📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR)
- 🌍 Origin: An interesting and somewhat unstable heirloom paste tomato. Its lineage is linked to crosses involving Amish Paste and Amish Red.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Mid-season, indeterminate. The plant has thin, wispy foliage (typical for many paste/oxheart types) but is surprisingly sturdy and not flimsy. Highly productive.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Elongated, pointy plum/paste shaped tomatoes weighing 100-120 g (3.5-4.2 oz). Because the strain is still showing instability, growers report seeing up to four color variations: yellow, orange, orange with a red tip/blush, and solid red. The flesh is very dense, meaty, and contains very little juice, making it perfect for processing.
- 👅 Flavor: Universally praised regardless of the color variation. It has an excellent, balanced, slightly spicy flavor with distinct and pronounced sweetness.
- ⏳ Yield & Climate: A very reliable high yielder.
A mid-season, indeterminate, productive variety. The bush is thin (wispy foliage), but not flimsy.
I’ve come across 4 color variations of this variety on the internet: yellow, orange, orange with a reddish tip, and red. And all four colors have excellent reviews regarding taste — tasty, slightly spicy, and sweet. My fruits were red, while in Tatiana Kouchnareva’s database, they are listed as orange. I think the variety is unstable. It has an interesting lineage; I’ll be looking for Amish Paste, Amish Red, and their subsequent generations to compare them with my red Burning Spear. I am also very eager to get my hands on the orange version, which was the original intent of the variety’s creator.
My red version showed excellent taste from the very first fruits right up to the end of the season. It is very balanced with a distinct sweetness, making it versatile for any use. Some fruits had slightly orange shoulders.
My photos:
Girls thank you for helping to insert the photo. My phone just wouldn’t let me do it — it kept either kicking me out or the link wouldn’t copy! This is the orange version of the Burning Spear variety (I think this is what it’s supposed to look like); I haven’t come across the red one anywhere.
Here is the description of the variety:
Burning Spear Paste.
Indeterminate. The fruits are bright dark-orange, elongated, pointy plums with a reddish blush. Great taste with distinct sweetness, weight 100-120 g (3.5-4.2 oz). They are dense, with a small amount of juice, and versatile in use. A highly productive variety.
