🍅 Quick take: Kookaburra Cackle is a low-maintenance, mid-season brown tomato from the Dwarf Tomato Project. Featuring thick rugose foliage and a compact tree-type habit, it produces beautiful dark oblate slicers. Its flavor is highly unusual—growers describe it as having a mild tomato base mixed with a surprisingly complex, spicy, or smoky kick. Full summary ↓
Growers’ Notes and Photos
A mid-season indeterminate variety from the Dwarf Tomato Project featuring regular, rugose foliage. The fruits are oblate, brown, and have a very weird taste; it’s sort of a bland tomato base, but with a spicy/smoky kick to it, even though the internal color is incredibly rich and gorgeous.The variety is highly productive, totally fuss-free, and I grew it outdoors out in the dirt.
Elena, you mentioned that this is an *indeterminate* variety from the Dwarf Project. I always thought that if it’s a Dwarf, it means it’s a short, determinate plant that won’t grow tall. I’m a bit confused by how this classification works. Could you explain the system please, if it’s not too much trouble? 🙏
Full Summary: Plant, Yield, Taste and Appearance
- 🌿 Plant: A classic Dwarf Tomato Project variety with thick, dark green rugose leaves and a sturdy, tree-type central stem. It is incredibly low-maintenance and doesn’t require the aggressive pruning of standard vining tomatoes.
- 📈 Yield: Excellent. It performs beautifully outdoors and sets a heavy crop of uniformly oblate tomatoes.
- 👅 Taste: Divisive and unique. It lacks the typical bright acidity or sugary sweetness of many heirlooms. Instead, it has a mild base flavor with a distinct “spicy” or complex earthy undertone typical of some dark tomatoes.
- 🎨 Appearance: A beautiful dusky brown/purple exterior with a deep, intensely rich crimson-maroon gel and flesh on the inside.
- 🌎 Who Reviewed It: Grown in Zone 4 (Kostroma, Russia) out in the open garden, proving it can handle short, cool northern summers with ease.
🍅 Grown Kookaburra Cackle? Did you find the flavor to be spicy or just mild? Share your zone and how it did for you in the comments below!
👨🌾 Editor’s Note: How can a Dwarf be Indeterminate?
To answer Natalya’s excellent question from the forum: “Dwarf” and “Determinate” are completely different genetic traits! A standard determinate tomato (like a Roma) grows to a certain height, sets all its fruit at once, and stops growing.The Dwarf Tomato Project varieties carry the dwarf (d) gene, which gives them short internodes (the space between branches) and thick, crinkly “rugose” leaves. However, many of them are genetically indeterminate, meaning they will keep producing new flowers and growing taller all season long until the frost kills them—they just do it at a much slower, more compact rate than a wildly sprawling standard heirloom vine.
To answer Natalya’s excellent question from the forum: “Dwarf” and “Determinate” are completely different genetic traits! A standard determinate tomato (like a Roma) grows to a certain height, sets all its fruit at once, and stops growing.The Dwarf Tomato Project varieties carry the dwarf (d) gene, which gives them short internodes (the space between branches) and thick, crinkly “rugose” leaves. However, many of them are genetically indeterminate, meaning they will keep producing new flowers and growing taller all season long until the frost kills them—they just do it at a much slower, more compact rate than a wildly sprawling standard heirloom vine.
