Campari?

[dipchip2000]

Has anyone ever planted the seeds from the Campari tomatoes that you buy in the grocery store or big box stores? They come in a plastic quart container and are a little bigger than a golf ball. Most of the time they are the only store bought tomatoes that have any flavor at all but they are pretty expensive. Just wondering if they will grow and produce if planted. I've never seen these seeds or seedlings available anywhere. Anyone know?
dipchip 2000

[hasshoes]

Did you do a search here? I think there was a small amount of discussion on this recently. :0)

They are yummy and keep quite well. . . but alas, if I remember correctly I *think* they are hybrids.

[mvan]

http://tomatoville.com/showthread.ph...hlight=campari

[gourmetgardener]

If you know a friend in Europe, you can buy Campari seeds from Lindbloms in Sweden and have them mail them to you. They are **Hugely** expensive - doing the math they come out to $1625.00 for 1000 seeds.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by gourmetgardener

If you know a friend in Europe, you can buy Campari seeds from Lindbloms in Sweden and have them mail them to you. They are **Hugely** expensive - doing the math they come out to $1625.00 for 1000 seeds.

Another option, wayyyy cheaper) is to buy seed of Mountain Magic F1, a cherry that was bred by Dr. Randy Gardener at NCSU and is advertised as a Campari "type"

Not only is it bred for outside growing whereas Campari was bred for greenhouse growing, but seeds for MM F1 are available at many seed sites, I think the best price may still be at TGS ( Tomato Growers Supply)

Randy sent me lots of seeds of it and with his permission I offered it in two recent seed offers here but I no longer have enough seeds to distribute. I've grown it for three years now and think it's great tasting and very very productive and also has a package of the latest genes bred in for both Early ( A. solani) and Late ( P, infestans) Blight.

I grow other cherries as well, all open pollinated, and MMF1 has been reliable every year.

[gourmetgardener]

Mountain Magic certainly did pretty good, but ran out of gas very, very quickly as the nights got cooler - initially it was promising on my post on August 18th. As the nights got cooler, it behaved more and more like a variety for heated cultivations. Annelise emerged as a clear winner by september.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by gourmetgardener

Mountain Magic certainly did pretty good, but ran out of gas very, very quickly as the nights got cooler - initially it was promising on my post on August 18th. As the nights got cooler, it behaved more and more like a variety for heated cultivations. Annelise emerged as a clear winner by september.

And I've had just the opposite results.

Mt Magic F1 and Smarty F1, both bred by Randy Gardener were two of the best I've grown in terms of keeping up with cool approaching Fall weather, still producing fruits and doing so much better than almost all others when the nights started to get cool.

Any variety that Randy releases or released, he's now retired but still breeding tomatoes, has been tested in different gardening zones for performance and taste, as is true for most professional breeders who do the same.

I'm in a roughly zone 5 area in upstate NY, can be 4b some years, but I don't see what gardening zone you're in in your avatar, just Canada, which has quite a few different gardening zones.

[gourmetgardener]

Have you had any other cocktail variety to compare it with?

I'm located in the Okanagan valley region, zone 6b. Typically 190-205 frost free days. Sonoran climate - dry season (May-September) with very little precipitation, daytime highs typically 95 farenheit in July and August. Fall rains begin in October and turn to snow by mid-december, usually last frost is mid-april. New York typically would have much greater humidity, around 150 days growing season. Our soil is a sandy loam - which does pose some challenges with EC problems after a rain which is uncommon here in the summer - where the plant suddenly takes up a massive amount of water, but plastic mulch helps mitigate. Problem I saw with Mountain Magic is the fruit got waterier - less acid and sugar which I even noticed as temperatures fell from a daytime high of 95 to 85 in early september. I was using a generative steering regime. They looked very promising early on.

For commercial sales, the fruit was essentially ruined at this point. Have to sell them as single tomatoes rather than cocktail at a deeply discounted price, and even then the chefs won't buy them. Mountain magic produced 3 good clusters with intact tomatoes, Temptation did 5, Adoration and Annelise both had 6 on average.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by gourmetgardener

Have you had any other cocktail variety to compare it with?

I'm located in the Okanagan valley region, zone 6b. Typically 190-205 frost free days. Sonoran climate - dry season (May-September) with very little precipitation, daytime highs typically 95 farenheit in July and August. Fall rains begin in October and turn to snow by mid-december, usually last frost is mid-april. New York typically would have much greater humidity, around 150 days growing season. Our soil is a sandy loam - which does pose some challenges with EC problems after a rain which is uncommon here in the summer - where the plant suddenly takes up a massive amount of water, but plastic mulch helps mitigate. Problem I saw with Mountain Magic is the fruit got waterier - less acid and sugar which I even noticed as temperatures fell from a daytime high of 95 to 85 in early september. I was using a generative steering regime. They looked very promising early on.

For commercial sales, the fruit was essentially ruined at this point. Have to sell them as single tomatoes rather than cocktail at a deeply discounted price, and even then the chefs won't buy them. Mountain magic produced 3 good clusters with intact tomatoes, Temptation did 5, Adoration and Annelise both had 6 on average.

I had seen the term cocktail tomato here and there but didn't really know what the definition of a cocktail tomato is. So I googled it and went to about 8 commercial places that sold them and most of them defined them as being small red fruits sold on the vine. But a couple of them showed sales of them as singles in packages.

At one link there was an interview with the owner of a huge greenhouse operation in Canada where many of them are grown inside and a note at the end said a correction, where the words cherry tomato were used it should be cocktail tomato.

Having looked at a lot of pictures and descriptions I have a hard time seeing the difference between a cherry tomato sold on the vine as opposed to a "cocktail" one sold on the vine, except of course for PR purposes.

I forget who the person is but Zima tomatoes were also described as cocktail ones at one link and someone was offering seeds here at Tville quite recently. I didn't check it out but I think most of the cocktail/cherry ones are F1 hybrids.

The question was asked above what variety is akin to Campari and I answered Mt Magic F1 which is sold as a Campari type for outdoor growing.

If MM F1 doesn't work for you and you grow something better, all to the good.

And to answer you directly, no, I haven't grown any "cocktail" type tomatoes to be sold on the vine, which I still can't easily differentiate between cherry tomatoes sold on the vine, except, as I mentioned above, the PR value of pushing a new generic name for them.

[gourmetgardener]

How tomatoes are differentiated by segment: A cherry tomato usually weighs in at about 15 to 25 grams max, a cocktail tomato weighs in at 35-60 grams. Both cherry and cocktail tomatoes can be harvested on the vine, or loose, depending on variety of course. Zima tomatoes are NOT cocktail tomatoes, but rather fall under the grape tomato category - an elongated tomato 25 grams and under.

As for stating my critique about Mountain Magic, I am not trying to sound snobbish or pretend I am better than everyone else, but rather just trying to help people experiment, and try something new - like trying Annelise (Seeds of Change), or Temptation (Osborne Seeds) - both of which are from the same breeder as Campari. My recommendation for everyone, is try growing 5 plants of Mountain Magic, and 5 plants of Annelise - I expect the results would be varied - Mountain Magic doing better in more humid regions like Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Ontario, and Annelise better in arid regions like Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico.

Speaking of which, to grow cocktail tomatoes, I plant them in double rows, 12" apart, 18" between plants, staggered, and trained to a single stem. I pinch the cocktail tomatoes to restrict them to 7-8 tomatoes.