Pretty excited to taste them. Previous attempts resulted in dead plants before the flowering stage. I was unsure if it was disease or the heat. Now that I finally have one that made it to the flowering stage, the variety has an impressive heat set with the ability to keep blossoms from dropping. The plant's roots would be at 90-100 degree temps during the day, high 80s during rain, 78+ degrees at night (no winter, spring, or fall where I currently live). The size of the fruits are pretty large for cherries. With the amount of production, I would have thought this was a hybrid. My growing season actually starts now (though I disagree and believe its best to start seeds in December when there is less rain).
This one has been shining compared to lemon drop (typically a winner for me, but doing bad this time around), sungold (caught TYLCV), sunsugar (caught some disease that made it drop all flowers and had maybe 2 flowers at 5 feet tall), suncherry, Matt's wild cherry, sungreen (2nd best producer so far), citrine (3rd best producer), Sakura, golden sweet, and sunpeach (some curl virus for the 3rd time in a row).
by thuglifecarlo
4 Comments
Very glad you got some of these fine tomatoes developing now. That is a difficult growing environment for sure. My black cherry here in Texas always tasted excellent and were larger than most other cherry tomatoes. I just have usually had to struggle to keep them free of fungal disease. This year I’ve bought seeds from a different supplier. Maybe the seeds will have some additional genetic information that will prove helpful (beyond their basic DNA.) Might just be wishful thinking, but I figured it was worth a try.
Nice, congratulations on finding another variety that works!
I was going to sow Lemon Drop Improved next week based on your experience, but maybe I’ll give that spot to Black Cherry…?
BTW I killed my Pink Princess and am about to kill my Honeydrop soon. They caught the leaf spots and rolls and curls and all that, lol. They were bred in Massachusetts and I bought from Fedco (Maine) so maybe tropical August and September were just too much for them. I’ve pruned 80% of the Gold Nugget’s foliage due to leaf spots but it’s still producing, so a month-old seedling Gold Nugget made it into my new hoophouse with some of the other big F1s (Sun Sugar, Celebrity Plus, Supersweet 100, Sweet Million). The sun’s like 25-30 degrees latitude south of us now, so it’s the time of year where we’re not *complete* weirdos for growing tomatoes! 🤣
Black cherry are my favorites! Close second is “Cherokee purple cherry” if you find black cherry continues to be tough.
Looking good OP! Planning to plant some of these next season. I tasted this first time at my buddy’s last time and I’m hooked.