Bushel Boy Farms

grow beefsteak, vine-on and Baby Boy brand grape tomatoes. We pick them red-ripe, and rush them directly to the store. Minnesota grown Bushel Boy tomatoes arrive sweeter and fresher. And, because Bushel Boy tomatoes sell faster, your grocer’s inventory of Bushel Boy tomatoes stays fresher.

Bushel Boy Beefsteak
Big, red, ripe, sweet. Bushel Boy beefsteak tomatoes are an essential part of any high-quality Twin Cities’ produce department.

Vine-on Cluster
Bushel Boy vine-on tomatoes bring the look and smell of fresh "back yard" tomatoes to your kitchen – and a great "Minnesota-grown" taste to your menu.

Baby Boys
Baby Boy grape tomatoes – naturally sweetened on the vine. Perfect for salads, relish trays or snacking.

We start with specially-selected, specially hybridized seeds – seeds carefully chosen to fit Minnesota taste and recipes. Once the seeds sprout, we re-plant them in a special growing media, and root-feed them in our greenhouses.

These are no ordinary greenhouses. They are specially designed and built to be ecologically friendly and super-energy-efficient. From sub-zero January days to a middle of summer heat wave, we can control the temperature to within 1/2 a degree Fahrenheit. As our vines grow and mature, they flower about once a week. We use bumble bees to pollinate every flower.

Tomato plants can set up to eight tomatoes per cluster. Here at Bushel Boy Farms we prune them back to four or five tomatoes per cluster to give them that Bushel Boy quality, sweetness and flavor. As the set grows, the vine continues to grow and flower. The bees continue to pollinate. In a matter of a few months, a vine may grow to thirty or forty feet long - and hold as many as seven or eight sets at any one time.

Since vines grow about a foot a week, we use a unique "support system" to suspend each vine – and "re-hang" each vine once every week to ten days.

When a Bushel Boy is perfectly ripe (maximum sweetness and juiciness), we pick it and prune the leaves that supported that tomato. That way, the vine will put more energy and nourishment into the tomato sets that aren’t ripe yet. Next, we sort and package. Then rush them to the store – usually within 24 hours of picking.