We like to offer baskets of colorful tomatoes at the farmer's market.These area few of our favorites.
Yellow Pear
I love the fact that tomatoes come in all colors, shapes, sizes; including yellow and pear shaped. Who knew, right? This is an heirloom tomato and will readily reseed itself. It's good for fresh eating and snacking right off the vine. It adds a lot of color and interest to our cherry tomato baskets.
Cocktail Tomato
One year in the dead of winter when we were forced to buy tomatoes from the store. We bought these. They had great taste and texture which is hard to come by in grocery store tomatoes at that time of the year. I decided to save some seeds and plant my own. I had no idea if they would “breed true” meaning the offspring would look and taste like the parent (the original tomato) or not. Luckily, they did! I don't know if this is the real name for these tomatoes but they were labeled as “Cocktail Tomato”, so that's what I call them. They grow in clusters, but all the the cluster doesn't necessarily ripen at the same time.
Green Tiger
I'm not one to be attracted to “green when ripe” tomatoes. I've got it stuck in my head that a tomato should be any color; orange, red, yellow, pink...anything but green (or white)! But I'll be darned if theses Green Tiger tomatoes aren't good! I initially bought these seeds just to produce tomatoes that would add some interest to the Tomato baskets we offer at the farmer's market. But I don't like selling things I wouldn't eat myself. I tried them on a salad and instantly deemed them worth of eating! And they do what I originally intended them for; with their green skins, streaked with hints of yellow and elongated shape, they definitely add interest to our tomato baskets.
Purple Bumble Bee
This is a fun tomato to grow and tasty too.
The streaky green stripes really make it stand out. It comes from the "Artisan" series of tomatoes as does Green Tiger above.
Pink Bumble Bee
...And yet another tomato from the "Artisan" series. Reddish-pink with yellow stripes. These really elevate the look and taste of a salad when tossed in whole or halved.
Indigo Rose
This one is a beauty but to get superior taste, it absolutely has to be left on the vine to ripen. Pictured here is what they look like when green and when ripe.
Matt's Wild Cherry Tomato
These little tomatoes are no bigger than a dime. But they're VITs (very important tomatoes) in our garden. If you follow us on Facebook then you probably know I brag on this little tomato all the time. Here's what I love about them: They have an intense tomatoe-y taste. They're extremely hardy . When everything else has died off at the end of the growing season, these are still going strong. They're easy to grow. In fact, I rarely need to plant any because they reseed themselves year after year. They're perfect to put in omelets or for tossing on salads and they're just so darn cute!
Sun Gold (?)
We acquired seeds for these from a fellow gardener. She told me she had been saving seeds from these tomatoes for years. This would imply that they're an heirloom or open pollinated. However, when these tomatoes are advertised in catalogs, they're marketed as hybrids, which would mean that the offspring would likely not look like the parent (the original) tomato. The tomatoes we've grown from seeds saved from these same tomatoes produce offspring just like the parent. So are these Sun Golds? I'm not sure. But what I do know is that they're one of the sweetest, best tasting cherry tomatoes we grow!
