Choosing the Best Little Fruity Tomatoes

Black cherry tomatoes

Some of the most appealing little tomatoes on the market today come with names that make them sound ultra fruity and wonderfully tasty. And it’s not just plain cherry tomatoes or grape tomatoes that fit the bill. Today they come in so many shapes and colours, it’s difficult to know what to choose.

So next time you want to plant tomatoes with a difference, and you are looking for small “fruity” tomatoes, check out the vast number of different seed offerings available from reputable seed companies on the Internet.

The Best Cherry Tomatoes

Cherry tomatoes don’t taste like cherries – although some types are unbelievably sweet and juicy –and only some of them are shaped like cherries or are even the size of regular cherries.

Today cherry tomatoes are generally either round, plum-shaped (like popular Roma tomatoes) or even pear-shaped, like the gorgeous heirloom variety, Yellow Pear that bears huge numbers of yellow-orange bite-sized cherry tomatoes.

They also come in a vast variety of colours, from tomato-red to yellow, and even “black”.  For instance Supersweet 100 is quite a dark red, while Sungold is a kind of orange. Brown cherry tomatoes are a brownish colour, while Snow White and Dr Carolyn are kind of “white”, or perhaps better described as very light.

If you’re fascinated by the idea of “black” tomatoes, there’s a relatively new Black Pearl Hybrid on the market. It’s a tasty treat, and one that changes its flavour when refrigerated, taking on a super-sweet grapey flavour – even though they are characterised as cherry tomatoes and not grape tomatoes!

The Red Lightning Hybrid is particularly interesting in terms of colour. If you painted tomatoes to look like these people would laugh at you! A kind of orangey red, they look as though an artist has washed lines of dark red and yellow over the fruits. Better still, they are said to taste beautifully sweet.

Other examples include tiny Red Currant and Yellow Currant tomatoes that grow on a vine. They look like they sound and are, by all accounts delicious.

To top it all, Green Envy cherry tomatoes are intriguing little fruits that look more like emerald green figs than tomatoes.

All worth trying to grow.

The Best Grape Tomatoes

Not as well known as cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes (like some varieties of cherry tomato) grow in clusters on a vine. What makes them stand apart is that they are amazingly sweet in taste and very juicy.

One of the reasons grape tomatoes haven’t attracted the same worldwide popularity as cherry tomatoes is probably because they have to be picked AS they ripen. This means that those who grow them don’t normally do so commercially. Where they do make the stores, they are VERY expensive.

There is currently a lot less choice when it comes to grape tomatoes than any other type of tomato – cherry included. They are also more likely to be traditional tomato red in colour. But look out for Rosalita which is “pink”.

If this doesn’t tempt you to try growing little fruity-named tomatoes, nothing will. Have fun!

Give growing little fruity tomatoes a go with the assistance of our comprehensive tomato growing guide How To Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes.