While you all know I have a soft spot for giant beefcake tomatoes, there is also something enchanting, irresistible and utterly practical about smaller cherry and salad tomatoes. In the garden they will be your earliest and latest producing tomato, and super valuable for that reason. Smaller tomatoes are great for the impatient gardener (like me!). Waiting for a tomato to ripen feels very much like watching grass grow. Smaller tomatoes being much quicker to ripen, will test your patience considerably less .
I also love that smaller tomatoes are a bite-sized, lunch-boxed-sized vegetable – no cutting or preparation necessary to consume – just pop into your mouth and portable snack on the go. They are staples in our kids lunchboxes from January through to June each year.
Click here for a tour of our current season’s tomatoes.
🏆 AWARD time
My cherry and salad tomato awards for last summer go to:
🏅 Best tasting: A tomato is a tomato, and they are all delicious. But the ones we couldn’t live without in our household are the unpronounceable Wapsipinicon peach, Sweetie, Barry’s crazy cherry, Golden tiger. For us they have the best sweet sour balance, and they add a rainbow pop of colour to salads.
🏅 Most prolific: Without a doubt, Barry’s Crazy cherry – see below evidence of how crazy the harvest truly becomes later in the season 🤪 Hundreds of tomatoes on just one truss!
🏅 Earliest producing: Red pear – this one was off to a flying start in our greenhouse well before any others and did not miss a beat producing luscious pear-shaped tomatoes all season.
🏅 Longest producing: Wapsipinicon peach and Barry’s Crazy cherry – I can’t quite believe it myself but both are still producing well into winter, and no they are not even in our greenhouse! Two slightly later planted, freakish plants that have outlasted the rest and keep on giving. Wapsipinicon peach with its fuzzy skin also provides natural resistance against fruit fly.
🏅 Prettiest: They are all irresistible, but can’t go past the deep purple tones of blueberry tomatoes.
this is a great site that I will pass on to my friends
Hi Robert thanks for the feedback and appreciate the support!
Thanks for all the info Jian! Never grown a tomato before eventhough I grow many fruit trees. Will definitely give some of these a try!
Hi Jess so glad you enjoyed the article. If you can grow fruit, you will smash tomatoes. I would highly recommend them as they are really fun and rewarding to grow x
Thanks for so many great tips! Do you have any advice on pests? My cherry tomatoes grow beautifully but i never get to eat them due to pests/ animals getting to them first!
Hi Alison, there are too many pests after our yummy produce! I would highly recommend netting your produce, and I find the fruit protection bags easiest for cherry tomatoes. Our favourite are these Fruit Protection Bags. They keep out all but the most enterprising pest and mean more food on your plate. Glad you enjoyed the article x