Today I picked my first Siberian tomato. It’s supposed to be the very earliest tomato–but I’ve already had a full-sized opener, an early girl and…a sugar grape! The Siberian is an heirloom tomato, meaning it hasn’t been crossed or improved. I didn’t know this when I bought the seeds. In the past when I’ve tried heirloom tomatoes I’ve been woefully disappointed. The brandywine I tried was a giant plant–as big as me with leaves as large as a potato plant–but the tomatoes were soft and few. Very few as in about 4 and they cracked very badly in the Houston heat.

The Siberian tomato is only slightly bigger than a golf ball–a nice red. And does it ever have a LOT of taste!!! It’s sweet right at first, but with plenty of acidic tomato flavor! Quite good. I’m very pleased with it. The plant has been disease resistant, hasn’t suffered too much in the heat and the bugs left it alone until the tomatoes started getting ripe. I’ve had a few of those beetles that get on the tomatoes and scrape the juice out. I’m trying to figure out what to do about those because I’ve only seen one or two, but they fly off before I can kill them.

The plant has very large leaves and was slow to grow. The seeds took so long to germinate, I thought they weren’t going to. I have a couple of the plants, so we’ll see how the overall yield goes. I definitely recommend them over a cherry tomato. They are twice the size and a lot more flavor. The plant is supposed to be quite cold tolerant, although I don’t think I’ll be testing that aspect here in Texas. It’s pretty much been 95 for two weeks now…