'Banadura Baladiyya' Tomato (Palestine)

Solanum lycopersicum

Origin: Palestine

Improvement status: Landrace

Seeds per packet: ~25

Germination tested 01/2026: 88%

Life cycle: Annual

This big, beautiful, deep-red to pink tomato landrace has ancestry in the Beit Omar/Hebron region of the West Bank. As a Ba’al (rain-fed) variety, they are traditionally not irrigated in Palestine, but seeded in March and later transplanted into a 10-12 inch hole filled with water. The soil around each plant is covered with hay or dry grass, and not to be watered for the remainder of the season. You can expect at least two distinct types from this landrace, one with deep ribs and one that is more smooth — but both are delicious.

We grow and offer seeds like these, and work closely with our dear friends at the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, in the hopes that our doing so helps to remind people around the world — many of whose governments, like our own, are complicit in the Israeli oppression of Palestine — that Palestinians are not the evil monsters portrayed by their Israeli oppressors. They are people of the land who want and deserve freedom. They want to plant the seeds of their beloved plants, just as all the rest of us to. They want to cook their beloved dishes with these plants. And they want to share them tenderly with the people they love.

These seeds were produced in Hurley, New York, in a collaboration between Vivien Sansour's Palestine Heirloom Seed Library and Hudson Valley Farm Hub. 50% of the proceeds will be donated to the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library to support their critically important work preserving a vital part of Palestinian culture in the face of political oppression, systematic violence, and cultural erasure.

GROWING TIPS: Start as you would any other tomato (early, indoors) and plant out after soil begins to warm in spring. Provide trellis or other support for these indeterminate tomatoes.