Black cherry tomatoes - ( sweet or horrible ) ?

[michael johnson]

Can anyone give me there views on the taste of currently available Black cherry tomatoes as I am considering growing a few this season.

I have seen so many times that most people are dissapointed with them and hate the flavour as being bland and tasteless / and yet still others say how lovely and sweet they are so I am confused as to grow them or not.

Perhaps there are different strains of it available where some are better than others, I know that taste is more a personal thing to each individual but as far as black cherry is concerned there does seem to be two different camps regarding its flavour.

[nctomatoman]

Black Cherry from TGSC is to my palate a wonderfully flavored tomato. That's the only one I've grown. Though not a cherry tomato, it is small - Black Plum (different in being a red/black, or brown - Black Cherry is a pink/black, or purple) is not nearly as good to eat in my view.

[Mischka]

I second Craigs' opinion of Black Cherry; I've grown it annually since TGSC first offered it in 2003.

I'd love to know its' origin; anyone have the inside scoop?

I have a high school friend that owns a large farm nearby; I brought him some to taste last year and he immediately asked if I'd start a few plants for him. (He has 2 farm stores that sell milk and produce he and his family grow.)

[JerryL]

I got Black Cherry from TGSC in 2004. For me it is one of the best tasting tomatoes I’ve grown. Fits right in with most of the other blacks I’ve tasted.

When I went to Tomatopalozza III in Raleigh last year I took some BC. There were three or four other entries also. I found it very interesting to note the different sizes and especially tastes among them. Everyone I talked to that tried all the different BCs agreed that they tasted different.

Some folks didn’t like any, some liked some and not others, and other folks liked them all. I fell into the latter group. But regardless of like or dislike everyone agreed they all tasted different.

While I got the most feed back on black cherry this same situation was noticed with other varieties also. So, I can only conclude that ‘what you grow, where you grow it, how you grow it, what you grow it in and how ripe it is’ all make a difference in the taste.

It will be in my garden again this year.

Jerry

[carolyn137]

The Black Cherry at TGS was bred by Vince Sapp, DH of Linda and co-owners of TGS and I love it.

But there are other black cherries.

One is called Black Sweet and has been listed at SSE for many years, initially introduced by Ake from Sweden. There have been essentially no relisters of this variety thru the years, which to me suggests that those who have tried it didn't especially like it, but I could be wrong. I grew ity two years ago to compare with the TGS one, but the seeds I was sent weren't true. Linda at TGS has grown it and says it is not the same as their Black Cherry.

Another one is Aunt Ruby's German Black ( cherry) first listed in 2004 as an unstable cross. Neil is the only one relisting it and he got a 1 oz purple black fruit with green shoulders, RL, and says very good flavor. With this one who knows what the next plant might bring b'c it was listed as being a natural cross and genetically unstable.

Carolyn

[lumierefrere]

Wait. I'm confused. I got Black Cherry but not from TGS.
It wasn't anything remarkable at all to me or anyone who tasted them here.

Are all Black Cherrys the same no matter where you get them or is the "strain" from TGS different/better (I say that trying to remember what Carolyn said about there being no strains within varieties, if different, it's something else???)?

Because I can say the exact same thing about Stupice. I grew one from America and one from Sweden and the Swedish one was superior. I'm too much of a beginner to know what to make of this.

Barb

[KCMO_Don]

I am planning on growing BC this year, but I guess I need to check her seed source!
I get plants from an organic grower in Missouri.

[michael johnson]

Now perhaps you all can see why I was confused, with such conflicting reports on black cherry.

I think I will go with those that said they liked them from TGS and ditch the ones I already have and order some fresh ones from TGS instead, you would have thought that by now they would have standardised the variety to virtualy all the same strain.

To confuse matters more than ever you always see a lot of Black cherry seeds for sale on E-bay some list them just as black cherry, others list them as the (real-Black cherry ) etc, but it sounds as though TGS has the better one to at least try first.

[carolyn137]

The only black cherry that's in wide circulation is the Black Cherry bred by Vince Sapp and introduced by TGS and it is not the same as the others that I talked about above.

I've seen neither Black Sweet nor the Aunt Ruby's one talked about anywhere and they remain within the SSE Yearbook as I said, as far as I know. And they have different names from Black Cherry and are not identical to it. And would be known by their specific names of Black Sweet, which is different from Black Cherry and Aunt Ruby's Black Cherry, which still is not genetically stable.

