PlantFiles: Tomato
Lycopersicon lycopersicum 'Black Plum'

Easily one of my favorite black tomatoes available. My plants produced over 200 tomatoes in a single summer, easily. No exaggeration. This is an unbelievable tasting tomato. I would describe it's complex flavor has heavily spicy (with a hint of anise perhaps), deeply smokey, and rich beyond all expectations. Be sure to not pick your black paste tomatoes when red - but when developed into a dark/brown state. That's the only way the true flavor can be enjoyed. Makes insanely excellent sauces when pureed with fresh herbs (not dried) such as tarragon and thyme, cream, and sherry wine. Have some excellent home made recipes. Message if you'd like some.

I LOVE this tomato! It is juicy and firm with a good flavor! Produced very well during our cool rainy summer last year. Our regular tomatos only prduced a few maters where as this guy just kept producing! A fast grower and does well in a large container!

This was very meaty, but the flavor is the kind of thing that's really an acquired taste. People say it's smoky and salty and this amazing culinary experience, but in my experience, it was just mostly earthy, with a little of that thick, tart, Italian tomato flavor that felt like it was being covered up by the overwhelming earthiness. It isn't very useful on the versitility scale; it seems to be a paste tomato and nothing else. But because it's the size of a plum tomato, there are a lot more skins to take off, than, say, an Opalka. It did a fair job as a paste tomato once I took the time to skin the thirty or forty it took to make a sauce, but there are many more tomatoes that do a much better job at it.

This tomato had an odd flavor. Spicey? but too strong etc. tasting for my likes. Also VERY mealy I thought and not too meaty. Not thrilled with taste/ texture. Color widway between red and brown but not very dark. Grew like WILDFIRE! and fruited alot and (the first to fruit in my garden). Also NOT troubled by diseases at all. But, too bad I didn't like the taste/ fruit that much. :( Will not be growing next year.

manvel tx.grows super flavor plum sized fruit.absolutely wonderful flavor.very prolific.many good comments from the local folks.

As is the case with most "black" tomatoes, they never get beyond dark brown here in the upper Midwest. Flavor description: Smokey and plummy. A little bit like eating a grilled plum. Not very tomatoey tasting at all. Incredible producer. Not a bad drying tomato, but a few too many seeds to make it ideal.

Later discovery: Great for making a rich, darker-color salsa.

Black Plum grew well here and was very prolific. We didn't notice any strange flavors, but we are strange people. We even had some volenteers the next year.

Very prolific but I'm not fond of the taste. I'm going to try this one for paste.

I grew Black Plum in 2002. It was VERY prolific. My family rejected it because of its' unique flavor. Though we did find it quite good for salsa and cooking. Also, I lost two out of four plants to some disease. Should know what it was, but am rusty on diseases. The stems of the plants got brown, dry streaks in them and then individual limbs would dry up and die. I would then pull up the plant.

Enjoyably different from other small tomatoes, I like to eat it, but would not grow it if I had to only grow one small tomato. It has more juice than a Yellow Pear. When used in salads with red and yellow cherry tomatoes, it adds a nice color mix.

These smallish tomatoes are very meaty. They are not on my 'best of' list as I found the fresh taste not as appealing as others that I have grown. They had a salty/earthy taste with almost a hint of anise.

They do well in sauces and salsa and although I didn't dry any, they are certainly suited for that too.

Very prolific, they produced well into fall. Perhaps they would make a better drying tomato than fresh eating. Fresh just seems to be the way I tend to judge tomato taste.