Problem: Vendors sell different toms under the same name

[ScottinAtlanta]

Folks, it is increasingly obvious to me that a problem that Dr. Carolyn Male referred to often is affecting my garden. The problem is that tomatoes sold under the same name by different vendors is obviously different from vendor to vendor. I have had problems with this in regrowing tomatoes from different vendors, and getting different results.

You can see this clearly if you Google a tomato, then select see images. The tomatoes shown vary widely in color and size.

Eva's Purple Ball is just one example of a tomato that I like, but that is quite different from vendor to vendor.

Hence...my question. How can I select the right vendor to replenish my seed supplies? Should I just view the images and select the image closest to my idea of what the tomato should look like? Should I use the same vendor every year for that variety? Should I just save seeds and stop buying seeds?

[nctomatoman]

Use the SSE yearbook, ask those who have been doing this a long time. It is an example of the inevitable clash between truth and money.

It's been going on since the very beginning of the growth of US seed companies...the mid 1850s or so. University grow out studies in the late 1800s showed that a few hundred named varieties was probably only a few dozen.

[PaulF]

Then add in the misspellings, reversals for example Cherokee Purple becomes Purple Cherokee or Craig's Purple Indian (well, it could happen) and other errors and that makes the situation worse.

Then people like me will take one called "unknown Russian" and give it a name and friends or family take my private name for a variety and spread it around as though that was the correct name (without me knowing it , of course).

All that times fifty years and you can see the problem.

[Cole_Robbie]

The problem is the rule of civil law that damages must be foreseeable. That means you are only allowed to sue for what you spent on the seeds, not your other gardening expenses or your time. The money is too small of an amount to ever bother with litigation.

[DonDuck]

It is so ridiculous it has almost become funny. Now China has entered the game. I ordered some Medusa Pepper seeds on Amazon. They showed up three weeks later from China by way of Uzbekistan. They sent me a packet with about one hundred seeds in it. My desired Medusa seeds became some of the nicest cayenne pepper plants I've ever grown. I guess crossing the pacific causes some kind of genetic changes.


I learned many years ago one major seed vendor in the states changes seed names all the time and then claims he developed the variety and gives them unbelievable descriptions One year, I wanted to try a few different varieties of orange tomatoes. I ordered a couple of his touted varieties and three or four others from other vendors by their original names. I found that both of his varieties were totally identical to some well known open pollinated varieties in the same bed.

[nctomatoman]

My favorite was when a smaller company offered Cherokee Purple with this description - "due to the fall of the iron curtain, this long lost European variety is at long last available".

And then there is the company I won't name that fabricates all sorts of history and charges exorbitant prices for "5 hand selected, organically grown seeds".

Caveat Emptor! It is really crazy out there - I am so happy I have such a huge collection accumulated in the SSE heyday (mid 80s to mid 90s), and love to breed new, weird things!