DaCosta’s Portuguese Tomato Review

DaCosta’s Portuguese. A productive and very tasty slicing variety. Grown outdoors in the open ground, the fruits weighed around 7-10.5 oz (200-300 grams). I pruned them to a double leader (2 stems). The color of the fruits is very beautiful and unusual, a deep dark pink. The tomatoes are juicy, and in mid-summer, they had a very rich, true tomato flavor with a great sweetness.

Towards late fall, the taste definitely changed for the worse, but I think the reason is that I completely stopped feeding and fertilizing them. The very first fruits cracked slightly at the blossom end, but the subsequent ones were perfectly smooth. I would classify it as a mid-season variety. It has definitely entered my favorites list 😋! Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo of them on the vine. 🤫 And I’m already completely out of seeds.

I am very happy with DaCosta. Productive, tasty, with sugary-sweet flesh. My largest fruit was 16 oz (450g), pruned to 2 stems. I grow it regularly.

Ladies, could you tell me please, I assume it’s an indeterminate since you’re pruning it to 2 stems?

Yes, I totally forgot to mention that it is an indeterminate variety.

It set fruit beautifully and ripened perfectly for me outdoors. Large, meaty, and sweet. I really liked it! 👍

My DaCosta (seeds from Popenko) grew in the hoop house. Extremely happy with this variety.

I like it too, seeds also from Popenko. Grew it for the first time last year, had ones hitting 1.7 lbs (800 g) and bigger. Planted it again this year)

Seeds from ElenaN 🌸 Grew in the greenhouse, amazing yield on 3 main stems 👍👍👍 I even needed to add extra stakes and string them up to the ceiling because the vines were collapsing onto all the neighbors under the weight of the fruit 😄 Taste is a solid 4 out of 5. They got yellow shoulders from too much sun, we barely had any rain this summer 😛

My seeds were also from Elena, but I had almost no yellow shoulders. And almost no seeds either! 🙂 A really good tomato! 👍 Grew outdoors.

I loved this variety 👍 Beautiful, large, and very delicious tomatoes.

This year I grew DaCosta in the greenhouse, not outdoors like last year. Maybe that’s why the taste wasn’t a perfect 5 for me this time, but a 4+, just like for Svetlana.

My DaCosta also grew in the greenhouse, seeds also from ElenaN 🌸 – tasty, large tomatoes with an average weight of 10.4 oz (295g)… only one downside for me, I didn’t get that long-awaited “neon” glow from the skin 😉

Loved the variety! Thanks ElenaN for the seeds. Grew it to two stems, very productive, massive fruits. A couple of the bottom ones cracked, but the rest didn’t. I won’t comment on the taste, our weather was completely awful, and it ruined the flavor of everything.

I liked the variety, productive and tasty, plus it sets fruit really well in a hoop house.

Dear Elena N, thank you for DaCosta’s Portuguese. It was my #1 tomato in the greenhouse in 2014.

DaCosta’s Portuguese 2015:

DaCosta made me really happy with a delicious harvest too. I will be planting it again next season.

DaCosta is just something else!!!! The discovery of the year for us! It was one of the earliest to ripen, and one of the absolute sweetest. And it gave me my biggest tomato of the year, almost 2 lbs (900g). The plant is indeterminate, not flimsy at all, but not a huge sprawling monster either, just medium vigor. It sets massive fruits. Right now they have green shoulders, but that’s probably my fault in managing the climate…

The sugar levels are off the charts (the only thing sweeter was Orange Russian). Long story short, this variety is staying with me forever!!!!

Liked the variety, did great both in the greenhouse and outdoors. Only thing is it didn’t ripen early for me; it acted as a mid-season inside and was late outdoors.

I am totally surprised by this variety. The first fruits just started ripening. Not only is it one of the heaviest yielders, but the taste is super! In this rotten, damp summer, DaCosta delivered a very bright, sharp tomato flavor packed with sweetness. Grew in a poly greenhouse, pruned to 2 stems, yield was about 11 lbs (5 kg) per plant. I’m just kicking myself that I only planted three bushes. It’s permanently on my grow list now! 👏

Could you guys advise me… is it too late to sow DaCosta right now? I just got my hands on the seeds…

Andreevna said:
Could you guys advise me… is it too late to sow DaCosta right now? I just got my hands on the seeds…

I think you’re fine to plant it, Irina! It acts like an early variety.

My DaCosta is from ElenaN. Huge thanks to her for the seeds! A very productive and beautiful tomato. Pretty tasty, but honestly almost too big to eat just like that (the first truss had 3 tomatoes weighing over a pound / 500g each!). The largest one ended up being almost 1.5 lbs (700 grams)!

