Isn’t It Adorable: Micro Tom Tomatoes

Yesterday, I decided that I needed to go plant shopping to lift my spirits a bit.

It’s funny, but I am not a shopper in the way that women are stereotypically thought to be shoppers. I only own 3 pairs of shoes. Clothes shopping is something that I despise. I seem to lack the latent gathering instinct that makes shopping enjoyable for many women. That is until I go plant shopping.

Then it’s “get outta my way, I have a credit card and I am not afraid to use it.” The endorphins run high when I get within a 100 feet of a nursery.

So, in my plant induced funk, I went plant shopping.

While I was shopping, I found the most amazing little plant. It is called a Micro-Tom Tomato and it is a super dwarf tomato plant.

The tomatoes you see on the plant in the picture are full sized, they only need to turn red. (Sorry I do not have a picture of a red tomato on the plant but the overwhelming need to eat a garden grown tomato, no matter how small, overtook me.) This plant grows only to a strapping 7 inches tall.

Really, this tomato is only a novelty. I am not really sure what you can do with a pea size tomato. But, since I have never seen a Micro Tom Tomato and since I love anything that is a novelty, I bought three.

I put them in a planter with some basil and a few marigolds. The planter is on my front porch and will make a fun conversation piece for anyone who visits.

I did a quick look-up of some information about the Micro Tom plant and learned that they do well in lower light conditions. So maybe if you have an apartment or an office with a decent light source but not enough to grow normal vegetables, this plant might work for you.

It is also a genetic freak. It has 3 genetic mutations that make it so small. It carries the self-pruning gene, a defective dwarf gene and a mutated internode length gene. I don’t know what an internode length is either but apparently it helps to make the plant smaller. I’ll let scientists worry about the fine details on such matters.

I feel better now. I have a tomato plant with tomatoes on it now. Tiny tomatoes, but tomatoes all the same.