Quote:
Originally Posted by bower
RedBaron, Scott, I'd like to hear your end of season update on Snickers and "Black Pepper", the ol start to finish sumup, when you get a moment.  |
I grew both. Both were EXACTLY the same in the early growth phase. So exact it was uncanny actually. Like clones! However, once the plants started producing fruit there were differences. The Black Pepper seeds I got kept growing huge plants. While the Snickers slowed foliage growth and started pumping out tomatoes instead. Snickers looks similar to the pics people are showing of Black Pepper, but smaller on average. Also slightly less "wrinkled" and slightly less "pointy". However, Snickers was radically more productive. Probably 30 times more productive and that's not an exaggeration. They taste about exactly the same.
As for me, I am going with Snickers from now on. It is a sauce tomato, so size is far less important than total productivity.
PS I LOVE the taste of both. Once customers got past the unusual color and shape, they became some of the most popular at the stand. The sauce made from them was absolutely the best I ever tasted. The cooking qualities were unusual too. They seemed to "break down" and reduce very easily, almost magically, in short order, especially Snickers. So in another climate if productivity of Black Pepper is better, I highly recommend it for sauce. You can make thick sauce that isn't runny so fast it still retains that "fresh" taste, instead of many tomatoes that end up needing to be over cooked to get thick enough. It was noticeable enough that I did a microwave "experiment" on both compared to Costoluto Genovese. Even in just a minute or two in the microwave the Snickers and Black Pepper "dissolved" into sauce, while the Italian sauce tomatoes kept their shape and just got hot. But here in OK where 100 degrees + is a common occurrence, Snickers is FAR better at setting fruit. I am just guessing, but the plants of Black Pepper did look good and healthy, some of the healthiest plants I grew of any variety, but they just didn't set fruit in this climate well at all. So I am thinking in a cooler climate, there is a potential for Black Pepper to out produce Snickers. Definitely not here though.