Garden Faerie Botanicals

Garden Faerie Botanicals A Canadian company that specializes in rare & endangered heirloom seeds, aiming to preserve biodiversity & promote food security.

Products are chemical-free & organically grown. The website features a variety of seeds, tubers, roots & bulbs.

🍅 DATE FRUIT YELLOW LONGKEEPER — A Little Golden Tomato With a Long Winter AheadThis little tomato has a fascinating sto...
09/01/2026

🍅 DATE FRUIT YELLOW LONGKEEPER — A Little Golden Tomato With a Long Winter Ahead

This little tomato has a fascinating story.

Date Fruit Yellow Longkeeper is a traditional Russian storage tomato, producing masses of small, golden-yellow, date-shaped fruits in enormous clusters. The fruits average only about 20 grams, but what they lack in size they make up for in sheer productivity and keeping ability.

Unlike most tomatoes that are grown to be eaten immediately, this one was selected for something incredibly valuable: staying around for the winter.

The plants are described as bush or semi-determinatel, with a broad habit and exceptionally heavy fruit set. The firm, thick-skinned fruits are highly resistant to cracking.

And then comes the really interesting part...

It can keep for approximately 5–6 months!

During storage, the tomatoes don't necessarily remain plump and perfect-looking. Instead, they slowly lose moisture, becoming wrinkled and somewhat shrivelled — almost like little tomato raisins — while remaining usable. Some descriptions recommend storing them in their clusters.

That makes this more than just a novelty yellow tomato. It's part of an older tradition of growing varieties that could provide fresh tomato food well into the winter, long after the garden had finished producing.

The Swedish seed-saving organization Föreningen Sesam documents Date Fruit Yellow as a Russian variety and describes it as a bush tomato with shiny golden-yellow oval fruits, large clusters, firm flesh and good crack resistance.

I love finding varieties like this because they tell us something about how people once gardened: not simply growing for today's harvest, but selecting plants that could help carry food from one season into the next.

Small tomato. Huge harvest. Six months of storage.

That's the kind of tomato I want in a food-security garden.

BOSU — A Tomato in Danger of DisappearingThis is Bosu.I got the seed from Jeff Shinduke, aka Qazaq, a fellow seed saver....
08/31/2026

BOSU — A Tomato in Danger of Disappearing

This is Bosu.

I got the seed from Jeff Shinduke, aka Qazaq, a fellow seed saver. I have a lot of seed from Jeff, and this one caught my attention because Bosu is considered a very rare tomato — the PEI Seed Alliance lists it as “in danger of extinction.”

And there's a reason I wanted to grow it.

Bosu is a 70–80 day red tomato with small to midsize, slightly ribbed fruit. It was described by its seed keepers as delicious, slightly sweet, an excellent keeper and good for both fresh eating and canning. It is also noted for remarkable disease resistance, including resistance to late blight.

The history of this tomato is already partly lost.

According to the Seeds of Diversity records, Jeff received his seed from Paula Dubeski in Alberta. Paula had received it from Martin Longseth of Wisconsin, who got it in a trade. Anything before Martin is unknown.

That's the problem with rare varieties.

Once the people who remember them are gone, the stories can disappear along with the seed.

So when a tomato is described as being in danger of extinction, saving the seed isn't just about having tomatoes for next year.

It's keeping a piece of agricultural history alive.

I have ten Bosu plants this year. They're small and determinate — interestingly, different from the original descriptions I've found, which call Bosu indeterminate.

So I'm documenting what I have here, saving the seed, and adding another record to the chain.

Martin → Paula → Jeff → me.

The seed keeps moving.

Maremma tomatoes 🇮🇹I was super excited to grow this old Tuscan variety this year, so I started 18 plants from seed.Only ...
08/28/2026

Maremma tomatoes 🇮🇹

I was super excited to grow this old Tuscan variety this year, so I started 18 plants from seed.

Only ONE germinated.

And that one plant? It is absolutely loaded with tomatoes.

Heirloom Seedhouse describes Maremma as an early-producing old variety from Tuscany, with small, shiny red fruit, exceptional flavour, and some of the heaviest production of any tomato they grow.

The small fruits are delicious fresh, but this is also a really useful kitchen tomato — good for sauces, preserves and cooking, and the Italian descriptions of the closely matching Tondino Maremmano specifically note that the fruit keeps well after harvest.

That's where this tomato gets especially interesting.

Italian seed sources list an old Tuscan variety called Tondino Maremmano, from the Maremma region, producing abundant clusters of small, round red tomatoes. It is described as early, highly productive, good for fresh eating and preserving, and with good keeping quality.

I haven't been able to confirm that the Maremma sold by Heirloom Seedhouse is the same variety as Tondino Maremmano, but the descriptions are remarkably similar.

So this ONE survivor is getting watched very closely.

