The Crafty Cultivator

This wasn’t originally on my grow-list for this year. But then the whole pandemic situation started happening and my brain copes by sowing more tomatoes. My original seed packet is from 2014 from McKenzie Seeds. I have two goals with this tomato for 2020: a) Save some seed to refresh my collection; and b) Put up a bunch of sauce in jars for the winter.

Manitoba is a quick growing, determinate tomato with medium sized fruits. The Days to Maturity is between 55-65 days depending on where you check. Because it is a vigorous and fast growing determinate variety with a quick maturity time, it makes a great candidate for a cold climate garden. The fruits will all set around the same time, which is helpful for my canning goals- because there will be a big glut of fruit. Being a determinate/bush type tomato, it also doesn’t require staking and pruning like the indeterminate types traditionally do… this is a benefit to new gardeners. This is the type of tomato that tomato cages are designed for.

This tomato was developed in the 1950’s at the Morden Research Station in… you guessed it (maybe)… Manitoba. That is all I managed to find in my google-research… If anyone knows any more details, please add them in the comments.

A very popular variety, so you can find it at many different seed companies. I’ll share a few links: West Coast Seeds, Wildrose Heritage Seeds, T&T, and actually, if you just type “Manitoba Tomato” into google, you can see just how available this seed is all across Canada and the US.

A quick run-down of what I’ve done this year for my own notes: I sowed 4 peat pellets on March 20th. On April 10, I potted up, and like before, I put the thinned cuttings into water to root. Some of the plants went to my friend on April 25, and I didn’t end up putting the rooted cuttings into soil. I counted how many tomatoes I had (52) and that made me scale back my tomato operation… So I should have 2 Manitoba plants for this summer. Now I just need to keep them going until the weather starts cooperating and these can go outside. It’s snowing today (May 10th), so Sometime in June or July maybe it will be safe for the tomatoes to finally go outside. So much for an early spring.