Black tomatoes

[cjschmitt]

Im looking for a black tomato heirloom that is excellent for flavor, resistant for cracking and still produces a large amount oflarge fruit. Any advice would be appreciated.

[AnnaIkona]

Black krim or black prince are good, large, blackish-greenish-redish varieties. The black Krim is a bit larger.

[cjschmitt]

Do you notice a lot of cracking in these varieties?

[applestar]

Are you only interested in Black - yellow epi, red flesh green gel - varieties, or are you also interested in Purple - clear epi, dark pink to red flesh, green gel - varieties? I seem to be growing mostly purples lately.

[cjschmitt]

I will grow some reds also. I was wanting to grow some blacks for something a little bit different. I was having a hard time deciding which to try.

[applestar]

To start, I can recommend Grandma Oliver's Chocolate and Royal Hillbilly for flavor and productivity medium to large size fruits. I see some small stem-end cracking in GOC sometimes but not total loss horizontal cracking like on some of the more crack-prone blacks.

Prudens Purple is another good one and in large to larger beefsteak sizes if that's what you are looking for.

[cjschmitt]

awesome thanks for the help

[PaulF]

My two favorites are Cherokee Purple (and its cousin Cherokee Chocolate) and Carbon. These are large tomatoes, 10-16 ounce average for me, very tasty without cracking and splitting. Carbon has been more productive. Brad's Black Heart is another nice 'black'.

Location, weather and soil conditions will make results vary but Black Krim for me has been a real dud. Black Prince and Black from Tula are other popular varieties but for me are too small. I go for flavor and my favorites deliver.

I am not sure which ones would do best in your area. Grow a couple and begin the process of elimination. I have grown maybe a dozen different blacks and have it down to just a few.

[rainbowgardener]

Unlike many of the tomato fanciers around here, I don't have a ton of experience growing lots of different varieties.

I am growing Cherokee Purple this year. It is a delicious tomato and very meaty, with not too much seeds and gel inside. But at least in this very hot and dry summer it has been a very poor producer. I've only gotten three ripe tomatoes from it all season.

[Lotte]

I'm not quite sure if these are heirloom, but they are black and resistant for cracking.I'm thinking at Kakao and Chokomato and there are even Cokoladni.I have grown all of them this year and they are very good in all things.