Black Bear Tomato

Description: Thick flesh with a smooth texture and lots of juice. A purple beefsteak variety. Quite delicious!

Open Pollinated.

Seed grown on our farm with beyond organic standards.

Days to Maturity:  75 to 80 days

Approximate seeds per pack: 25

History: First introduced in SSE 2008 Yearbook by Neil Lockhart of Oblong, Illinois, USA, who obtained seeds from Reinhard Kraft, Neukirchen, Germany. Reinhard Kraft received seeds from Andrey Baranovski of Minsk, Belarus with a translated name that he felt was racially discriminatory. As it appeared to be a great tomato, Mr. Kraft chose a nice neutral name for it – ‘Black Bear’ – and shared seeds under this new name. The original Russian name for this tomato was ‘Negrityonok’. However, original Russian variety named with this name is a much smaller tomato compared to what Reinhard Kraft observed in his growouts. Feeling it obvious that just environmental growing conditions could not be responsible for such a huge difference in fruit sizes, ‘Black Bear’ tomato a considered a different strain.

For those curious, the reported translation for the original Russian name would have been “little black child” and it is said it culturally carries a special, affectionate feeling and is not considered derogatory in any way.