from sungold to purple: this year’s tomato patch

Most years, selecting what tomato to plant is part of my garden adventure. I have a few reliable regulars, like Sungold, that return season after season, but I am always drawn to try something new too, sometimes for the color, and sometimes just for the fun of seeing what it will become in the garden. So although there are always repeat plantings, roughly half of my tomatoes are usually new each year. This year’s patch feels very much like that.

The cherry tomatoes make up the heart of the planting. Sungold is back, of course, along with Chocolate Cherry, Citrine, Ruby Mystery Cross and the newcomers this year: Sweet Prince, Bicolor Cherry, Gum Drop Black Hybrid, and Sakura. Cherries are a long standing favorites not just for color and abundance, but also for that quiet pleasure of picking a handful while passing through the garden. In my area, the growing season is also shorter so while I plant some beefsteak varieties occasionally, I find that they often could not ripe on the vine in time before the cold season arrive. So the cherry tomatoes are often the tomatoes that keep the season going till the first frost.

This year I am growing a few tomatoes for color and character as much as for eating. The Orange Accordion earned its place for looks alone: large, ruffled, bright orange fruits with an old-fashioned, almost theatrical shape that makes the standard red slicer seem a little plain. The Thorburn’s Terra-Cotta tomato is distinctive for its unusual coppery-brown skin and orange-pink flesh, and for being an old 1893 heirloom. It has the kind of rich flavor that makes it memorable beyond looks and that's why it is returning to my garden this year.

I've added the Midnight Roma from Row7 which I grew in a large pot last year. I would like to see how it grows in a raised bed. The Midnight Roma is meaty and bred for sauce and it offers a modern twist to the familiar paste tomato with its black as midnight skin. It is certainly striking and had been mistaken for a plum in my garden.

Then there is the Purple Tomato I am planting separately in a new bed which feels like a tomato from another era entirely, not the past this time, but the future. This is the outlier in this year’s patch, a bioengineered tomato bred for deep purple anthocyanins in both skin and flesh. I'm particularly looking forward to how this newcomer perform in the garden.

I am not usually looking for one perfect tomato when I plan the tomato patch. One year, I even chose varieties to echo the colors of the companion plants growing nearby. This time around, the patch is shaped by contrast: gold and orange against deep purple and brown, and cherry varieties alongside paste tomatoes. Then there are a couple of old heirlooms growing with something entirely new. Fingers crossed it turns into a colorful and interesting season. And now this year’s tomato list—ta-da!

Cherry Tomatoes
Sungold (2020-2025)
Citrine (2023-2025)
Chocolate Cherry (2024-2025)
Ruby Mystery Cross (2024-2025)
Gum Drop Black Hybrid (new)
Sweet Prince (new)
Bicolor Cherry (new)
Sakura (new)

Heirloom / Large-Fruited
Orange Accordion (new)
Thorburn’s Terra-Cotta (2022)

Paste / Roma Types
Midnight Roma (2025)


New
Purple Tomato (GMO) (new)

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