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TM007

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Sale

Punta Banda

  • TM007

    • Solanum lycopersicum. Collected from the Punta Banda Peninsula in Baja California. Indeterminate plants produce hundreds of red meaty, thick skinned fruits despite heat, water stress and poor soil. Great paste tomato. Performed impressively in our 2012 trials in Tucson, producing throughout the summer despite full exposure and harsh conditions. It was also incredibly productive in 2018 at Mission Garden. Renowned for its early maturity. A staff favorite! From our seed bank collection.

    • A staff favorite! 
    • Approx. 40 seeds (0.1 g).
    • Limit 3 packets.
    • No more than 30 packets total of any seeds 
  • $3.95

Customer Reviews

Based on 13 reviews
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(10)
15%
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8%
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J
Jason Grace
Really drought tolerant

We have hot, dry summers here and Punta Banda tomatoes do quite well. Production slowed in the hottest part of summer, but the plants perked up and went crazy when the weather cooled off, and we got some heavy rain.

S
Shelley Thompson
Punta Banda Tomatoes

Most prolific of my tomato producers in Summer 2021. Excellent balance of sweet and acid. Planting again and more this year. Grown in Santa Fe, NM.

J
John Murdoch

Punta Banda

C
Charles Anderson

Punta Banda

J
Joe R. Klein
Excellent flavor, hardy plants

These are wonderful little tomatoes on hardy little plants that stood up to a brutal summer. This was my first year growing them, and they are a winner. In my opinion these are the perfect sauce / salsa tomato, though they are also delicious fresh from the vine, in Greek salads, or for roasting with chiles for salsa (not too watery like many tomatoes). The flavor is rich and perfectly balanced--and I love the thick skins; flavor is miles ahead of other paste / sauce tomatoes. The tomatoes are also the perfect size--like a very large cherry or small plum type, 2-3", easy to work with in the kitchen.

We had extreme heat and drought in our garden this summer (CA Central Coast zone 9b); I planted these the furthest away, in an exposed, hard to reach spot, hoping that they would tolerate less moisture. They did pretty well, and are still producing fruit in late October. Despite doing well in the stress test, in the future I'll give them a little extra water in the hottest part of summer and hopefully have even more fruit. As the summers continue to get hotter and drier, I'm glad to have Punta Banda on my team.

One very important thing that others have mentioned: these do not behave like most "indeterminate" tomatoes that grow very long vines; they produce much more compact plants with shorter vines (not quite determinate either; maybe "semi-indeterminate"?). I would recommend doing only very minimal pruning of these plants to maximize their fruit production. I usually grow my tomatoes on a 3-leader staking method to save space and grow vertically, and that did not work very well with this variety. My other tomatoes are all 7+ feet tall now, but Punta Banda never got higher than about 3-4 feet, and my pruning probably cost me delicious fruit. In the future I will grow this variety in a large tomato cage with a central stake, and maybe just prune the lower branches a bit to keep them off the ground.

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