Tangerine Jellybean

[travis]

This plate of tomatoes are all of the sound, blemish free, fully ripe, tangerine colored, grape tomatoes picked off a single vine today.

Each truss produces 9 to 13 tomatoes, with about 2/3 of them becoming ripe enough at once to pick and market.

The flavor is a typically "Santa" sweet/tart profile, and the skins are sufficient to resist cracking or splitting unless left on the vine past prime condition.

[travis]

On the right, you can see the entire picking that has not yet been sorted and cleaned. There you can see the few tomatoes that were past prime and had begun to show a bit of decomposition. However, the majority of fruit is sound and comprises about a quart off one vine.

[Carriehelene]

Purty. And the name makes me smile.

[Labradors2]

The look lovely! Is this one of your crosses????

Linda

[travis]

Originally Posted by Labradors2

The look lovely! Is this one of your crosses????

Linda

Linda, I have been messing around with several hybrid cherry varieties for a few years now, Linda.

I started with seeds for Sun Gold F1, Sunchocola F1, Sungreen F2, Zima F2, and a yellow variety from China that a friend brought back.

These "Tangerine Jellybean" tomatoes are just one of the lines that came out with what I think are unusually pretty and tasty elongated cherries, and it doesn't hurt that they are prolific as well.

I have one other line that looks more like Zima or Sun Gold, but is more along the lines of a slightly elongated currant tomato. If I get a batch off the vine, I'll take a photo and post them too. They have a more complex, fruity, cherry tomato flavor rather than the milder sweet/tart grape profile.

The two deep orange lines mentioned above have rather compact indeterminate vines for cherry tomatoes, and only got outside their 6-foot cages about mid-September.

I also have a small red cherry line that came from a cross with Sunchocola, but it is strongly flavored, very sweet, but almost insipidly fruity. Some people like that, but it's almost to pronounced of a wild flavor for me. And that line makes monster vines that take over the neighboring cages.

[Labradors2]

It sounds as if you've been having lots of fun with your crosses and TJ sounds perfect!

Linda

[travis]

Originally Posted by travis

Linda, I have been messing around with several hybrid cherry varieties for a few years now ...

... I also have a small red cherry line that came from a cross with Sunchocola, but it is strongly flavored, very sweet, but almost insipidly fruity. Some people like that, but it's almost to pronounced of a wild flavor for me. And that line makes monster vines that take over the neighboring cages.

Here is a photo of that red cherry tomato I was speaking about:



The color could be a bit better. I just got a new phone and have not gotten used to the camera yet. The little peppers are Tabasco peppers for color comparison.



And here is a photo of the purple version that segregated out along with the red line:



The purple cherries in this photo are from two different vines. One vine gives the simple, smaller, typical cherry with two seed cells, and tastes more complex, more sweet. The other vine gives slightly larger cherries with 3 and 4 seed cells indicating the seed may give ever-increasing sizes, hopefully up to a true large cherry type, maybe ping pong size.

I also have a few other lines that are segregating out of a cross of this purple cherry x Kumato F2. Those are sized from this cherry size up to a more cocktail size that runs about 6 to 8 fruit per pound. But those photos are in my older Samsung, and I have not been able to transfer them to the new Galaxy Prime just yet.

There is a line of the purple type that last year gave me one vine with very tight clusters, long trusses, that looked like those "on the vine" cocktail tomatoes you see in the store, but not as large. I hope to get more of those plants in the future.