Exotic And Small-fruited Tomato Varieties

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

What varieties of tomatoes to choose for the new season

The fate of this vegetable is truly amazing. Columbus's caravels brought an unusual plant to Europe from South America, which the Indians called tomato.

In Europe, it aroused admiration and for several centuries it was cultivated as an ornamental one thanks to its beautiful carved leaves, bright yellow flowers and original fruits of golden and red color.

Just for the fruits, the plant got its second name - tomato (translated from Italian pomo - apple and doro - golden). And only much later they guessed to taste these fruits by mouth. But when this happened, a delicious and aromatic vegetable literally filled the European menu.

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He ended up, of course, in Russia, and since then it has been difficult to imagine our table without him. The number of culinary delights that are prepared with the obligatory participation of tomato is incalculable. Its fruits are used boiled, fried, baked, stuffed, salted, pickled. Delicious sauces are prepared from it, including everyone's favorite ketchup, marinades, mashed potatoes and pasta, etc. etc.

Every year the tomato kingdom is replenished with new varieties and hybrids, one better than the other. And in general, today the total number of tomato varieties and hybrids existing in the world has long been calculated not even in hundreds. For five centuries of their cultivation in Europe, varieties of all kinds of colors have been bred - from cream to dark cherry, there are even striped ones, and the weight of the fruit ranges from 5 grams to 2 kilograms.

How not to get lost in this diversity? It is more and more difficult for an ordinary gardener to make his choice - his eyes run up, and the bags are more beautiful than each other. And they do not always have exhaustive information on them (moreover, advertising on bright bags promises "golden mountains" to anyone who buys them), but all the nuances are important: yield, and resistance to diseases, and the height of the bush, and whimsy, and taste of fruits.

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And this is understandable - everyone has their own landmarks: someone has a high greenhouse, and someone just has a greenhouse, someone will spray conscientiously, thereby preventing diseases, and someone will give up on all these spraying with his hand (maybe in force of great employment, or maybe just relying on the classic Russian "maybe"), someone is chasing the yield, and to someone give the most delicious and brightly colored fruits, and someone "goes crazy" for exotic …

As a result, in reality it is impossible to list a standard set of varieties (or hybrids) and say that they are the best. Therefore, we will try to consider varieties and hybrids of tomatoes from different points of view in the hope that the information will be interesting for a wide variety of readers.

The most exotic tomatoes

It is worth recognizing that there are many tomatoes in this group that can delight you not only with the most different colors and shades, but also with a variety of shapes, and often they do not look like tomatoes, but, nevertheless, retain their true tomato taste.

For example, the fruits of the Moscow delicacy variety are more reminiscent of peppers. Which, however, does not prevent them from possessing a true tomato taste and aroma. The variety is very productive, excellent storage, dense sweet fruits are easily chopped.

And then a real striped tiger is waiting for you. Only it is not dangerous, but very, very tasty. This is a Tiger tomato, which is famous for its amazing red-yellow color and beautiful rounded fruits.

The Tigris variety does not lag behind with striped fruits of the original color with dark green stripes-strokes, which become dark red when ripe. Its fruits look very impressive in assorted vegetables.

Very large, weighing 150-300 g, in milky ripeness striped, like a watermelon, fruits - as they ripen, they turn red with thin yellow intermittent longitudinal stripes - will delight the variety Ryabchik. Plant this variety, and its extraordinary and very tasty fruits will give a unique shade to vegetable preparations, decorate and transform any dish.

Lovers of the exotic should pay attention to the green-fruited variety Emerald Apple. Despite the clearly not tomato color, it will be difficult to tear off its tasty fruits.

It is worth getting acquainted with the unusually colorful variety Black Prince - by its appearance on your beds, it will certainly outshine many other chic varieties. Its shiny, large (up to 400 g) black-raspberry fruits resemble giant olives and have a truly royal taste.

If you want fruits that resemble southern bananas in miniature, then pay attention to the varieties Red Banana and Orange Banana with very decorative fruits of a beautiful elongated shape, 10-12 cm long, in the first case red, and in the second - an extraordinary bright orange color. They are perfect for canning and are good fresh, and how great they look on a bush, and cannot be described.

