five feet tall, although it ranges everywhere. It comes early and stays late and produces through heat, drought and cool temps right up to frost.

I'm giving plants to a summer school garden and will be choosing a variety of colors of cherry tomatoes, including Matt's Wild Cherry, which is one of my favorites (big tomato flavor in a tiny tomato). I'm hoping the children will be excited by the beautiful colors as well as the delicious flavors.

Cynthia

[Raymondo]

Yes, a selection of colours would be good. How compact? Good question. They want plants that the smaller kids will be able to harvest from. I guess a larger plant could just be let sprawl.

[dice]

Aurora and Sasha's Altai are smallish indeterminates
that produce bigger tomatoes than cherries, both early.
Grub's Mystery Green would be another good one (compact
plant, indeterminate, big fruit, not as early).

Wondering about cherries, I looked under the cherry category
in Tania's Tomatobase for smaller plants and found these:

http://t-garden.homeip.net/mwiki/index.php/Barbaniaka
http://t-garden.homeip.net/mwiki/index.php/Clementine
http://t-garden.homeip.net/mwiki/index.php/Ditmarsher
http://t-garden.homeip.net/mwiki/index.php/Jagodka
http://t-garden.homeip.net/mwiki/index.php/Mini_Rose
http://t-garden.homeip.net/mwiki/ind...Russian_Cherry
http://t-garden.homeip.net/mwiki/index.php/Santa
http://t-garden.homeip.net/mwiki/index.php/Tumbler

(I skipped the tart-flavored ones, because kids usually prefer
sweet tomatoes. You could email Tania from the Tomatobase
contact page and see if she has seeds for any of these. Some
might be available via SSE, too.)