If there's any confusion in anyones mind then grow the TGS Black Cherry. But it's good to remember that not all folks like it and so may well disagree about the taste of it.

As for Stupice, there are four of them that were bred for commercial purposes, two for outside growing and two for glasshouse growing.

The only one in wide circulation is one of the ones for outside growing and is sold commercially in Europe as Stupicke. Reinhard Kraft sent me seeds of Stupicke in a commercial pack and it was identical to the Stupice I had been growing. I grew them in the same summer at the same location for comparison sake.

Barb, for a very few varieties there are strains, but for 99.8% ( a wild guess) of the varieties we know there are no strains at all.

Carolyn

[Andrey_BY]

I've got some seeds for Moravian Wonder from Russia. The second name for this variety is also Stupicke, so this year I will try to do the same as Carolyn did. I think it is one of these 4 strains of Stupicke.

Originally Posted by carolyn137

As for Stupice, there are four of them that were bred for commercial purposes, two for outside growing and two for glasshouse growing.

The only one in wide circulation is one of the ones for outside growing and is sold commercially in Europe as Stupicke. Reinhard Kraft sent me seeds of Stupicke in a commercial pack and it was identical to the Stupice I had been growing. I grew them in the same summer at the same location for comparison sake.

Carolyn

[lumierefrere]

Indeed the pack of seeds I received was labeled Stupicke.
They were sweeter, rounder and slightly smaller than the American one. There was also less foliage. Even to my inexperienced eye, this was very easy to discern as they were directly across from each other.

And I just remembered I don't have this on my garden plan--that'll be something to entertain me all day. What do I delete in order to have the Stupice....

[carolyn137]

Barb,

All four are known as Stupicke, but the individual four have, as I recall, numbers attached to them.

I have a link in my faves with this information and perhaps some day I'll find it, ahem, and can then tell you more specifically. I say some day b'c my faves list is several thousand long and I never put anything into folders.

A few years ago at GW there was a very long thread about Stupice/Stupicke b/c some folks were intent on trying to find out who the breeder was. We know that it was Milan Sodomka who distributed some of the varieties bred by this person, but not who he was.

At that time a friend of Reinhard's, I forget his name now, made direct contact with the breeding station at Stupice, which is a place name, but no one there knew anything.

Carolyn

[Andrey_BY]

There are 4 Czech varieties with Stupicke as a core name (first 2 for outside and last 2 for inside glasshouse):

Stupicke rane (can be translated as Stupicke Early)
Stupicke rane polni (Stupicke Early - sorry, can't translate "polni")
Stupicke rane sklenikove (Stupicke Early for glasshouse)
Stupicke sklenikove (Stupicke for glasshouse)

They were bred in 70s by Research and Plant Breeding Institute of Vegetables at Olomouc, PBS 691 42 Valtice, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic), well-known for their huge Allium collection, with the help of CSK Breeding Station Stupice.

All these varieties you can find in collection of one Czech genebank: http://genbank.vurv.cz/genetic/resou...tum_MILL.&sub=

So do we still consider Stupice (Stupicke) a heirloom tomato variety? :wink:

Originally Posted by carolyn137

Barb,

All four are known as Stupicke, but the individual four have, as I recall, numbers attached to them.

I have a link in my faves with this information and perhaps some day I'll find it, ahem, and can then tell you more specifically. I say some day b'c my faves list is several thousand long and I never put anything into folders.

A few years ago at GW there was a very long thread about Stupice/Stupicke b/c some folks were intent on trying to find out who the breeder was. We know that it was Milan Sodomka who distributed some of the varieties bred by this person, but not who he was.

At that time a friend of Reinhard's, I forget his name now, made direct contact with the breeding station at Stupice, which is a place name, but no one there knew anything.

Carolyn

[lumierefrere]

Very interesting lesson on Stupicke, Andrey. I guess it's an OP. But the way people use language, they will call it heirloom regardless of the technicality.

[Andrey_BY]

Spent one more hour searching on Czech web-sources and found out at least two of these four Stupickes are much older. They were registrated in Czechoslovakian variety database for the first time in 1954-55 as you can see on this web-site of old Czech seed company SEMPRA PRAHA which still maintain old Czechoslovakian/Czech varieties: http://www.sempra.cz/ them click: zelenina at the top and find "Rajce" folder.

So I assume all four Stupicke were bred in the first part 50s, but were included on that genebank I mentioned in the 70s and maybe we could consider it "commercial heirloom"