Good source for Juliet (hybrid) tomato seeds in the USA?

A few months ago in the thread about 2020's unusual shortage of canning supplies, I wrote:

Dan Boone wrote:
I would also suggest that anybody who runs any kind of calendaring system (whether it's writing useful dates on a paper calendar, or something electronic that beeps at you, like a calendar or to-do list app on your phone) make several entries for wintertime (perhaps December 1, January 15, and February 28) to watch for reappearance of canning jar lids in the supply chain.  Then stock up while snow (actual or metaphorical) is still drifting against your windows.

Well, I made notes like that for several items that were supply-chain stressed.  That includes, famously, seeds.  Now, I don't rely heavily on purchased seeds (which is not at all the same thing as saying I don't buy seeds) but there is one species of tomato that has historically outperformed all others in my garden.  It's the Juliet F1 hybrid, it's a small oval semi-paste tomato of acceptable but not stellar flavor,  and it has the unique-in-my-garden characteristic of being long-lived, prolific, and very crack resistant.  Normally I buy starts locally, but this last year that went poorly, the starts I got were feeble, and I missed the productivity of these plants.  Though I have grown them from seed before, I found myself without any seeds in inventory this spring.  So I made a reminder note to buy some this winter.

Ebay and Amazon have (very expensive) mystery seeds in baggies labeled "Juliet" from sellers of no particular reputation (at least with me).  That's not what I want.  I want some reasonable expectation of quality, which in this case for me means retail packet from a major seed distributor.  Seed catalogs are starting to trickle in, so I went online and checked all my usual suspects.  Nothing! Everybody I checked is out of stock except for a few weird places whose shopping carts did not show stock amounts or out-of-stock indicators on anything.  

Maybe I'm jumping the gun.  Maybe the  ultimate seed grower hasn't shipped any inventory to anyone yet.  But I'm not anxious to miss the window.  I've got lots of tomato seeds (including some new-to-me heirlooms with many of the qualities of the Juliet) so it's not like I'm in a planting bind.  I just really want to have a couple of packets of Juliets, one to work from and one to store.

Does anybody have a trusted / favorite / secret seed supplier they love, who has Juliets in stock?

Here are a couple of sources I found, but have never purchased from:

https://www.totallytomato.com/product/T00400/9
https://www.whiteflowerfarm.com/4864-product.html

AAS also maintains a list of sellers for all AAS selections:

https://all-americaselections.org/product/tomato-juliet/

Also, if they're not sterile, you should totally save seeds. A lot of times the F2 generation is practically indistinguishable from the parent plant. At the very least, you can save seeds from the best plants in the F2 generation and know that you'll get more of the same. I'll be growing out F2 okra this year and making selections for my breeding project. Carol Deppe's Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties has a whole section on dehybridizing hybrid varieties.

Plus, if your major concern is getting something that will produce reliably in your garden, you can always Landrace Everything. Especially since the vigor of hybrids comes primarily from the broader gene pool, which you naturally get with landraces.

 A lot of times the F2 generation is practically indistinguishable from the parent plant

I didn't know this, thank you!

Stacie Kim wrote:

 A lot of times the F2 generation is practically indistinguishable from the parent plant

I didn't know this, thank you!

I mean, it all depends on what the parents of the hybrid were like. The F2 generation will resemble its parents and grandparents. If the grandparents were similar, the F2 generation may be indistinguishable. If they're not, you can do a bit of math to figure out what percentage of the offspring will have each trait, but it doesn't need to be that complicated. Grow the seeds, them save the seeds from the plants that have the traits you want. Eventually you'll eliminate traits you don't want.

Mathew Trotter wrote:Here are a couple of sources I found, but have never purchased from:

https://www.totallytomato.com/product/T00400/9
https://www.whiteflowerfarm.com/4864-product.html

AAS also maintains a list of sellers for all AAS selections:

https://all-americaselections.org/product/tomato-juliet/

Thanks, Mathew.  That AAS link is in my OP, and I didn't find anybody on their sellers list in stock.  White Flower Farm is out of stock and Totally Tomato is one of the ones with hinky shopping cart software that doesn't show stocking status, so honestly I don't believe they have them.

