Consumers have seed savers and amateur breeders to thank for discovering and sharing heirloom varieties of some vegetables and tomatoes like the Cherokee Purple.

are around them. Is your market carrying green dragon In recent years, we've been transfixed by If you go to the farmers market this time of year, tomatoes are strutting their stuff in all sorts of glorious and quirky hues: green striped, white, pink, indigo, even purplish-brown. They boast intriguing names, like Mortgage Lifter, We got to wondering just who, besides farmers, is to thank for this expanding panoply. Cherokee Purple tomatoes are an heirloom variety that may be identified by their meaty taste & bold, deep pink coloration although they are technically considered a black tomato– those that are rich in anthocyanins. What do Cherokee Purple tomatoes taste like? Cooking Essentials. "That makes sense if it comes from the Tennessee River Valley originally, which is also humid. Produce Sharing allows you to share your produce discoveries with A Cherokee purple tomato grown in Alaska in 2011. The Profile. Popular heirloom tomato known for its unusual looks and remarkable flavor.

And they are definitely not red. Cherokee Purple: The Story Behind One Of Our Favorite Tomatoes : The Salt Consumers have seed savers and amateur breeders to thank for discovering and sharing heirloom varieties of … All my past tomato growing experience have been with tomatoes like the Celebrity or Bestboy variety. Tomatoes grow up to 12 ounces. I bought a greenhouse produced plant of the Cherokee. (Heirlooms are much One day in 1990, a packet of tomato seeds arrived in LeHoullier's mail with a "It was a question of being in the right place at the right time," says LeHoullier, whose His hunch was correct, and LeHoullier was so impressed with the tomatoes the color of a "bad leg bruise" that he named them Cherokee Purple and sent his friends at a few seed companies some seeds. The fruits are large (12 to 16 ounces), dark pink with darker purple shoulders. Solanum lycopersicum. this world? With thin skin and soft flesh, the fruit is somewhat perishable. Eliza Barclay/NPR Tomato; Cherokee Purple $ 6.00. Its flesh is a deep rose with wet and red, sometimes green, pockets of seed. Every now and then, these amateurs convince seed companies that the rest of the world will want to enjoy something they've discovered.LeHoullier is — it's fair to say — obsessed with tomatoes and their stories. I had read it had a long maturing rate and wanted them mature around late July.. Cherokee Purple is the name of a cultivar of tomato that develops a fruit with a deep, dusky-rose color while maintaining a somewhat greenish hue near the stem when mature for eating. In his small yard at his home in the Raleigh suburbs, he can grow only 200 plants, so each year he must pore over the collection to decide what makes the cut.An avid gardener for much of his life, LeHoullier, 59, joined the Seed Savers Exchange in 1986 and began connecting with other gardeners and seed savers to trade tips and favorite varieties.Soon, LeHoullier had built a reputation as a tomato connoisseur, joining a small group of other hard-core tomato seed savers committed to reviving heirlooms. The deep crimson interior and clear skin combination give it its distinctive color.

The tomatoes in the photos do not look like Cherokee Purple to me either. Cherokee Purple fruits are, for many, high up in the taste testing charts. They need 8-10 hours a day of sunlight.

The next thing you'll want to remember is that the Cherokee Purple plant gets really big (and the tomatoes are thick) so you will need a strong cage and a way to tie them up. "And tomato seeds have long viability, so they might sit in a glass jar in somebody's pantry for many years before someone discovers it and decides to keep growing it." The flavor of this slicing tomato is best when the fruit is given an opportunity to ripen directly on the vine. That's the work of professional breeders, says Johnston.As for the family lore that often accompanies heirloom seeds like the Cherokee Purple? With more than 3,000 varieties, he has one of the largest personal tomato collections in the country.