The varieties of Chukhloma and Khokhloma, which are very similar to each other, differ in their banana-shaped fruits with bright orange and bright red fruits 10-12 cm long, elongated cylindrical in shape, which also have a unique keeping quality.

The pear shape resembles the spectacular fruits of the Louis XVII variety - bright red with a slight admixture of orange. They are small - only 50-60 g each, with a dense skin and pulp, making them perfect for whole-fruit canning.

The original and rarely found on the market hybrid Don Quixote F1 also differs in the cuboid shape of the fruit, uncharacteristic for tomatoes. Its rich yellow, like gold bars, densely sitting on the brush, the fruits make an extraordinary impression and, in addition, are distinguished by a high content of carotene and sugars, and therefore are good both fresh and for all kinds of processing.

Peach and Pepper striped varieties differ in the original color of the fruits. The first has creamy orange rounded and smooth fruits, and the second has fruits that are clearly more like peppers than tomatoes, and are unusually impressively colored: in an immature form they are light green with dark green stripes, and in ripe form they are red with yellow stripes.

Delicious red fruits in the form of a heart in the Budenovka variety, they are large (weigh up to 350 g) and are very good in salads. The Yellow Ball variety will also delight you with large, up to 150 g, juicy and, in addition, bright yellow fruits that are suitable for making salads.

It is impossible not to mention the charming variety Marusya. Low, only up to 70 cm, Marusya bushes are literally hung with medium-sized plum-shaped fruits with a rich red color and create an unusually joyful mood in the soul. Fruits are dense, with a strong skin, do not crack and therefore are ideal for whole-fruit canning, including without skin.

Well, if you are delighted with very small tomatoes, get one of the best small-fruited varieties - Grape. Its long brushes are studded with many sweet, beautiful fruits. You might really think that this is not a tomato, but a bunch of grapes. From the same series tomatoes of the varieties Yellow Cherry and Red Cherry - a special decorative effect is given to them by a long cluster, on which there are 20 to 40 yellow or red fruits weighing up to 20 g.

They contain twice as much sugar as regular fruits, so they taste very sweet. And dishes decorated with small fruits look very impressive. I want to keep this beauty longer, so you can try to pickle these tomatoes for the winter right on the brushes. Then to your delight will be added the undisguised delight of the guests, to whom you will demonstrate this truly delicacy miracle.

The list of small-fruited tomatoes will be supplemented by hybrids Yellow Caramel F1 and Red Caramel F1, which differ in plum-like fruits, very much reminiscent of cherries and collected in long clusters of 25-30, up to 50 pieces. In addition to the extraordinary spectacularity of the fruit-strewn bushes, their sweet caramel taste is very much appreciated; in general, growing these hybrids is real fun, and their fruits are a great treat for children and adults.

There is another spectacular representative of small-fruited tomatoes. This is Bonsai, which is a super early maturing dwarf tomato variety for growing on balconies, window sills and hanging flowerpots. Its fruits are unusually tasty, with a dry matter content 2 times higher than that of ordinary tomatoes. Plants that are planted in flower pots with a soil volume of 1.5-2 liters are highly decorative and have a very attractive appearance.

True, small-fruited tomatoes have one drawback - they all have very low yields. For example, the yield of Red Cherry or Yellow Cherry does not exceed 1-2 kg / plant. And from the Bonsai variety, you can get no more than 150-200 g of tomatoes per plant.

If you are a fan of tall vine-shaped tomatoes with spectacular fruits, then De Barao red, De Barao black, De Barao pink and De Barao gold will still be held in high esteem. From the names it is already clear what color of fruits you should expect, however, De Barao's black fruit color is not black, but, as is usually the case with black-colored tomato varieties, it is dark purple. Huge bushes, hung with small, weighing 40-50 g, fruits are an unforgettable sight, but, alas, like all liana-like varieties require thorough care and large doses of fertilizers, otherwise they will not be able to show themselves in all their glory.