Okay, let me clear up a couple of things. Nothing anyone said is wrong regarding Little Red Bullet and Dwarf Red Heart, but I think everyone would like to know the difference and the origin of each.
In 2006, I grew about 30 different plants out of Long Island Dwarf Champion Mix. The pack that Ken Ettlinger sent me had maybe 40 - 50 seeds in it. I think I have the remaining few original seeds, but I can't say right now.
Okay, the info on Dwarf Champion Mix was that I could expect red, pink, yellow, deep yellow and green when ripe fruit on a variety of all dwarf plants. And that's what I got except I never saw a green when ripe (like Lime Green Salad, for example). And all round fruit like large cherry or small saladette tomatoes.
Also in the 30 plants was one single little dwarf about 18" tall and 24" broad (grown in an unsupported sprawl on straw bedding) with these little 1-ounce or so, slightly elongated, pointed fruit about 1.5 - 2 inches long and maybe .75 - 1 inch in diameter.
Here is the only picture I have of that plant:
The bad spot on that one tomato is simply because it sat on wet ground. It rained constantly that June and July 2006. But you can see the size and shape that led me to call it lLittle Red Bullet, because it's about the size and shape of an old 1860s era military musket "mini ball."
Now, I sent Ken Ettlinger back quite a few seeds so he could examine what I got from his mix that was not mentioned in his literature. He confirmed he had not seen that size/shape from the Dwarf Champion Mix before which led me to believe it was result of a cross. But since it was fully rugose and fully dwarf, I assumed it wasn't an F1 cross since both dwarf and rugose are recessive.
However, when I grew it out in 2007, I only grew maybe 6 plants of that seed, and two were nearly identical to the 2006 plant, and the other 4 were a bit larger plants with fruit that was larger and more elongated. Because one particular plant was extremely healthy and productive, I followed that line in each of the following years. It kept getting taller and the fruit kept getting larger for the next two years or so.
This baffles me because if the 2006 plant was an F2 and fully dwarf fully rugose, etc., I didn't expect it to recombine back to "non dwarf," but ...
What I seemed to get was kind of inbetween dwarf cherry "roma" and "semi-dwarf" "semi-rugose" (if there are such things) with an elongated, "linguisa" (tongue shaped) type fruit. Also curious is the leaf form seemed, at least to me, to resemble a "Roma" type, determinate type leaf shape, although it was still puckered enough to almost be rugose. I don't know if anyone else has grown one particular kind of Rutgers that is fully determinate and has somewhat puckered leaves that almost look rugose, but that's kind of what this thing I got looks like, although the leaf shapes (the silouettes) look like an old Roma style leaf in a way.
Here is what I got in 2007, but I don't have pics of the ripe fruit. This is the 2 different plants, one is in a container, and the other up against the house foundation in soil:
Okay, at this point, let me say that all the seed I distributed as "Dwarf Red Heart" came from that single plant in the picture shown up against the brick foundation. A "single seed selection" in other words.
I think this is 2008 fruit, and you can see now why I called this expression "Dwarf Red Heart:"
You can also see how much bigger it got than the 2006 "Little Red Bullet."
Hope that explains the two different names.
So, depends on what you guys get from whatever seeds I happened to send out and what year you may have gotten the seeds. Is that confusing enough? LOL.
I've enjoyed growing these tomatoes, and I hope nobody takes it too seriously if the results vary from year to year or garden to garden.
I want to thank FlowerPower for sending me back some seeds this month for the Little Red Bullet she has maintained since 2007, because otherwise, that would've been lost to me.
pv