Mathew Trotter wrote:
Also, if they're not sterile, you should totally save seeds. A lot of times the F2 generation is practically indistinguishable from the parent plant. At the very least, you can save seeds from the best plants in the F2 generation and know that you'll get more of the same.

Oh, I've been doing that for years.  I've got several lines of "Juliet Kids" seed that I play with, but so far, nothing has offered the same performance.  Several are worth growing -- and I will! -- but the point of this post is to keep some seed of the known good performing variety in stock, if I can get it.

Mathew Trotter wrote:Plus, if your major concern is getting something that will produce reliably in your garden, you can always Landrace Everything. Especially since the vigor of hybrids comes primarily from the broader gene pool, which you naturally get with landraces.

Although I don't have a big enough garden to get very many crosses from the 5% hybridization that Joseph estimates for tomatoes, I am growing a ton of varieties in proximity, and keeping seeds from all the good stuff.  Again, this post was not intended to encompass my entire tomato growing strategy; I'm hoping somebody has a seed source, that's all.

Dan Boone wrote:

Thanks, Mathew.  That AAS link is in my OP, and I didn't find anybody on their sellers list in stock.  White Flower Farm is out of stock and Totally Tomato is one of the ones with hinky shopping cart software that doesn't show stocking status, so honestly I don't believe they have them.

I only posted AAS after going through the list until I find them in stock somewhere (I totally missed it in your post.) Garden Trends says they do:

https://www.gardentrends.com/products/00879-tomato-juliet-f1?variant=32453222826050

Stacie Kim wrote:

 A lot of times the F2 generation is practically indistinguishable from the parent plant

I didn't know this, thank you!

Stacie, this has not actually been my experience.  In the F2 generations I have trialed, there's a lot of regression to what I think of as the "ur-tomato" -- tiny red cherries on weedy vines, of no particular heavy bearing, without any exceptional traits.  This may be due to my general focus on various cherries and saladettes; small tomatoes do much better in my Oklahoma conditions than larger ones, and so all my projectys have a lot of cherry tomato genetics in them.

Last year I planted seeds from some huge, presumed hybrid, orange slicing tomatoes that I bought at a farmer's market in Portland.  Out of a dozen plants I got three or four that failed completely under my conditions, nearly half a dozen that produced unimpressive tiny red cherries, one very nice medium red oval paste tomato plant, and several plants that produced medium orange slicers of good flavor in small quantity.  Obviously I saved seeds from the successful orange slicers and separately, the paste tomato.  But my point here is that I didn't get a single plant that closely resembled the parent, unless (and this is possible) the ones that gave me medium orange slicers would have done about twice as well under the conditions (Oregon) that their genetics are adapted to (very possible).

Mathew Trotter wrote:
I only posted AAS after going through the list until I find them in stock somewhere (I totally missed it in your post.) Garden Trends says they do:

https://www.gardentrends.com/products/00879-tomato-juliet-f1?variant=32453222826050

Huh.  When I look at that page I see "We have ordered more from the supplier. We expected to have received the product by now but have not. We will update this message ASAP, last updated Dec 29 2020 5:03PM."

Dan Boone wrote:

Mathew Trotter wrote:
I only posted AAS after going through the list until I find them in stock somewhere (I totally missed it in your post.) Garden Trends says they do:

https://www.gardentrends.com/products/00879-tomato-juliet-f1?variant=32453222826050

Huh.  When I look at that page I see "We have ordered more from the supplier. We expected to have received the product by now but have not. We will update this message ASAP, last updated Dec 29 2020 5:03PM."

Is this not what you see? Maybe your browser is serving a cached copy of the site? Maybe try clearing your cache or trying from a different device?

