Cherokee Purple tomato

Cherokee Purple tomato

Traits:
• Fruit color: black
• Fruit shape: beefsteak
• Fruit size: large
• Growth habit: indeterminate
• Leaf type: regular leaf
• Maturity: midseason
• Uses: slicer

Offsite articles:
• Bonnie Plants
• Dave's Garden
• Los Angeles Times
• Mother Earth Gardener Growing Organically
• Slow Food USA (Slow Food Arc of Taste)
• Specialty Produce
• Tatiana's TOMATObase
• Tractor Supply Company
• Wikipedia

Vendors:
• Burpee
• Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds
• Fedco Seeds
• Ferry~Morse
• Harris Seeds
• High Mowing Seeds
• The Home Depot (plant)
• HRSeeds
• Johnny's Selected Seeds
• Joy Grow
• Lowes (potted plant)
• Reimer Seeds
• SeedsNow
• Seeds of Change
• Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
• Tennessee Urban Farm
• Territorial Seed Company
• Thomas Jefferson's Monticello
• timeless-tomatoes.com
• Tomato Growers Supply Company
• TomatoFest
• Totally Tomatoes
• Truelove Seeds
• Urban Farmer (ufseeds.com)
• Villagers
• Victory Seeds

Blog Posts:
• https://www.thatbloomingarden.com/2014/09/cherokee-purple-tomato-a-chefs-favourite-how-to-save-seeds/
• http://www.thejoyblog.net/2018/11/how-to-grow-cherokee-purple-tomatoes.html

Offsite threads:
• https://www.houzz.com/discussions/2236750/horrible-tomatoe-cherokee-purple
• https://www.houzz.com/discussions/2795450/cherokee-purple-tomatoes
• https://www.houzz.com/discussions/2795619/cherokee-purple-rocks (praise)
• https://www.tomatojunction.com/viewtopic.php?f=98&t=1213&p=21438 (cherry variants)
• http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=8249 (origin/history)

Offsite forum search results:
• Google: boards.net
• Google: Dave's Garden
• Google: freeforums.net
• Google: Gardenweb
• Google: proboards.com
• Google: Tomatoville

Recipes:
• Save the Flavors – Cherokee Purple Tomato and Vidalia Onion Tart, by Gwen Pratesi

Related, and possibly related, tomato breeds:
• Cherokee Carbon F1
• Cherokee Chocolate
• Cherokee Green
• Cherokee Green Pear
• Cherokee Lime
• Cherokee Lime Stripes
• Cherokee Purple Potato Leaf
• Cherokee Red
• Cherokee Tiger Black
• Cherokee Tiger Black Dwarf
• Cherokee Tiger Black Pear
• Cherokee Tiger Large
• Dora
• Faelan's First Snow (a variegated Cherokee Purple)
• Gary'O Sena
• Golden Cherokee
• Indian Stripe / Indian Zebra
• Indian Stripe Potato Leaf (ISPL)
• Large Barred Boar
• Liz Birt
• Purple Haze
• Spudakee
• Vorlon

*****

This is often considered the best-tasting tomato, although it has a lot more competition for the title than it once did. Some growers report it being early, and some report it being prolific—but neither always seems to be the case for everyone.

I got some Cherokee Purple tomato seeds from Wintersown.org in the fall of 2014, and for the 2015 season, I started a couple plants indoors under lights and in a windowsill. They seemed to come with some disease, which in retrospect might have been Pythium or another stem disease, although it didn't kill them. I transplanted them in poor conditions. One of the plants got at least one extremely late, and probably unripe fruit by the end of the season. I didn't get to taste it, as I lost track of it in the harvest or something.

Anyway, I plan to try it again some year, but I haven't as of yet. I have grown Indian Zebra (AKA Indian Stripe), and Cherokee Green Pear. I'm growing Cherokee Yellow Red Pear, and Cherokee Yellow Perfection Peach, this year (2020), neither of which are stable, yet, I imagine; I was growing Cherokee Yellow Red, too, but it froze in the unheated greenhouse, I believe.

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