True definition of determinate

There seems to be a lot of confusion as to what a determinate tomato actually is. Is there an authoritative answer to this question?

Generally, it seems to me, people tend to think determinates are just plants that grow to a set size. However, some people also think they're supposed to ripen all their fruit at once and then die (and some of them do, it seems); however, to my knowledge, though indeterminates are never supposed to do this, many supposed determinate tomatoes are said to fruit all-season.

Example:

* Glacier is said to be determinate (and truly it is a small plant), but it's also said to fruit all season.

What are your favorite all-season determinates (whatever they're really supposed to be called)?

[Cole_Robbie]

True definition of determinate

It just means that each branch of the plant ends in a flower cluster. Indeterminate vines end in a growth tip.

My favorites include Taxi, Agatha, Cole, Sol Gold, Bradley and Maglia Rosa. I plan on trying New Yorker in the high tunnel next spring as well.

[Gardeneer]

To me tru definition of DETERMINAT tomato is that every branc EVENTUALLY end with the final truss and the growing tip disappears ( = no growing tip anymore , detered )

Now, how many nodes it take for the disappearance of the the growing tip might vary in different varieties. ALSO the internode length can vary. So the combined effect may result in a very short compact plant or a tall one. I give give an example based on my experience.
Siletz and Willamette both are determinants. While Siletz stay around 4 ft tall Willamette can get over 6 ft tall.
Indeterminant branches , on the other hand, grow vine like indefinitely until the plant dies.

On the fruiting habit , I agree with shule. Not ALL determinants fruit once and quit. The reason is that determinant plant keep growing more branches. When the older branches stop fruiting new/younger branches grow tomatoes. So then they fruit all season long.

[MrBig46]

An important feature of determinate tomatoes is the way of growth ....– cluster of the flowers - a single leaf – cluster of the flowers - a single leaf ….. This is a guarantee of high harvest at the low plant.
Vladimír

Awesome. Thanks, everyone! I knew I was likely missing something here. Now it should be pretty easy to tell when something is determinate just by observing the plant at maturity. And, thanks for the list of favorites Cole_Robbie. Those were just your favorites our of the all-season-types right? I grew Maglia Rosa and Bradley this year, and I liked Maglia Rosa quite a bit. Taxi is on my grow list for next year. New Yorker sounds like a nice one. There are tomatoes related to New Yorker that might sound interesting, too (e.g. Coldset, Fireball, etc.) I'll have to look into those others. So, is self-pruning (as Coldset is supposed to be) the same thing as determinate?

[greenthumbomaha]

This has always confused me as well. Lots of people use the term indiscriminately , which further confuses the situation.

I can't think of anything I've grown that sets fruit all at once and then peters out. I've always thought of Rutgers and Roma of being determinate in this sense, but I've never grown either one. Maglia Rossa produced like crazy all season. Unfortunately I stopped caring (mostly not fertilizing) for my plants in August expecting a killing frost.The plants I didn't pull are setting flowers again. My neighbor picked a bowl fill of Sungold this evening. I stupidly didn't plant a fall garden this summer , ugh!

- Lisa

@greenthumbomaha

We grew Roma (from plants from The Home Depot, which had bonnieplants.com tags, in 2014). They were pointed, very compact, and very productive all season (granted, they weren't super early—but they produced in a reasonable time frame). It's possible in a longer season they may have stopped producing, but they kept going from about mid to late July to some time in October or so when it frosted (being by far the most productive at the end). These fruits definitely didn't ripen all at once.

I've heard that all the fruits on Siberian are supposed to ripen in a short time frame, as well as Burpee Sunnybrook Earliana and Backfield. The only tomato I've grown like that, which I have observed to be like that, is Bush Goliath F1. Well, Sophie's Choice seemed like that, but it wasn't thriving well enough to tell if it was the plant's nature or the growing conditions; it might have just been dying for another reason. I grew others that were potentially like that this year (including Siberian), but they were smothered by indeterminate plants because I didn't separate the determinates from the indeterminates (I plan to separate them next year, of course, though).

On one of my Husky Cherry Red F3 plants (Husky Cherry Red F1 is a dwarf indeterminate red cherry with rugose foliage)—ahem, on one of the F3s, I noticed that all the fruits per truss (which were a plum or egg shape, and larger than the F1 and F2s) ripened all at once, pretty much. I don't know that the plant was determinate (it didn't produce all season like its relatives, though, but it was extremely healthy and vigorous, growth-wise, before I didn't see any more of it; perhaps it died, but perhaps it just got smothered). This ripening trait seemed pretty unusual to me at the time, as I hadn't seen it before, although I imagine entire trusses ripening at once (but not all trusses at a time) could be a well-known trait. I thought it was cross-pollinated, but now I think it was likely just plum-shaped because of the weather/soil. It didn't have rugose foliage.

I grew Maglia Rosa, too. It fruited throughout at least most of the season, but it wasn't in the best soil; so, I imagine it could have done much better.

[Fred Hempel]

The Botanical definition of determinate -- The entire growing shoot becomes converted into a flower or flowers (think Sunflowers)

Some multiflora dwarfs, which (based on my experience) really do stop producing leaves come the closest to the botanical definition of determinate. However, since they can produce flowers for an indeterminate period of time before they stop, they are not determinate. They also do not clearly use up the growing tip to make a flower of flowers. It just slows down and stops.

So, no tomatoes are determinate, in the strict botanical sense.

The way the word is used for tomatoes implies that 1) the plant pretty much stops growing and devotes it's energies to fruits at some point and/or 2) most fruit ripens at approximately the same time.

Neither of these things is strictly true for any tomato variety, so "determinate" when referring to tomatoes is relative. However, most of us, after a few years growing tomatoes can recognize a RELATIVELY determinate variety when we see one.

[MrBig46]

I read:
In the sixties of the nineteenth century seed company Vilmorin - Andrieux offered first low form of tomato. Suddenly it appeared, apparently as a mutation among normal tall tomatoes. As a novelty reportedly expanded, but at the time when there was enough manpower had no economic significance. Therefore fell into oblivion. Until then in 1914 was captured in Florida bush growth form. Its excellent new feature has been the main and secondary stems end up by inflorescences, it was also completed further plant growth. Matured fruits of this form of growth is often directly on the ground.
Does anybody know how this bush tomato called?
Vladimír

[StrongPlant]

In determinate varieties the meristem tissue terminates in flower cluster after a set number of leaves,whereas in indeterminate plants it keeps on going,producing more growth.IMO it seems that determinate tomatoes never really "run out" of meristem tissue,it's just that there are so many flowers and fruits on the plant that all the sugars get sinked into them and none is left for the sleeping shoots so they never start growing.I never tried it but I'm quite sure that you could keep a determinate tomato alive for much longer if you'd cut all of it's flower buds as they emerge.

[Cole_Robbie]

The way that seed companies throw around the term "semi-determinate" doesn't help to make anything less confusing.

[StrongPlant]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

The way that seed companies throw around the term "semi-determinate" doesn't help to make anything less confusing.

Yeah but it's not anyone's fault,there is simply many intermediate types.I think we can agree that the less leaves the plant makes before the apical meristem terminates in inflorescence,the more it's determinant.Maybe if there were labels such as determinate-1,det.-2 etc.,the number representing the tendency of the stems to produce that number of leaves before termination,we would all have a much better idea of how the whole plant would look like.