Foliage

• Bush tomatoes are popular for container gardening and for very small gardens, precisely because plants don't continue to grow, making the foliage easier to manage. Greater manageability offers commercial advantages, too, since vines require less support. The first determinate tomato varieties often had sparse, inadequate foliage, leading to less vigorous plants and sunburned fruit. Modern bush types may develop as dwarfs or grow quite tall, but foliage is bushy and much improved.
  
  

Fruit

• Bush tomato varieties tend to be very early ripening, an advantage in northern areas with short summer growing seasons or for generating a crop early in the season. Because plants are determinate they produce all of their fruit within a fairly limited time, an advantage for timing commercial harvests. Fruit quality was a notable criticism of early bush tomato varieties, though newer bush tomatoes have narrowed the flavor gap.
  
  

Advantages

• Determinate or bush type tomatoes are smaller, more compact plants that can easily be grown in containers or small spaces, often without external supports required by vining tomatoes. Plants produce earlier fruit. They also grow, flower and set fruit within a short time frame, making them ideal for anyone who wants a limited, predictably timed crop--such as gardeners growing tomatoes for canning or fresh salsa.
  
  

Disadvantages

• Traditional indeterminate tomato varieties are often more flavorful than bush tomatoes. Vining tomatoes are more productive, growing new vegetation, flowers and fruit until the first frost. Bush tomatoes produce and ripen fruit over a short period, so making successive plantings is a viable strategy to increase productivity and extend the harvest season throughout the summer.
  
  

Considerations

• Gardeners and commercial growers alike may find reasons to plant both compact tomato bushes and indeterminate tomato vines, because the two types fill different niches in an overall tomato-growing plan. Bush tomatoes ripen early, satisfying demand for vine-ripened fruit while later-maturing varieties continue to develop. The two tomato types make it possible to select and grow varieties for different purposes--flavorful bush types for canning, and vining varieties for eating fresh.