21/05/2020
Hi everyone I wanted to introduce myself.
My name is Brad Gates and I started my tomato Obsession about 25 years ago after helping a friend sell tomatoes at a farmers market over the summer.
I became captivated by the energy of the market and amazed by the diversity of heirloom tomatoes.
From that point on I knew I wanted to be a farmer.
Within a few years I was growing thousands of tomato plants and had trialled over 200 heirloom varieties looking for Holy Grail that would stand out to my customers.
After trailing so many heirloom tomato varieties I soon learned that only 10% or so we're truly outstanding.
About this time I was also learning about how open-pollinated varieties were created either by chance or by deliberately crossing two tomato varieties and selecting over many generations.
I was practicing seed saving early on as it was the best way to keep varieties going that were not commercially available.
Tomatoes typically self-pollinate, however on a rare chance they can naturally cross. By saving thousands of seeds and planting thousands of tomato plants each season I was able to capture some very special one-of-a-kind natural crosses.
I learned that tomato crosses can be grown out over several seasons, typically 5- 7 or more, by selecting the best of the best each year it is possible to develop new open-pollinated tomato varieties.
In the past 20 years I have been lucky enough to develop over 50 new open pollinated tomato varieties.
At one point I was growing up to 20,000 tomato plants per season. This allowed me to make some great selections and observe hundreds and hundreds of tomato crosses and variations.
Seeds for my varieties are available on our website and plants are available each April at various Northern California nursery locations.
THANK YOU to everyone that has supported us on this quest to provide the world with new, exciting and gourmet quality tomato varieties 👍🌱✌🍅
