Quick Summary of Cherry Blossom F1
- 🌍 Origin: A highly popular commercial F1 hybrid created by the Japanese breeding company Sakata. Widely grown and discussed in Eastern Europe.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: The official registry lists it as determinate (bush), but growers consistently report it acting like a vigorous semi-determinate or even indeterminate, reaching 1.2 – 1.5+ meters (4-5+ ft) in greenhouses. It features distinctive bluish-green, massive foliage.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Red, round, glossy cherry tomatoes weighing 16-30g (0.5-1 oz). The skin is thick and tough, which makes them incredible keepers—they can store indoors well into late October.
- 👅 Flavor & Usage: A classic, sweet tomato flavor (rated 3 to 4 out of 5 for fresh eating by some). However, they absolutely shine in canning, pickling, and preserving in their own juice due to their meaty texture and strong skin.
- 🛡️ Disease Resistance: Exceptionally high. Growers highlight its outstanding ability to resist Late Blight (Phytophthora), even when neighboring plants succumb to the disease.
From the description: “Early (90-100 days from emergence to harvest), determinate (limited growth) hybrid for growing in open ground tied to stakes. Fruits are small, weighing 20-25 g (0.7-0.9 oz), beautiful, glossy, in long clusters of 20 pcs. Ripen evenly, delighting with an abundant harvest. Sweet cherry tomatoes are much loved by children, a wonderful decoration for festive tables, everyday dishes, and canned assortments. The hybrid is resistant to major tomato diseases.”
It was planted on May 1st in the greenhouse. As for the “long clusters”—that didn’t work out, as you can see. The taste is a 3-4 out of 5, the skin is thick, but it stores perfectly until the end of October. I really liked it for pickling/canning. It is indeed highly resistant to diseases.
Edited October 24, 2016 by Drosera
Mine had exactly those long clusters and a lot of tomatoes. Yours looks like some kind of fake.
galka68:
Mine had exactly those long clusters and a lot of tomatoes. Yours looks like some kind of fake.
And on top of that, it says determinate! I thought it was an indeterminate.
Hellavtomske:
And on top of that, it says determinate! I thought it was an indeterminate.
According to the producer – SAKATA – it is determinate.
Hellavtomske:
And on top of that, it says determinate! I thought it was an indeterminate.
Nah… mine was 1.5m (5 ft) tall.
Here is what the State Register says about it =======
Variety: CHERRY BLOSSOM
Type: Cherry. Salad type. Early to mid-early. The plant is determinate. Leaf of medium size, green. Inflorescence is complex. Peduncle with a joint. Fruit is round, smooth. Unripe color is green with a dark spot at the stem, ripe is red. 2 seed locules. Fruit weight 16-25 g (up to 30 g / 1 oz). Excellent taste. Dry matter in juice 5.7%, total sugar 2.7%. Marketable yield 94-99%. Resistant to nematodes, Verticillium, and Fusarium wilt.
Originator: SAKATA VEGETABLES EUROPE S.A.S. (France).
Oops, while I was typing, others already answered…
Natasha, mine was exactly according to the description, everything matched… It’s just that someone swiped my saved seeds…
The register says “Inflorescence is complex”! And not a simple cluster like on the Gavrish seed packet. On Sakata’s official photo, the tomatoes are shown in bulk, so it seems anything is possible.
galka68:
It’s just that someone swiped my saved seeds…
I also thought someone stole my seeds a few times, but then I found out the packets had stuck to each other so perfectly that when you picked them up, it felt like just one packet… discovered it by accident later.
No, mine were super long braids, 30-40 tomatoes per cluster…. 😕
I grew Cherry Blossom this year. Having read that it is determinate, I left an appropriate amount of space for it, but it grew like an indeterminate and became so powerful! The tomatoes are sweet, and the weight was over 30 grams. It set fruit well and for a long time. I pulled it out of the glass greenhouse last, only when it suffered from frost, and there were so many tomatoes on it! The taste was not lost during storage. I will plant it again.
Olenka, my Straus variety looked like that, but this Blossom was specifically braided. I’ll try to find the picture from the agromarket now.
And here is the one I bought, I will plant it in 2017:
“Early hybrid, indeterminate for growing in open ground (on a trellis) and protected ground. The fruit is round, red, weighing 20-25 g. Excellent taste. An average of 20 fruits ripen on one cluster.”
I grew it in 2015 in a container, seeds from Hupta. It was short, but it got hit hard by Late Blight (Phytophthora); it was a very wet and cold summer.
I grew Cherry Blossom in 2014 and 2016. Overall, I am very satisfied with the variety: tasty, mid-early, and resistant to diseases. Its height is not very tall, 1.2 – 1.4 meters (4-4.5 ft). The clusters are not complex, but exactly like on the picture—tomatoes lined up in one row on both sides. I grew it in a greenhouse.
The bush is vigorous; it didn’t particularly need a heavy-duty support, tying it with twine was quite enough. It didn’t produce a ton of suckers. The foliage has a bluish tint and massive leaf “paws”. I wouldn’t say the yield was crazy high, but it bore fruit until mid-September; even the tomatoes that set in September all turned red. In 2014, the summer wasn’t damp, so I had no Late Blight at all. But in 2016, Late Blight started raging as early as late July, and Cherry Blossom didn’t even get infected from a sick neighboring bush.
For fresh eating—definitely suitable, moderately sweet, quite meaty, the tomatoes are not tiny, a good size for a cherry.
For pickling/marinating—it’s perfect, anyway, preserved in their own juice, they are the best I have.
Among the disadvantages—it occasionally skips fruit sets (drops blossoms), but this might be my fault; it gets stuffy in the greenhouse during the week and there is no one to ventilate it (the automatic window vent is apparently not enough).
I will plant it again if the seeds sprout. They are from 2013; last year they sprouted without problems, we’ll see how it goes this year.