Dan Boone wrote:Last year I planted seeds from some huge, presumed hybrid, orange slicing tomatoes that I bought at a farmer's market in Portland.  Out of a dozen plants I got three or four that failed completely under my conditions, nearly half a dozen that produced unimpressive tiny red cherries, one very nice medium red oval paste tomato plant, and several plants that produced medium orange slicers of good flavor in small quantity.  Obviously I saved seeds from the successful orange slicers and separately, the paste tomato.  But my point here is that I didn't get a single plant that closely resembled the parent, unless (and this is possible) the ones that gave me medium orange slicers would have done about twice as well under the conditions (Oregon) that their genetics are adapted to (very possible).

Tomatoes definitely introduce challenges because of the complexity of fruit size and eating qualities along with their self-pollinating nature. If you did crosses from the F2, I'm sure the next generation would get pretty close. If the orange F2 slicer is pretty close other than productivity, then crossing with the cherries would probably add the extra productivity. Of course, you're bound to limit production anyway if you limit the gene pool too much. That's probably how the orange grandparent ended up after many generations of inbreeding.

Things that set fruit are definitely harder to manage if you have limited space. You have to grow out a lot of seed to separate the wheat from the chaff and that requires a lot of room, especially if you have to wait until fruit set to make any culls. And if you don't get something close in the F2 generation, in the case of tomatoes and other self-pollinating crops, it means having to hand pollinate to manually make the crosses.

You at least tried, and that's all I was really trying to get across. For most hybrids, it's at least worthwhile to save seeds and see what you get, given the space to do so. And having something is better than nothing if seeds end up not being available. You might be happy for a breeding project if you can't get the seed you need. 😳

Mathew Trotter wrote:
Is this not what you see? Maybe your browser is serving a cached copy of the site? Maybe try clearing your cache or trying from a different device?

Perhaps you did not look further down the page at the "shipping" section?  There's an out of stock message that seems to frequently update with a current timestamp:

Dan Boone wrote:

Mathew Trotter wrote:
Is this not what you see? Maybe your browser is serving a cached copy of the site? Maybe try clearing your cache or trying from a different device?

Perhaps you did not look further down the page at the "shipping" section?  There's an out of stock message that seems to frequently update with a current timestamp:

Damn. Apparently I'm just blind tonight.

I didn't see anything on Jung Seed about backorders...

https://www.jungseed.com/product/J00400/580

But at this rate, I probably missed it.

And Totally Tomatoes is on the AAS list, so I'd be inclined to place an order. Worst case scenario, you have to file a chargeback if it falls through and they try to make off with your money.

Mathew Trotter wrote:
Damn. Apparently I'm just blind tonight.

I didn't see anything on Jung Seed about backorders...

https://www.jungseed.com/product/J00400/580

But at this rate, I probably missed it.

I really do appreciate your efforts to help! But I would like to persuade you that I really did check all the AAS listed sources before I put that link in the OP.  My initial report of my findings was "Everybody I checked is out of stock except for a few weird places whose shopping carts did not show stock amounts or out-of-stock indicators on anything."

Jung was one of those weird places; Totally Tomato was another.  They use the same shopping cart software and I suspect them of being white-label affiliate sites for some more distant supplier.  I apologize if I was not clear enough that I am looking for "in stock" sources, not "sources that don't report out of stock".  My default experience with seed companies whose shopping cart software doesn't report in-stock or out-of-stock is that hard-to-find items there are most likely to be out of stock, but you won't find out until days or weeks later when they process your order by hand (maybe refunding, maybe keeping your money for months while they hope stock returns).  Maybe I've just been unlucky.  

Again, I appreciate the help.

I don't think they ship to the US, but there is some hope - https://www.damseeds.com/products/juliet-hybrid.

William Dam seeds in Canada is listing them as in packaging, available mid January.

I quickly checked the other places I normally buy from, without seeing any others even listing them as something they offer.

I am planning on ordering seeds in the next few weeks. I was caught in the shortage this spring, with many suppliers sold out, so would prefer to get my orders in and shipped early.

Dan Boone wrote:
I really do appreciate your efforts to help! But I would like to persuade you that I really did check all the AAS listed sources before I put that link in the OP.  My initial report of my findings was "Everybody I checked is out of stock except for a few weird places whose shopping carts did not show stock amounts or out-of-stock indicators on anything."

