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About Our Tomato Seeds
 Heirloom Tomatoes
I've been growing organic heirloom tomatoes for more than 30 years. When I started TomatoFest to harvest heirloom tomato seeds and share them with others, my mission was simple: to be a positive force in supporting bio-diversity, promote sustainable agriculture and help preserve the many heirloom tomato varieties that had been rapidly disappearing as big farms bought out and replaced many small family farms.
Through the years, Dagma and I continued TomatoFest Garden Seeds to cultivate many hundreds of heirloom tomato and open-pollinated tomato varieties to ensure that we can continue to share the seed legacy of these wonderful foods. Learn more
About Us.
We take the growing, nurturing, harvesting and management of our heirloom tomato seed crop very seriously and personally. This is a family business. The tomatoes and seeds we grow are part of our extended family. We are responsible stewards of the land and the integrity that sustains our personal lives is extended to our business.
Gary Cleaning Tomato Seeds
Each year we select a new list of heirloom tomatoes to grow, including: varieties that are proven favorites of our customer base, little known and rare varieties just to sustain the variety, proven winners from the prior years' seed trials, and newly discovered heirloom tomato varieties sent to me by family gardeners and seed collectors world-wide. I collect seeds of the heirloom tomatoes that have been most revered for their outstanding flavor.favorite and rare tomato seed varieties from small family farms and growers in most growing regions. Through the years of growing these heirloom tomato varieties, I've selected for you, my favorite heirloom tomato varieties based upon flavor, fruit abundance and adaptability.
We grow between 600 - 650 heirloom tomato varieties every year and feature more than 650 tomato varieties at TomatoFest?.
You benefit from the meticulous selection practice we insist upon for our TomatoFest? seeds! All tomato varieties listed are open-pollinated and most are heirloom tomato varieties. We carry no hybrid varieties (unless they are the few varieties that I have de-hybridized over the years).
We grow our heirloom tomatoes on healthy, mineral-rich, certified organic land. We practice crop rotation, feed the soil off-season with cover crops, and fertilize our plants with an abundant selection of organic minerals. All of our seeds are 100% Certified Organic: See more information about our Organic Certification.
Unlike many other tomato seed suppliers, who may source their seed from independent contractors, where quality is difficult to maintain, our family grows and harvests our own Certified Organic heirloom tomato seeds by hand, to ensure you the finest quality heirloom tomato seeds.
We GUARANTEE our seeds!
Night-time Tomato Seed Counting
I maintain detailed notes about all plant and fruit growth characteristics and keep "tasting notes" from the field. (Yes, I taste tomatoes from every plant to insure it passes my tomato taste requirements and note levels of sweetness and acidity). I personally photograph all the tomatoes we grow, make sure all the fruit is true to the variety, and research each variety's history, just so you will have the most complete information available about each heirloom tomato variety.
TomatoFest does not use GMO's. To be Certified Organic, we prove the absence of any transgenic germplasm in our source material, seed production, cleaning, storage and shipping. All our seeds are free from GMO's. Our seeds are extracted from selected fruit by hand, and prepared through a natural fermentation process to remove any possible disease pathogens.
Within our seed selection, we feature many
"cooler climate" tomato varieties that are better suited to colder growing climates. Most of these varieties originate from the cooler growing areas in Russia and other northern growing areas. Many of these varieties can flourish within these cooler weather conditions regardless of whether they are early, mid-season or late maturing varieties, but most are early maturing varieties suited for shorter growing seasons. Successful tomato gardening benefits from your understanding of the hardiness zone of your region. For more information about what your minimum temperature is you can check what your zone is on our USDA Zone Chart.
Our Seed Catalog is only online. Much of my adult life was spent in the pleasure of pouring through seed catalogs. I kept stacks of them next to the bedside table for late night reading. So, I appreciate those of you who desire having a printed catalog. However, after many years in the magazine publishing business and seeing the tremendous waste of our resources in the printing, mailing and paper use, I saw a need to do things differently.
For Bulk Seed Orders - Click Here.
Given good germination and growing conditions, TomatoFest Certified Organic heirloom tomato seeds will produce excellent, delicious fruit for you. Thank you for your loyal support of
organic tomato seeds.
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