Tomato – Montreal Tasty

$4.50

An heirloom from Quebec with bright red 110-g (4-oz) fruits that have an excellent, tangy, old-fashioned flavour. Great for canning and fresh eating. A lovely large red slicer. Indeterminate compact vines grow to 1.5 m (5′).

Price is for seed packets. 0.2g +/-50 seeds per packet.

Thanks to James S. Marshall for the following family history of this tomato!

• Montreal had a farmer’s market called the Atwater Market where my family shopped. My father noticed at the end of the day the other farmers threw away their left over tomatoes and bought those of an old woman who sold tomatoes (and nothing else) at the market. My dad bought from her and saved the seed when she died. No one else seems to have preserved her varieties that we ever saw. There were two types (un-named then) and one was tall (we named Montreal Tall) and one was shorter (we named Montreal Tasty).
• From 1965-2014 my father grew and bred these tomatoes in containers in apartment windows and on apartment balconies. As a result, they tend to do better when not treated so well (after ±48 years years of wind, limited sun, containers no more than 2-3 cubic feet in soil volume).
• From 1983-2018 I have been growing them. I grow Montreal Tasty and Montreal Tall in alternate years so they never cross-pollinate (they are open-pollinated).
I traded Montreal Tasty with a fellow down in the USA many years ago for an old variety called John Baer that I had grown and lost. This fellow claimed to have the seed (not true). I later found Montreal Tasty traded amongst seed-savers across the internet in Canada and the USA however some varieties being sold seem to have been accidentally crossed with another type and get overly large (the fused tomato you reference).
The picture on your website looks exactly like the originals. Thanks for keeping them going.

My kind regards,

James S. Marshall

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This item is a SEED
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Description

Botanical name
Solanum lycopersicum ‘Montreal Tasty’

Family
Solanaceae

Spacing
1 per square foot. Climbing.

Depth
Plant seeds 1 cm (½”) deep, indoors.

Requirements
Full sun, hot weather plant. pH around 6-6.5.

Germination
Seeds will sprout in 7-14 days.

Pests
Tomatoes are susceptible to some fungal diseases, but problems with this plant are mostly caused by cultural practices that stress the plants. Make sure you keep the garden clean and tidy, water consistently and avoid directly spraying water onto the leaves. When plants get off to a good start, few pests will bother them. Protect young plants with floating row covers that are removed when flowering starts.

Timing
Start tomatoes indoors in early April indoors under bright lights. Transplant into the garden at the mid to late May. Night-time temperatures need to be reliably above 10°C (50°F) to avoid shocking the seedlings. Before planting, pluck off the lower two thirds of branches and leaves to increase root growth. You won’t believe the difference in growth rate and especially in the yield.

Growing
Best to have them climb a trellis to save space and keep pests away. Indeterminate tomatoes keep shooting off new branches found in the crotch between a leaf and the main trunk. You need to pinch out these ‘suckers’ to keep the tomato plant from focusing the plant’s energy into producing fruit.

Harvest
75-80 days from transplant

Season
Warm, annual

Links
‘Pinching Out’ your growing tomato plants (Suckers)
Harvesting heirloom tomatoes