Austin's Black Cherry

[Shule]

I planted some Austin's Black Cherry seeds this year that Tormato gave me some years ago, and they're growing, now. I had thought that they were merely a selection from Black Cherry—but, the seedlings are PL (and they're supposed to be). So, it looks like it came from a cross, since Black Cherry is RL.

Anyway, what's it like? What uses do you envision for it besides fresh eating, if any? Is it acidic at all? How sweet is it? Is it earthy? Does it taste like a tomato, a tropical fruit, or neither? Is it good in sauce? Canned? Sliced on pizza? Tomato soup? Salsa? Fresh on burritos? Salads? Juice? Frittatas?

How prolific is it? Could you get 20+lbs of fruit from one plant in a five month season? How many days to maturity? How adaptable is it?

I've read that the plant size is smaller than the regular Black Cherry, and that ABC is less prone to one or more certain kinds of disease than BC. I've read that it doesn't taste like Japanese Black Trifele. I've read that one person, at least, preferred Ron's Carbon Copy (which I've grown before) to it. To me, Ron's Carbon Copy (heavily watered) tasted earthy (not smoky) and super sweet, without acidity, and unlike any previous tomato I had tasted (but other people report acidity in RCC, and not everyone agrees about the sweetness).

Does anyone know the PL parent of ABC? Was it pink?

I've never grown Black Cherry for comparison. I planted both for this year, but Black Cherry doesn't seem to have sprouted, yet.

[TomHillbilly]

I suggest you look at the below site. It would appear that 7 years ago some type of deal took place that left several tomatoville members scratching their heads. Is your seeds 7 years old ? LOL
http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=27493

[Shule]

[mention]TomHillbilly[/mention]
Thanks. I saw that and at least one or two others on the same site, but I hadn't checked to see if my seeds were from that year. Let me check and see. Found it. My seeds are marked 2015, but I received them in 2016. It looks like Tormato saved the seeds himself, in 2015 (because he didn't mark where they came from).

I saw an old thread on the same site where they talked about some seeds growing larger, pink fruits, but the breeder seemed to think those were from mixed up seed instead of being unstable traits (I would also suspect an accidental cross as a possibility there, too; either way, the plants that grew non-pink fruits should have been stable). I could be wrong, but I think pink is dominant to the black color involved (if so, it couldn't have been from the breed being unstable). There were some RL plants talked about, too, but I would think those were accidental crosses, since PL is recessive (and stable when it shows up; so, a PL plant shouldn't have RL offspring unless the flowers that grew the seeds that the fruit came from were cross-pollinated).