Heirloom Tomatoes – Have You Tried Black?

Heirloom Tomatoes – Have You Tried Black?

Art Knapps has enjoyed a long association with a well known local grower of heirloom tomatoes. Boy, after a conversation with him, you’ll be pumped up and eager to experiment with all sorts of unique heirloom varieties! The difference between a regular tomatoe and an heirloom variety is often in taste. Commercial tomatoes are grown for hardiness as they often have to travel thousands of miles before landing in your local grocery store. These tomatoes have to stand up to the rigors of much handling but lack the ‘fresh picked from the garden’ taste. Heirloom tomatoes are varieties that were grown pre1950 before mass hybridization began. Our grandparents would have saved their own seed from year to year. Thus each growing season, the tomatoe would have remained true to type.

Heirloom tomatoes are softer than grocery store types but if you are eating them right after picking, then this is not a problem. Sometimes the fruit will be slightly misshapen but if it’s just going in your BLT sandwich, who cares? Great flavor is what home gardeners want and heirlooms trump grocery store tomatoes every time!

There are so many varieties, I’m not even going to try to list them but instead in this article am
concentrating on one category of heirloom, the black tomatoes! They are called black because of their dark blood-red skin and dark flesh. Again, after chatting this week with our heirloom grower, he convinced me to try black tomatoes because he claims they have the most real, from your childhood taste of all colors of tomatoes.

There are 2 types we carry: Black Krim and Black Cherry.

Black Krim – an indeterminate tomatoe, medium size fruit, strong, sweet smokey taste, fantastic depth of flavor

Black Cherry – indeterminate, rare variety, dark flesh, rich complex taste, vigorous, one of the few black cherries

Because both of these varieties are indeterminate, allow more space than if they were bush types. They can grow to 6 feet but I often pinch out the top growth to keep them down to 4-5 feet.

Try these, like me, this year and we can all compare notes in September! (Supplies are limited)