Quick Summary of Blue Keyes
- 🌍 Origin & Type: A striking novelty anthocyanin cherry/pear tomato. It is part of a series (along with Amber Keyes, Black Keyes, etc.).
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate. The bush tends to be tall, thin, and rather lanky/leggy with regular foliage. Several growers report that it is quite sensitive to extreme weather, especially extreme heat, which can cause the plant to wilt or drop blossoms.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Small, pear-shaped cherry tomatoes. When unripe and exposed to direct sun, they turn completely black/dark blue. As they ripen, the shaded parts turn a reddish-brown/mahogany. They have thick, sturdy skin and are highly resistant to cracking.
- 👅 Flavor Profile: Reviews are very mixed. Some find it mealy, ordinary, and lacking in any real zest when eaten right off the vine. Pro Tip: Due to the extreme black coloring, it is very hard to tell when they are fully ripe. Letting them sit and ripen on the counter indoors for a few days drastically improves the sweetness and texture.
An indeterminate tall variety, the bush is lanky and thin, regular leaf.
The fruits are red-brown with anthocyanin, small pears, unusual appearance; when unripe, they are black-blue. Good fruit set, but there are not very many fruits in a cluster. The taste is just an ordinary tomato flavor, sometimes mealy/cottony, without any frills or zest, fruits have thick skin. The fruits store quite well.
An indeterminate of medium height, about 4 ft (1.2m) in open ground. Regular leaf. Reacted poorly to the heat, wilted.
Unlike the previous user, mine had plenty of fruits in the cluster for a cherry type—but there were few clusters overall because it suffered from bad weather.
The taste was indeed plain and unremarkable at first. Then it sat at home for a while and gathered sweetness, I was even surprised—what kind of yummy variety is this?) I think it was too cold for it here. In the sun, the fruits turn completely black, making it very inconvenient to determine ripeness) In the photo with Amber Keyes.
I won’t grow it again, I surprised my guests, and that’s enough for me)))
I grew BLACK KEYES, are they twins or a different variety? When they ripen well, a flavor with interesting notes emerges, along with sweetness and aroma.
Grew it in 2021 in a greenhouse. Tall bush, medium foliage, clusters are sparse. Due to the heat, it didn’t set all the fruits; there were from 3 to 8 per cluster. Mid-season. I liked the taste, with sweetness, the flesh is dense, the skin is sturdy but not tough or leathery. It didn’t crack, unlike all the other small-fruited ones. Aromatic. The only thing is, not a single one of mine ripened to completely red; inside they were red-brown and even greenish.
