Kitchen Garden Forum

Picked my first ripe tomatoes today - Chocolate cherry, delicious. We're they a free packet last year? I saved some seeds from them and they all seem to have come true to type. They are very robust plants too for a cherry variety.

All the dark cherries seem to be good, we've grown Black Cherry many times and this week we have been enjoying Black Opal.

The "black" skinned varieties definitely have a lot of flavour. I try to grow at least one plant of them every year.
I don't know whether they all originate from the Russian/Crimea region and whether climate and soil there has any influence on the slightly smokey flavour.

Agree totally Primrose!

The black ones are rally tasty with just the right sweet/acid balance and not as watery. It would be interesting to know soil conditions where they originated from as there is a smokiness as well!

I'm sure someone will have that knowledge to share.

Mutant tomato - Double Rich.

PP! It is ripe!

My greenhouse toms that size are only a light pink & my Lottie toms are very green & small.

Yes Westi, it was delicious with the nobbly bits removed. I was surprised this large variety was ripening as early as the cherry ones as several other varieties aren't showing any sign of changing colour and they were all planted at the same time. I'm going to write down when each variety ripens this year and compare it to the ripening information for that variety. I've not taken much notice before and save my own seeds so don't have packets to refer to. I don't grow hybrids and know the names so can look them up.

I think the rich smokey flavour of the black varieties to be some of the best. I grew Black Plum for several years but they were so good I ate them all and forgot to save the seeds one year and haven't been able to replace them with the same strain. I bought some from Heritage tomatoes under the name Black plum but they were very large ones like Black Crim. Certainly nothing like the original Black plum.