This was my first time with this tomato and what a wonderful surprise it was. A real champ. A Wow! - Very good taste, Good for sandwiches. salads and for tomato sauce. It was a heavy bearer over a long season. I also grew Sun Gold, New Girl and Sakura all good and each distinctive. The New Girl and Sun Gold lasted the longest with fruit into December! [SF Bay Area]

If you want to make the best sauce in the world, then grow this tomato. I will always grow this tomato and please save seed from it should you grow it, too, just in case. I cannot praise it enough and am so happy I tried it - the reviews are what made me give it a try. My plants have always grown well and produced copious amounts of tomatoes, even last season when there was leaf fungal problems - the tomatoes just shrugged it off. If big, meaty, juicy, sweet tomatoes are your thing, then you must grow Red Pear.

This tomato was excellent this year in my garden. A lot of people mistake this for a canning tomato and expect canning tomato taste. However, this is actually a very flavorful fresh-eating slicer that is on the sweet side (although nicely balanced with acid) and tastes similar to oxheart varieties, which are known for great flavor. It just happens to *also* be good for canning because of its meaty structure with few seeds. It did have some problems with blossom end rot this year because of record heat waves and periods of low rain, but that's to be expected with any tomato with an elongated body shape. I'm sure it would be fine in a normal season and if I had taken more care in watering. The plant was vigorous from the beginning and was one of the first to flower and set fruit in my garden. It's also relatively disease-resistant compared to other heirlooms. It continued to set some fruit through the worst heat, then started setting a ton of fruit again as soon as temperatures cooled to normal ranges. Anyone who has been disappointed by the flavor of other ruffled tomato varieties should give this one a try.

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.

A really great, tasty productive tomato with bulk for our heirloom mix. would give it 5 stars but I save that for your San Marzano Redorta! Have had excellent luck with all the tomato varieties we have trailed from SOI (and I'm a commercial grower who uses many seed sources). Thanks for providing these great varieties.

We tried growing these tomatoes for the first time this year. We planted seeds in the house on 4/24 and I was kind of late transplanting them to a newly built greenhouse (6/1). I also planted some outside. Living at 7000 feet elevation is a little more of a challenge for gardening. The plants outside didn't fare as well. But, if I plant them earlier next year, I have more hope for them. However, the ones in the greenhouse were fabulous! Beautiful big tasty tomatoes and they, mixed with some San Marzano I had planted made the best sauce we have ever had. I had a hard time knowing whether I liked one over the other, but the size and meatiness made the Red Pear the winner. I will definitely be planting both again next year. Thankfully, we had enough to do some canning to get us through the winter.

As other reviews state, these tomatoes are large, tasty, low in seeds and productive. Downsides? Rather rough and irregular in shape and a bit hard to market (I am a market grower) probably due to unusual and often irregular shape. If growing for home use--go for it! If growing for market, may have a bit of a selling job ahead of you.

I have grown tomatoes for 50 years and these are the best I have ever had. Firm, sweet, large fruit that can be eaten fresh or in a sauce. Plants grew over 7 feet and were loaded. I have already bought my seeds for next year and will no longer grow any other full size tomato. Everyone I gave tomatoes to raved and wanted more.

This is my all time favorite tomato. In Atlanta (zone7/8) it produces from early July through October. Lots of tomatoes of large size. These are excellent for fresh tomato sauces or main course fresh tomato recipes as they are meaty with few seeds. I have grown them for 3 seasons and they have produced under very hot and dry weather, excessively rainy weather, and (this year), perfect growing weather. A winner.

Do you want a big crop of great tasting tomatoes? Do you want a reliable, no nonsense tomato? Do you want great taste? This one has it all. My wife uses it for fresh sauce: 2 tomatoes makes a very nice fresh sauce for 1/2 pound of pasta.

This variety was excellent for eating and canning. We were amazed at their hardiness and their size.It is the only tomato we are planting this year because of it's versatility and hardiness!

