posted 3 years ago
Indeterminate tomatoes have stems that end in new leaves and just keep growing.
Determinate tomatoes have stems that end in flowers and eventually ripen all their fruits.
I used to only grow indeterminate tomatoes. However when I started my own tomato breeding six years ago I started experimenting with both.
I now have both wonderful varieties bred by other people with both traits and my own tomatoes.
It is a simple dominant / recessive situation with indeterminate dominant.
There is a third way called dwarf and at least some dwarf varieties keep their fruit off the ground without staking for me.
The most important thing for starting a tomato breeding grex in my opinion is to start with hybrids and or include at least one variety that crosses readily because a part of the flower called the stigma / style sticks out and or make deliberate crosses using the many videos available on youtube or other online tutorials.
I've occasionally been able to find a blooming sungold F1 or Sunsugar F1 plant for sale at a local retailer and checked to find the stigma / style to be sticking out before even buying it. That could be a very good place to start such a grex because dehybridization projects using Sungold have produced numerous successful open pollinated versions for other breeders.
Other seed for varieties with stigmas that tend to stick out a bit is available including Exserted Tiger, Exserted Orange, Big Hill, and the promiscuous tomato project from Experimental Farm Network and Snake River Seeds.
Western Montana gardener and botanist in zone 6a according to 2012 zone update.
Gardening on lakebed sediments with 7 inch silty clay loam topsoil, 7 inch clay accumulation layer underneath, have added sand in places.