I have these two, plus about 6 other cherries growing this year. Brad’s Atomic Grap and Lucky Tiger are among my favorites, particularly Lucky Tiger although it is prone to cracking.
I’m a big fan of the Green when ripe and almost always grow Green Cherokee and have added Malachite Box this year, which has been wonderful as well.
Mixed batch my daughter picked. Some of the cherokee purple crossed it looks like because those aren’t producing yet. My fault, late planting. Also pretty sure the green grape hadn’t gotten planted but they may have crossed with yellow cherry - or i mixed up seed (more likely). Yellow pear that are drought hardy - grew at my Mom’s in 110 degree heat with virtually no water. And from seed that survived and fruited after 25 degree frosts.
Indigo Apples seem to be prone to crack after a bit of rain in a long while, but then that’s why I’ve planted Voyage as red backup.
Haven’t sampled these yet but had a few new varieties ripen up yesterday—
This one is supposed to be Berkeley’s tye dye but doesn’t really look variegated like ones I’ve seen so not sure…
Mushroom basket- meaty, tasty
Emerald evergreen from two different plants. Juicy, meaty and refreshing. May have eaten it a little earlier than fully ripe as it lacked the sweetness I was expecting, but more are coming. Great in a tomato&cucumber garlic&basil salad.
Cherry types are going and going. I’ll have to can them since we couldn’t possibly keep up. The plain red and pinkish&green ones are very vigorous volunteers and I have some other volunteers and wild tomatoes that have yet to ripen. I just hope they will have enough time in September.
Beautiful tomato’s and tomato colors.
So I just went to the Rutgers Tomato tasting yesterday, which was so awesome by the way and I would recommend it for anyone who loves tomatoes, and I have come to the conclusion that I have already found some of the best tomato varieties. I tried around 100 varieties yesterday, and none of them measured up to the umami bombs of Lemon ice and Tasmanian Chocolate. The Cherries were interesting, but black cherry and dwarf eagle smiley are just so good that I can’t say that I found something that I would want to grow next year. The only one that I was interested in was the Rutgers 250, which has a flavor that approaches the Tasmanian chocolate, but it is a better color for sauce and is more firm for canning. I asked if I could get a slice with a lot of seeds and they gave me a whole tomato! what an awesome event!
Anyways, I am still trying to find something to replace the Super Sweet 100 tomatoes as a red cherry type, one with less seeds and less cracking but with the same flavor profile. I am going to try fruit punch next year, but does anyone have suggestions for open-pollinated red cherry types that would do well in the swampy monsoon that is a New Jersey summer? I generally confit the tomatoes, but I also give them to people fresh and can’t really give them the cracked ones. My other varieties have been very crack-resistant so far.
Lots of red cherries do well in New Jersey. Lorelei is excellent and has very good disease resistance. Camp Joy is hard to beat. Matt’s Wild Cherry has ph2 which helps prevent Late Blight.
Lorelei seems interesting if I can get my hands on it. I am probably going to trial a few different red cherries to see which one I want to take. I had my eye on camp Joy/ Chadwick cherry, but read some mixed reviews. I’ll probably still try it out. Controlling the cracking can be tough when you get 6-8 inch rainstorms a few times a month. Black cherry has proven to be very crack resistant, but it has a flavor that is too berry/ fruity to be a main tomato in a confit or roast. I like them, but my family likes the sweet 100’s the most, so hoping to get something comparable or better.
I will probably have to send you seed of Lorelei. I’ve sent to about 50 people over the last 3 years but don’t know of anyone offering seed. Send a message with your address and I’ll mail a few seed sometime next week.
Lorelei represents an advanced selection from LA0417 which I got out of TGRC about 15 years ago. One single plant from the growout was much more tolerant of foliage disease and was very productive and very good flavored. I crossed it with a larger fruited variety and selected for the combination of disease tolerance, flavor, and size.
One of this year’s experiments was Voyage. For the fun of it and also because I thought they would not crack which was a problem last year when my larger tomatoes cracked and molded before they were half ripe.
Well, it does crack a bit - it is very thin skinned.
Neat looking tomatoes, very unique
Thanks, I’m writing these down for next year!
