Tomato Cyril’s Choice

A red salad open pollinated tomato on very dwarf indeterminate/determinate plants.

Description

An English variety which was distributed through the Heritage Seed Library (although it seems to have disappeared from its list now), the stocky determinate plant has relatively small, regular sized deep red fruits and dark foliage. We grew this for the first time in 2017 and (along with all the fruit in 2017) it was late with the first ripe tomatoes not until early August. However, it had a good taste and grew well and productively in the polytunnel. We’ll grow it again when there’s space.

According to the web, this was grown by Cyril every year until 1984 when his sisters took over with a near catastrophe in 1993 when they failed to save the seed properly. However, two random seeds in the bottom of the tin preserved the cultivar. This again always makes me want to know more about the actual genetics of tomatoes. Is this just another name for an equally common tomato which gets attributed to Cyril because he grew it and saved the seed or is it actually a unique cultivar (there’s always the point that it might have started as purchased seed of known variety but mutated over time as Cyril kept the best seed).