Quick Summary of Black Beauty
- 🌿 Plant Habit: INDETERMINATE (Tall/Vining). Growth is highly variable based on conditions: in greenhouses, it can easily reach 2 m (6.5 ft), but outdoors it often stays remarkably compact and sprawling (around 1 m / 3.3 ft). Regular leaf.
- 🌍 Origin: Introduced in 2016, this is a stunning creation by Brad Gates of Wild Boar Farms (USA). Often touted as one of the darkest/blackest tomatoes in the world.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Oblate (flattened-round) beefsteaks, typically weighing 150-250g (5-9 oz), though some growers manage to push them to 300-500g (10-17 oz). When exposed to direct sunlight, the skin turns pitch black. The interior flesh is a deep, meaty red. Warning: The skin is quite prone to cracking, even in dry weather.
- 👅 Flavor: Reviews are mixed but lean positive. For some, it has a complex, sweet, and rich flavor with fruity tartness (especially when allowed to ripen fully or sit indoors for a few days). For others, it tastes quite ordinary or mildly sweet.
- ⏳ Maturity & Yield: Mid-season. Highly productive and disease-resistant. Harvest Tip: Because the top and sides turn completely black, wait for the very bottom (blossom end) to turn red and feel slightly soft to know it’s ripe!
The bush is indeterminate! Mid-season ripening. Regular leaf. In the sun, it gets completely black. Good size. But I think I’ll be able to describe it more accurately when I plant it a couple more times. The variety is adapting to my conditions. Almost all varieties that I plant year after year keep getting better.
Edited October 6, 2017 by Drosera
Indeterminate, but no higher than 1 meter (3.3 ft) for me. Very few suckers, sprawling bush. The fruits are round, slightly flattened, absolutely black with an even color on all sides. It turned out to be low-yielding for me. The taste was mediocre.
I definitely need to test it one more time next year. The black fruits are just so incredibly unusual.
It’s so blue/black, it just takes your breath away! 👏
Description: “2016 novelty. A stunning variety from Brad Gates. The fruits are oblate, the blackest known to us, amazing taste, weighing up to 200g (7 oz). The taste improves when stored indoors at room temperature.”
Seeds from Popenko. Grew in the greenhouse on the sunny side. You simply can’t walk past it; it immediately catches your eye as soon as you step into the greenhouse. A very productive variety. Some fruits were over 200g (7 oz). My mom also grew this variety in her greenhouse. It turned out to be the tastiest of all the “blue” varieties we grew this year (Blue Gem, Cosmic Eclipse, Pink Siberian Tiger, Amethyst Jewel, Wooly Kate). I will repeat it in 2018.
In this photo, Black Beauty is the 2 tomatoes in the back and 1 on the right, turned upside down.
Indeterminate, it split into 2 stems right before the first truss. I kept it as 2 stems. It successfully carried 5 full trusses. The tomatoes were medium-sized, around 150 grams (5 oz). The variety is high-yielding.
The bush grew in a sunny spot. But the taste didn’t impress me. Blue Gem (Clear Opal) turned out to be tastier.
It is not on my planting list for 2018 😳
My plant in the greenhouse reached nearly 2 meters (6.5 ft) in height. It was very productive, mid-season ripening. The fruits were medium-sized, very tasty, and sweet.
Extraordinarily beautiful, heavily yielding 🌿, and very disease-resistant variety 👍. Two bushes grew in the greenhouse and one outdoors, and I only pulled them out in October 😜. The tomatoes turn almost completely black in the sun, glossy, red inside, oblate, weighing up to 300g (10.5 oz). The taste is interesting, with a slight tartness.
My beauty is completely black. How do I know when it’s ripe?
Edited July 9, 2019 by Irina Fedorova
Quote by Irina Fedorova:
My beauty is completely black. How do I know when it’s ripe?
When they start turning red, just like in your second photo.
Here is what my beauty looks like at the moment. The very tip (blossom end) at the bottom is still greenish, which means they are not ripe yet.
Quote by Nessi:
When they start turning red, just like in your second photo.
The very tip needs to turn a solid red, and you should check it by touch. It’s better to let it hang a little longer or let it sit on the counter so it can fully ripen. You might make a mistake with the first fruit, but then the experience will come.
My first one got fully ripe and overripe—it even cracked because I missed the moment. But wow, how delicious it is! Both the sweetness and the tartness are very bright, intense, the flavor is very rich and unusual, similar to the Dwarf tomato varieties. Maybe it was because it was slightly overripe. Very tasty and highly productive; the whole bush is strung with black orbs.
I have been repeating Black Beauty every year since 2017. The bush has become quite short. I don’t feed my tomatoes with anything except organic chicken manure/nettle tea. This year, for the first time, it gave me a fruit weighing 330g (11.6 oz).
It got slightly overripe, I just can’t keep up with them…
I planted this beauty for the first time and it looks like it will stay for a repeat. It gave an abundant harvest in cold and damp conditions. The fruits are very uniform, tasty, beautiful, and quite transportable—what more could you want from a tomato.
Seeds from V. Pulinsh. Very beautiful fruits, black, matte, large 200-500g (7-17 oz)—for antho tomatoes, these are really big!!! There were quite a few large ones, but the yield was a 4 minus, and the taste didn’t particularly impress me, also a 4 minus.
Vigorous, stunningly beautiful, disease-resistant, simple taste, sets fruit almost 100%, ripens very well off the vine, BUT it cracks…
A tasty tomato with fruity notes and a slight tartness. Seeds from Valdis.
Edited September 26, 2020 by Hrizantema57
I am planting it for the third year in a row, shared seeds and seedlings with friends, and it has become everyone’s favorite. Only this year, for some reason, the variety produced a strange off-type (rogue/crossed seed). Out of two bushes, one was the classic type, and the second turned out to be green-fruited.
The fruits were olive-colored with a little anthocyanin cap. I left them alone for a long time, waiting for them to turn red. I went to feel them, and they were completely ripe. When sliced, they were green inside, the taste was blander, and they were more watery.
My Black and Blue Beauties. Good tomatoes. I will plant them again. The Black one does crack, too.
Edited August 22, 2021 by Valentina-11
I wouldn’t say it’s red, more of a smoky crimson. This is not the blackest tomato. The blackest one I grew was American Blue. The tomato is sweet, but bland. It cracks, even though the summer wasn’t rainy and we had no water for irrigation :(. We even bought them already cracked at the market. Outdoors in open ground, they were only slightly above knee-high. Weight around 200 grams (7 oz). I will collect seeds for a repeat.
Black Beauty is exactly that—a beauty. I wanted to repeat it again in 2024. And I admired it once more!
Black Beauty – indeterminate, mid-season.
Fruits are oblate, red with dark shoulders, and the fruits can become almost completely black (depends on the amount of sunlight). Fruit weight is 150-250 grams (5-9 oz).
The taste is sweet with a slight tartness. The fruits are red inside.
Edited February 3 by OlyaSashina
