📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Cosmic Eclipse
- 🌍 Origin: A visually stunning novelty release from Brad Gates (Wild Boar Farms, USA).
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate. Grows to about 1.5–1.7 meters (5-5.5 ft) in a greenhouse, slightly shorter in open ground.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Small to medium cocktail-sized round fruits (usually under 100g / 3.5 oz). The coloration is incredibly striking: a mix of green, dark green, purple (anthocyanin), and dark brick-red stripes and specks. The walls are relatively thick.
- 👅 Flavor: Highly debated! Some growers love the complex, slightly fruity taste (one even noted a hint of tarragon). Others found it completely mediocre and bland.
- ⏳ Maturity & Yield: While the breeder lists it as early-mid season with high yield, several Russian growers in cooler zones found it to be quite late (a “slow thinker”) with underwhelming production.
Cosmic Eclipse is a tall (1.5–1.7 meters / 5-5.5 ft in the greenhouse) variety with a mid-season ripening time. The fruits are medium-sized, beautiful, round, purple with stripes. Excellent taste—juicy, sweet, and aromatic with a fruity tartness.
What beauties! I can see the outer walls are quite thick, which means they would be excellent for making sun-dried (dehydrated) tomatoes too.
I notice they have 2 seed locules (chambers). From my experience, 2-locule fruits are great for whole canning/pickling. Did you try canning them?
Quote from ALIANNA:
Did you try canning them?
In my family, all tomatoes are either eaten fresh or juiced. I haven’t tried canning them.
Seeds from Popenko. Grew outdoors in open ground. Beautiful, I liked the taste, and the skin is quite thick/dense.
Seeds from Popenko. Grew in the greenhouse. Tall, productive, and kept fruiting right up until the frost.
I did not like the taste at all, and I do not plan to grow it again. Didn’t try canning it.
I gave some seedlings of this variety to my mom. It grew in a greenhouse for her too. She didn’t like the taste either.
It is beautiful, though.
Quote from Ovechka:
Grew in the greenhouse.
Wait, is it strictly a greenhouse variety??? Or can you plant it outdoors in the garden too? 😮
Edited March 28, 2018 by Drosera
Quote from Svetlyachok-plus:
…excellent for making sun-dried tomatoes too.
I have never dried tomatoes before… I have no idea how that will turn out. I planted it for the first time this year, hoping it lives up to my expectations! 🙌
“Cosmic Eclipse, USA. A variety by Brad Gates. Indeterminate. The fruits are round, very unusually colored with a mix of green, dark green, purple, and dark red colors. Tasty, weighing up to 100g (3.5 oz). A worthy ornament for any garden.” — This is the description from Popenko’s catalog.
It’s all true. It is both beautiful and tasty. The coloration is similar to ‘Gargamel’, but even more beautiful. I could never quite capture it in all its glory in a photo. In real life, it is much more stunning.
A friend of mine said it has an aftertaste of tarragon. I don’t know about tarragon, but the flavor undertone is very distinct and pleasant. The tomato is dense. Indeterminate. It turned out to be mid-early for me.
And in these photos, it’s the exact same fruit, just shown from different sides. I just wanted to keep taking pictures of it constantly.
Sveta, how do you like the taste of this variety compared to other anthocyanin (blue/black) varieties?
Quote from Nata N.:
how do you like the taste of this variety compared to other anthocyanin varieties?
Natash, it’s not just anthocyanin, it’s also striped. Or rather, covered in tiny specks/splatters. I really liked the taste. Especially the aftertaste. It is dense, not like marmalade, but it doesn’t crunch either. Deee-licious!
The bush is a standard indeterminate, nothing outstanding, reached about 1.2–1.5m (4-5 ft) in open ground. This year, almost all my antho-tomatoes wilted in the heat, but this specific variety completely died in one of the beds. However, in two other spots where it grew practically abandoned—no pruning, no truss thinning, no staking, none of the things you normally do with tomatoes—it was perfectly healthy and strong.
It’s quite late in terms of maturity. Over 4 months of vegetative growth, it only set 2-3 trusses. The fruits are under 100 grams, about 5 per truss, so the yield is nothing to write home about. On the photo is the 1st truss; the tomato in the photo is exactly 3 (THREE!) months old. It’s a very slow thinker.
Here is what Brad Gates himself writes about the variety:
“Very good production. Early-mid season. Very good, sweet rich and juicy flavor. Great ability to hang on the vine ripe and stay edible better than most. Good post harvest shelf life. Slow to break down and extended eating quality.”
So, they promise high yield, early-mid season maturity, great flavor, long shelf life (one version of the description even said up to 2 months without flavor loss!), and good keeping qualities.
“Everybody lies” (c). None of this turned out to be true for me. The flavor is totally mediocre; it’s not worth growing small cocktail tomatoes just for this taste (take ‘Brad’s Atomic Grape’, for instance: with a similar striped antho-coloration, it had fantastic flavor and yield!). For me, it wasn’t early, or even mid-season. The yield was low. It stored worse than half of my other varieties… In general, it’s just meh. Just an exotic novelty to surprise your friends with, nothing more.
I won’t be growing it again, and I don’t recommend it.
