Quick Summary of Blood Moon
- 🌍 Origin: An excellent cross between two absolute favorites in the tomato world: Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye and Blue Beauty.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate but generally manageable, growing to about 5 ft (1.5 m). It is known for being very stocky, robust, and well-behaved as a seedling without getting leggy. It shows fantastic resistance to Late Blight (Phytophthora).
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Oblate, sometimes slightly ribbed fruits. They emerge with dark blue/green anthocyanin shoulders and ripen to a brownish-crimson. Average weight is around 7-9 oz (200-250 g). Quirk: It has a deeply embedded stem cavity, making fruits hold on tightly to the vine and requiring care when snipping them off.
- 👅 Flavor Profile: Very meaty with dense, dark crimson flesh. Growers consistently rate it as rich, sweet, and highly aromatic.
Seeds from Elena Danko. @Danko
Description from Elena:
“Blood Moon is a cross between two varieties, Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye and Blue Beauty. Both of its parents are favorites in the tomato world that excel in all categories; they are equally appreciated by tomato connoisseurs and casual gardeners alike. The fruit yield is superb, as you would expect from its predecessors. Ripe tomatoes usually weigh 7-9 oz (200-250g). The fruits are meaty, with dense dark crimson flesh boasting a rich and sweet flavor. Plants are medium-tall, up to 5 ft (1.5 m).”
A very good variety. As a seedling, it’s very stocky and robust. It didn’t overgrow or get leggy. The plant is strong and powerful. The fruits are oblate, sometimes slightly ribbed. Tasty, sweet, aromatic… I didn’t have any hugely large ones, but I pruned it to 4 stems, which I think was a mistake. As for flaws—for me, the stem was deeply embedded into the fruit, making it hard to get in there and snip it off. It held onto the branch very tightly and didn’t drop off on its own. In my greenhouse, it grew taller than 5 ft (1.5 meters), but it didn’t stretch excessively, definitely not a sprawling vine.
Quote from Olya Pskovishna:
A very good variety. As a seedling, it’s very stocky and robust. It didn’t overgrow or get leggy. The plant is strong and powerful. The fruits are oblate, sometimes slightly ribbed. Tasty, sweet, aromatic… I didn’t have any hugely large ones, but I pruned it to 4 stems, which I think was a mistake. As for flaws—for me, the stem was deeply embedded into the fruit, making it hard to get in there and snip it off. It held onto the branch very tightly, didn’t drop off on its own. In my greenhouse, it grew taller than 5 ft (1.5 meters), but it didn’t stretch excessively…
I agree completely. In the polycarbonate greenhouse, pruned to 2 stems, it was much earlier and larger than its “brother” outdoors in open ground that was left unpruned to grow wild. But even that outdoor one produced a lot of tomatoes of wondrous beauty (dark blue-green at first, turning brownish as they ripen) despite the cold and hurricanes. It is resistant to Late Blight (Phytophthora); it went to the compost pile completely clean and disease-free.
