Tomato Pink Brandywine

Pink/red beefsteak heritage tomato on Indeterminate potato leafed plants.

Description

Pink Brandywine is a pink-fleshed beefsteak tomato described as having “great tomatoey flavour” and “beautifully sweet, offset by a wonderful acidity”. A late-ripening indeterminate, potato-leafed beefsteak tomato, this is possibly our favourite tomato (competes with Summer Cider). The large blush-pink fruits are 4-12oz on a plant 4-7ft tall with four or five trusses. Can be a heavy cropper with 4-5 trusses of 6-8 8oz fruit per truss though larger fruits are achieved with fewer fruits per truss. Its intense flavour makes it good for sandwiches and sauces.

The general consensus seems to be that this type of tomato has been in common cultivation in the US for about 100 years. There are a large number of cultivars with “Brandywine” as part of their name due to accidental crossing with other varieties. The Pinkish coloured, large boat shaped fruits seem to indicate that this one is fairly close to the original. Part of the difficulty is the way in which seed catalogues list tomatoes, some put Pinks under Red, others under Purple so it is difficult to identify the original strains of the particular variety.

The fruits need a long time to ripen and good heat, so getting them planted early and protected from cold nights is almost essential. There are long debates about how many fruits can be supported by a single plant. This picture shows a single truss on one of our plants in 2014 with seven fruits weighing between 6 and 14 ounces each. This plant was grown in a simple growbag (there were two plants in the growbag – Pink Brandywine and Orange Berry) and this plant had three trusses all about the same. The picture was taken in the middle of October (yes it was bright and sunny) so it shows how long the Brandywine tomatoes take to ripen.

We open freeze them or blitz them down before freezing for use throughout the winter.

In 2011 these started cropping in late August and went on until early November.