Black Krim Tomato

Black Krim is native to Central and South America. Grown by indigenous people, the original tomatoes were small, seedy fruits. The Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortés took the first seeds back to Spain in the early 1500s. Those tomatoes may have been a yellow-fruiting variety, since they were called pomi d’oro, or yellow apples, in Spain and Italy.

The “black” tomatoes were developed in the Crimea region of Russia, near the Black Sea. It’s believed that Crimean War veterans gathered seeds and took them home to grow in their own gardens. ‘Black Krim,’ also known as ‘Black Crimea’ and ‘Noire de Crimée,’ became commercially available in the U.S. in 1990, when Lars Olov Rosenstrom of Bromma, Sweden, provided seeds to the Seed Savers Exchange.

Pick your tomatoes when the fruits turn a dark red to maroon and they release easily from the stems. Keep freshly picked tomatoes on the counter and use within a few days. You can also can your tomatoes whole, diced, stewed or as a sauce in a hot water bath.

These are the sweetest of all the tomatoes we offer, and Kiley swears they are his favorite to eat like an apple!