'Mountain Spirit Bi-color' Hybrid Swarm Tomato

Solanum lycopersicum

Origin: Cardondale, Colorado

Improvement status: Cultivar

Seeds per packet: ~20

Germination tested 11/2023: 80%

Life cycle: Annual

Casey Piscura is a talented organic vegetable breeder and production farmer in Carbondale, Colorado. We are very excited to be offering four of his tomatoes that he has put through an extensive and rigorous selection process.

From Casey: "Medium to large, beautiful yellow-red bi-color tomato. Born by creating a hybrid swarm of popular heirlooms and selecting for vigor, crack resistance and productivity. These tomatoes have heirloom quality flavor or better but with much better productivity. Wild Mountain Seeds in Carbondale, CO at 6400’ have been using selection pressures such as frost, drought and late blight to find superior heirloom plants with hybrid vigor. Through intense selection they have drastically increased early fruiting, crack resistance and yield. The price of these seeds reflects the quality of the plants and fruit of which have outperformed expensive F1 hybrids in head to head testing."

An important note on the price of these seeds: There is a lot of talk in the organic seed world about how to properly compensate for the vital work that small-scale, organic, open-pollinated plant breeders do. Because, of course, once a variety is released, another seed company can get ahold of it, grow it out, and sell it themselves. This is a complicated debate, but one way to put more money in the hands of breeders is to price unique seeds at a premium upon their initial release. Casey put years into the development of these seeds, and the reality is, once you buy them, you can save the seeds yourself and keep growing these varieties for years to come. We work with all of our seed growers and breeders to set prices that they believe will fairly compensate them — and we believe the price of these tomato seeds is fair for Casey, for us, and for you. Thanks.

GROWING TIPS: Start seeds indoors in March or early April, transplant outside after danger of last frost. Space plants 24-36 inches apart. They will benefit from a trellis or tomato cage. Full sun preferred.