Oh, I believe you. And all fair points. It's just that my local seed supplier literally just updated their website and started accepting new orders just a few hours ago, so I wanted to double check just in case we were that lucky with the tomatoes.



Holmes listed a possible ETA of March. And since it's a hybrid and the bottle neck is the grower, that means anyone that doesn't have it now probably also went have it until March, if that ETA is accurate.

Johnny's lists Juliet as out of stock but offers Verona as a substitute:

Organic (F1) Tomato Seed
Larger, more flavorful Juliet type.
Similar to Juliet, but with even tastier, somewhat more plump, deep-red "cocktail plum" fruits averaging 2 1/2 oz. Long clusters on a medium-vigorous vine. High resistance to Fusarium wilt races 1, 2 and Verticillium wilt; and intermediate resistance to early blight. Indeterminate. USDA Certified Organic. Avg. 15,200 seeds/oz. Packet: 15 seeds.

I also have had mixed results with the self-seeded F2 of hybrid tomatoes. I did have good results from the self-seeded F2 of some BHN-something cherry tomatoes; and they've self-seeded for two summers, giving heavy production of large cherry tomatoes. But the Estiva I'd grown, that turned out to be nicely resistant to some kind of wilt I've got, their self-seeded offspring also withstood the wilt for a while, but were sort of polygonal in shape (the parent was round) and cracked, and the plant died after producing a first batch.

Spurred by the news via Twitter that this year's pandemic seed rush appears to be at least as bad as last year's, with several big seed companies having closed their website to new orders, I decided to return to my Juliet seed quest with a bit more rigor.  

I looked for and found a garden blogger with an Ultimate List of Seed Catalogs and Seed Companies and just started down the list, opening each link in a new tab and then typing "Juliet" into each seed box without doing any other looking, reading, or browsing.  (I also did not make any effort to vet the list for completeness.)  

I got as far as J/K in the list before I got a promising hit: John Sheeper's Kitchen Garden Seeds in Connecticut.  They have good reviews online and their smart order form showed Juliet seeds in stock.  My order went through just now without any hitches, except for the fact that they charged me $8.95 shipping for a six-packet order, which is a little bit brutal.  I was hoping to spread the pain of small seed order shipping costs by buying a few extra things (jicama seeds, an attractive heat-tolerant radicchio, some fennel, and a new-to-me color of breadseed poppies) but they actually have an escalating scale of shipping charges by order dollar-value, which I think is a quite customer-hostile policy.  

I will update here when they confirm shipping (if they do) and/or when the seed order arrives.

For what it's worth, I did see several large seed companies with completely closed ordering as I worked through the list.  So the Twitter rumors would appear to be true.

Dan Boone wrote:
I will update here when they confirm shipping (if they do) and/or when the seed order arrives.

Got an email notice just now that the seeds (including my Juliet seeds, at least in theory) got shipped today.  Five days from order to ship is not terrible in these times.

Given how much you love this hybrid, it might be worth digging deeper to find out what the parents are. If they're both heirlooms, you could grow them for the purpose of crossing to make your own Juliet hybrids. As long as you keep a line of pure seed from each parent, you could, in theory, have an unending source of Juliet seeds.

Ellendra Nauriel wrote:Given how much you love this hybrid, it might be worth digging deeper to find out what the parents are. If they're both heirlooms, you could grow them for the purpose of crossing to make your own Juliet hybrids. As long as you keep a line of pure seed from each parent, you could, in theory, have an unending source of Juliet seeds.

You know, that's something I had long wondered about, although I haven't seen much info on this. I'm sure it's a pretty secretive thing for the newer varieties with crazy expensive seed, but ... at least for the older ones? How do you find this sort of thing out?

Dan Boone wrote:I will update here when they confirm shipping (if they do) and/or when the seed order arrives.

And, indeed, the seed order arrived today and my two packets of Juliet seeds were in the envelope.  So that's a preparedness detail I can check off my list.

