Tomato Red Pear (106-107)

Purchased this variety based on the other reviews. Harvested the first ripe tomato yesterday. Best large red tomato I've eaten in years. Other family members agreed. Good enough to enter in our community garden tomato-tasting contest! Variety is unusually productive and early to produce.

This is an update from a post submitted on the 7th of July, 2015. Well, this tomato did fantastically this year. The community garden allotment on which it was grown experienced a mild drought that lasted three weeks; none of the plants succumbed. In fact, the vines kept on producing well into October; I just picked our last batch three weeks ago, just before the first killing frost. Judging from the vines' overall health, I'd say that these beauties must have at least some resistance to late blight. (This year was a terrible year for late blight; I lost a whole row of potatoes and another variety of tomato to the pathogen.) The one issue I did encounter was that the plants started to show signs of nitrogen deficiency about mid-August; that was largely due to our poor soil. So, I went ahead and gave each plant a healthy dose of green manure, to which all bounced back within a week. As the catalog description states, these tomatoes are huge: one fruit out of my garden allotment ended up weighing in at 1.92 pounds! And the flavor...wow! The tomato itself is meaty, and richly aromatic. Whether by itself, in salads, on sandwiches, added to soups, or processed into sauce (which is fantastic), this tomato cannot be beat. I donated the surplus to our local food pantry the day before distribution; the food pantry director told me that they were all gone within thirty minutes of opening! After my experience this past growing season, and, the food pantry's reaction, I am seriously considering the prospect of only growing this tomato.

I started fifteen of theses tomatoes the first week of April, and as of July 7, they are in full bloom; all of the vines already have no less than two or three fruits! I am pleasantly surprised by the yields thus far: our community garden allotment is on nutrient-poor, sandy soil. The vines themselves do not have a speck of disease on them - knock on wood - and are nearly two and a half feet in height. And the fruits, they are already large! Unfortunately, I cannot say anything about the flavor yet, as none of the fruits will be ripe for another week. Still, based on its ease of growth, I would highly recommend Red Pear sel. Franchi to both beginners and seasoned gardeners alike. Two thumbs up to both Seeds from Italy and Franchi Sementi.