Bolgiano’s Extremely Early ‘I.X.L.’ Tomato

74 days, indeterminate — The ‘I.X.L.’ tomato has very productive, regular leaf vines. The fruit are flattened-globe shaped, red in color, firm, and exhibiting a wide variation in size (from four to twelve ounces) on each plant. Where as many early tomato varieties tend to be quite plain tasting, ‘I.X.L.’ fruit are surprisingly flavorful.

‘I.X.L.’ was reportedly developed from a single plant selection of ‘Chalk’s Early Jewel‘.^[1,2] J. Bolgiano and son of Baltimore, Maryland began sending out seed samples to select experimental organizations and various commercial growers. They officially introduced Bolgiano’s Extremely Early ‘I.X.L.’ tomato as a, “New 1905 Variety” in their 1905 seed catalog. They wrote:

It should be noted that since days to maturity, for any tomato variety, can vary greatly from location to location and from year to year, we have not grown a side-by-side comparison of ‘I.X.L.’ and ‘Earliana‘ to validate Bolgiano’s claim described above. Additionally, their “marketing” claims are seemingly contradictory. Specifically, their claim that the fruit ripen all at once is incorrect and in modern terms would indicate a determinate tomato variety. However, this is a “vining” or indeterminate tomato and predates the first commercial introduction of “self-topping” or determinate varieties. We suspect that considering Bolgiano’s primary customer-base, they were explaining that instead of a few early ripening fruit, ‘Extremely Early I.X.L’ would ripen enough all at once, that a truck farmer could be first to market with a tomato crop; a highly desirable consideration since they could charge more if they were the only ones selling fresh tomatoes.

Our seed is grown out from USDA accession number NSL 27522 (which is now PI 636280). Each packet contains approximately 20 seeds.