Charles Rehoboth wrote:

Ellendra Nauriel wrote:Given how much you love this hybrid, it might be worth digging deeper to find out what the parents are. If they're both heirlooms, you could grow them for the purpose of crossing to make your own Juliet hybrids. As long as you keep a line of pure seed from each parent, you could, in theory, have an unending source of Juliet seeds.

You know, that's something I had long wondered about, although I haven't seen much info on this. I'm sure it's a pretty secretive thing for the newer varieties with crazy expensive seed, but ... at least for the older ones? How do you find this sort of thing out?

First, I may have given a false impression.  I do not actually love Juliets.  They fall from the vines while still green far too easily (but then ripen nicely indoors on a plate, if I find them and pick them up), they have a fairly tough skin, and their flavor is merely adequate.  Despite all that, they are important to me because they are far and a way the most productive tomatoes I've ever found for my garden skills and conditions.

My actual "plan" -- as much as a gardener so chaotic as myself can be said to have one -- is to continue trialing new promising varieties and saving seeds from plants that are successful and productive.  Eventually, I imagine, I'll have a half-assed landrace slash grex that performs well enough I can let go of the Juliets.  But that is, perhaps, still years away.  

One of the lessons I learned this year is that I'm not as good at growing tomatoes from seed as I thought I was.  I've always relied on a few flats of purchased started plants to fill in for seedling tomato failures, and when that didn't work out this year, my overall results were the worse for it.  Learned some more things, this year may go better.

Having said all that, I am indeed curious, and cannot find a definitive answer, about the source genetics for the Juliet hybrid.  During my deep dive search for Juliet seeds this year, I did see pages suggesting that China is the source of all the Juliet seed, which might explain why most sources are not in stock; the pandemic and the trade war have interrupted supplies of many Chinese goods.  But these were speculative-sounding internet allegations, not solid/reliable information.  


My other approach (and I obviously have TOO MANY tomato experiments going on at the same time) is to try some of the heirloom varieties that are sometimes suggested as Juliet replacements.  This year, the candidate is San Marzano, said to be a somewhat larger oval paste tomato with many similar characteristics.  I bought that seed earlier in the winter; we'll see how it goes.

Thanks to everybody for the feedback and suggestions!

Charles Rehoboth wrote:

Ellendra Nauriel wrote:Given how much you love this hybrid, it might be worth digging deeper to find out what the parents are. If they're both heirlooms, you could grow them for the purpose of crossing to make your own Juliet hybrids. As long as you keep a line of pure seed from each parent, you could, in theory, have an unending source of Juliet seeds.

You know, that's something I had long wondered about, although I haven't seen much info on this. I'm sure it's a pretty secretive thing for the newer varieties with crazy expensive seed, but ... at least for the older ones? How do you find this sort of thing out?

Years ago, I accidentally stumbled on a website that had information about the ancestry of several popular hybrids that were old enough not to be kept secret anymore.

Now that I'm looking for it, I can't find it.

I have no idea where to find that out.

Ellendra Nauriel wrote:

Charles Rehoboth wrote:

Ellendra Nauriel wrote:Given how much you love this hybrid, it might be worth digging deeper to find out what the parents are. If they're both heirlooms, you could grow them for the purpose of crossing to make your own Juliet hybrids. As long as you keep a line of pure seed from each parent, you could, in theory, have an unending source of Juliet seeds.

You know, that's something I had long wondered about, although I haven't seen much info on this. I'm sure it's a pretty secretive thing for the newer varieties with crazy expensive seed, but ... at least for the older ones? How do you find this sort of thing out?

Years ago, I accidentally stumbled on a website that had information about the ancestry of several popular hybrids that were old enough not to be kept secret anymore.

Now that I'm looking for it, I can't find it.

I have no idea where to find that out.

You know, something about the way you phrased that sent me back to searching.

I actually did find something that might be useful, which is a cultivar list from NCSU. The link I had found didn't go to the cultivar list anymore, but Internet Archive to the rescue:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160704224524/http://cuke.hort.ncsu.edu/cucurbit/wehner/vegcult/vgclintro.html

(Alas, Juliet doesn't show up there. But many others do, and it's pretty interesting reading for me.)