I've been growing these tomatoes for several years now. They are so heavy bearing that I put stakes on either side of the plant and tie it off on both sides so the branches don't break from the weight of the tomatoes. Great for sauce and eating. You cannot go wrong with these tomatoes.

I started 45 cells of this tomato from seed I had leftover from last year and 42 cells are up and nearly and inch long in 4 days...same as last year's. You cant go wrong starting up with this seed brand.

I grew this tomato last year for the first time and it was hands down the best. I even planted some plants along a fence line where it was sorely neglected. We also experience some drought. It was slow in turning red (got tomatoes in zone 6 through October) but delicious! I didn't even get them mulched. I thought they were not going to turn red but they did and were perfection!

Quality taste and production in Southern California!!

This tomato out produced all of the other ones that I had in my garden. It by far the best one that I have sauced and canned. The meat is dry and firm with little pulp and seed. The flavor is "heirloom" quality and very sweet. I plan at least 100 of them next season.

Been growing this wonderful tomato for years--plants get 7-8 feet tall here in zone 6a, with heaviest production in August, but have been eating them since mid July. The best tasting sauce is made from theses--also the best BLT you'll ever eat. Move them around in your garden and you'll have good luck.

very productive of huge tomatoes. I have about 50 of them growing and are just beginning to turn pink. If the taste is equally as big it will be my main crop.

I am a grower and I am always looking for something else to grow. I found your display at Agway and tried this tomato. It germinated and was up in 6 days!! Germ rate was 96%! unheard of from retail seed packets. I planted Better Boy 3 weeks prior with 70% germ rate but the Friachi seed has caught up in height and has 2 sets in bloom...

This will be my third year growing Red Pear. The plants get 7-8 feet tall in my EarthBoxes. The thick solid flesh has very few seeds. Taste is fantastic when vine ripened and also very nice when picked at blush and ripened inside. This variety will always have a place in my garden.

if we could only grow one tomato there would be no contest. this is the most amazing tomato for productivity, for great tomato flavor, and for meaty texture. the fruits are HUGE and beautiful! in our high desert medium length season the plants grow to about 7 feet tall! truly amazing!

My friend in Italy (outside Pisa) has been growing these for years. His family freezes these whole and use them all winter. I have looked all over for the seeds and these are a match. I grew these last year with great results. I have already seeded mine and will be planting them in my garden within the week.

Wide hipped, dense & meaty, just juicy enough, small seed locules - skin too thin to ever see these for sale at market... the taste is utter tomato perfection - big, balanced sweet & acid - makes a gal's toes curl when she eats them! People travel 2 1/2 hours to get these plants at my yard sale every year - they are that good. I plant them where they get relief from blazing afternoon sun here (zone 8a) & when the weather cools just a bit in early September - then they reward us with just the best tomatoes I have ever eaten. A must grow every year down here.

People have grown heirloom varieties for generations for a REASON! The three seasons I have grown this (in both central Connecticut and southern Vermont) it has reliably produced wonderful fruit, even in adverse conditions. It is a late season tomato in Vermont but mid-season in Connecticut. Also grows well in the Philadelphia area. Loved by all who taste it, and a good bearer. Seems to be blight resistant. My main crop tomato in both locations.

I've been growing this variety for 5 years and its always been good. I grow 9 tomato varieties all selected for taste. This year it took top prize in the taste test, beating out Brandywine fot the first time ever. Amazingly Brandywine, the usual first place winner, came in dead last this year.

fantastic taste for slicing and sauce. Plants grew very large beautiful fruits. Canned quart after quart of of two plants. Biggest fruit was well over 3 pounds. Delicious and the biggest surprise out of my nine varieties!

Sweet, silky, dark red, fresh eating... of all the varieties I grew this year this one took the prize. Not quite as huge as advertised, but fabulous.

These huge Pears are beautiful, everyone i let taste/showed them loved them. I did save seeds from lat year and this summer it is loaded again. I do have pictures of them also.