I'm curious to see whether the tomatoes themselves match the traditional Tondino Maremmano description.


08/28/2026

There is so much stuff to do!!! And even more I want to start!!!

Galatino Piennolo is a small, red, clustered Italian tomato associated with the tradition of winter storage — a tomato m...
08/26/2026

Galatino Piennolo is a small, red, clustered Italian tomato associated with the tradition of winter storage — a tomato meant to keep long after the garden has stopped producing.

It is not the same thing as Pomodorino del Piennolo del Vesuvio. Galatino is a distinct named variety, officially registered in Italy in 2001.

It appears in Italian sources as its own long-keeping tomato, particularly associated with Andria in Puglia. Italian culinary sources actually refer to galatino d'Andria as a winter tomato.

The fruits are small and firm, with thick skin, and grow in clusters. That structure, combined with the fruit's keeping ability, makes them suited to being stored after harvest. One modern variety description reports that Galatino can be kept for up to about 6 months, either hanging in clusters or laid out on trays. During storage, the tomatoes slowly lose moisture and may wrinkle and dry somewhat — concentrating their flavour rather than simply rotting away.

It has been used for sauces and passata, but it isn't limited to the sauce pot. Italian cooks have used Galatino in pasta dishes, in soups, baked preparations, marinades and alongside meat and fish. One Puglian recipe specifically uses winter Galatino tomatoes in lentil soup, while dishes from chefs in Andria have paired Galatino with pasta, smoked sausage, cod, olive oil, garlic and basil.

This year my Galatino plants are loaded with fruit. They are near my potatoes that got watered right before the rain and some have split. Rather than waste those damaged fruits, I'm drying them - another way of concentrating and preserving what the garden has produced.

This is a fantastic variety and I see that it is more prolific than the Piennolo Del Vesuvio!

Green Skin Long Keeper Tomato This is one of the more unusual tomatoes I'm growing this year. Green Skin Long Keeper is ...
08/24/2026

Green Skin Long Keeper Tomato

This is one of the more unusual tomatoes I'm growing this year. Green Skin Long Keeper is a rare heirloom tomato that was preserved through the Seed Savers Exchange collection.

I am still trying to figure out how this variety works. What colour do I harvest at? I can't find this info. However, the birds have started to eat them and I feel they know something I don't!!

Unlike an ordinary garden tomato, this one was selected for long-term storage. The fruit can be harvested while still firm and allowed to finish ripening slowly off the vine, providing homegrown tomatoes well after the main growing season is finished.

Longkeeper tomatoes were traditionally valued for exactly this reason: they extended the tomato harvest into the winter months, when there were no fresh tomatoes coming from the garden.

Green Skin Long Keeper is particularly interesting because it belongs to the green-skinned longkeeper group. The fruit remains green as it matures, making it a little harder to judge ripeness by colour alone.

The variety is now quite uncommon, and detailed information about its original history is surprisingly difficult to find. I haven't found reliable documentation yet identifying exactly where this particular strain originated or who first introduced it. That's one of the things that makes having seed from the Seed Savers Exchange vault so interesting.

I have a large planting of this variety and tons of fruit, so I'm hoping to observe how it performs in all stages, and learn more about this old storage tomato.

I'm also planning to sell some as I have so many.

The real test will be how long these tomatoes can keep once harvested! If the birds are eating them and more than just little pecks, they must be good already!

Have you grown this variety or know anything about it? Please let me know!

Seed from this variety will be available on January 2027.

Fiaschetto: The Little Italian Tomato That KeepsThis small Italian tomato is also known as Napoli Fiaschetto and Napoli ...
08/23/2026

Fiaschetto: The Little Italian Tomato That Keeps

This small Italian tomato is also known as Napoli Fiaschetto and Napoli a Fiaschetto, names that point to its connection with Naples. Flaschetto means “little flask” in Italian

It is a compact bush tomato, growing to about a metre tall and often wider than it is high. There is no need for staking or pruning, and it can produce ripe fruit in around 70 days.

The tomatoes are small, dense and meaty, with thick skin and relatively little juice. They are primarily a cooking tomato rather than a fresh-eating variety, making excellent sauce and being particularly well suited to drying.

Fiaschetto is also described as a long-keeping tomato. The fruit can be kept after harvest, including in clusters, and allowed to ripen gradually. This type of tomato belongs to an old tradition of keeping tomatoes beyond the summer harvest so they could be used during the winter months.

For the best keeping quality, the clusters are harvested when they are about 70% coloured. Leaving the entire cluster to become fully red reduces its storage potential, while harvesting too green means the flavour has not fully developed. The fruit should be harvested on a warm, dry day.

Fiaschetto is an unusual combination of an early, compact plant, a productive paste tomato and a fruit that can be stored beyond the growing season.

08/23/2026

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