I am also very happy with DaCosta. This year it was even more productive, larger, and just as tasty as last year. I will absolutely keep planting it. This was my biggest tomato.

I liked the variety too, it’s wonderful… 😋 Sveta, thank you!!!

Tell me, is this variety super juicy or is it more meaty/sugary? Does it have at least a little bit of acidity/tang?

The tomatoes are juicy, there is definitely a tang, and the flavor is very well balanced 😋😋😋 Here is mine grown from a fused megabloom.

DaCosta grew in the greenhouse, pruned to a single leader just like everything else I grew this year. Large tomatoes, tasty and beautiful. I was really pleased with how early they ripened, which is a huge plus in our climate zone. It only had about 3 tomatoes per cluster, but they were quite heavy. 🤷‍♀️ I’ll definitely plant it again.

Excellent, productive variety. This past season it rewarded me with delicious fruits once again.

Can anyone tell me what leaf type DaCosta is supposed to have? I have two seedlings with Regular Leaf and one with Potato Leaf. Which one is correct? Growing it for the first time.

Myaus said:
Can anyone tell me what leaf type DaCosta is supposed to have? I have two seedlings with Regular Leaf and one with Potato Leaf. Which one is correct?

Mine is Regular Leaf, not PL. I’m growing it for the third year, it’s the real deal.

I sowed it this year too. Do you guys need to support/tie up the fruit trusses?

I really wanted this variety. First time growing it. I have 2 plants in the greenhouse. Both from the same seed source. Both plants are doing great, setting fruit without dropping blossoms, the bush structure and leaf type are identical. BUT… one is producing oblate (flattened) fruits, and the other is throwing hearts. Which one is true? Which one should I save seeds from?

I guess I’ll decide based on the final ripe fruit? (If we actually get any this season…)

Tata55 said:
…BUT… one is producing oblate (flattened) fruits, and the other is throwing hearts. Which one is true? Which one should I save seeds from?

The true one is oblate.

Thank you!

A wonderful variety – productive and incredibly tasty, it’s earned a permanent spot in my garden.

Grew it for the first time this year. I was deeply impressed, saved seeds, and it will be one of my favorites for many years to come, I hope.

Excellent variety! But my seeds ended up segregating into Regular Leaf and Potato Leaf. I only had one seedling of each, so I kept both. The Potato Leaf version turned out to be earlier and more productive. I saved seeds from both, and will definitely plant them both again next season.

I grew DaCosta for the first time this year. Loved the taste and the yield, and the size totally blew me away. ALL the fruits were massive, not just on the bottom clusters, but all the way up the top of the vine too. Set fruit very well, barely dropped any blossoms. And despite the sheer size, it was actually one of my earliest to ripen. I will definitely repeat it.

By the way, my single biggest tomato this season came from DaCosta. A total giant. The rest of the fruits were also ranging from 1 to 1.5 lbs (500-700 g). Also, despite being so huge, I barely managed to scrape any seeds out of them. Some fruits had literally zero seeds in them. 🤷‍♀️ Well, here are photos of the plant.

My single biggest fruit came from DaCosta this year too.

Well, thank God, third time’s the charm–DaCosta finally worked out for me! I had tried sowing seeds from different sources. This year the seeds were from Tomatinka (Vera). It was finally productive, tasty, and beautiful. I always pinch off fused megablooms. The fruits turned out uniformly large, over 10.5 oz (300g). Big thanks to Vera and the ladies who shared seeds with me! Now I’ll be planting from my own saved stash. 🎩

The variety has absolutely no flaws, only merits: productive, beautiful, tasty, resistant to diseases and weather anomalies. Grew outdoors in the open ground.

TatianaSh said:
My single biggest fruit came from DaCosta this year too.

Ladies (Tanya and Alla)! I’ve been dying of curiosity but was too shy to ask – were your DaCostas grown from my seeds? If I’m not mistaken, I mailed you some. I’m just always curious to see what comes of my “offspring” 😊 and negative results are just as important to me, I want to know about them. My DaCosta was grown in the absolute best spot in the garden (in terms of soil fertility), it never got sick, so I confidently shared seeds from it. My original source was Irina from Kuban.

Olga (Myaus), was that genetic segregation from my seeds too? 📝

Yulia, my DaCosta wasn’t from your seeds, someone else gifted them to me earlier. Yours are still sitting in my stash, I will definitely plant them.

I did plant Kursk Black from your seeds—absolutely loved the flavor, but it wasn’t very productive. However, our summer was terrible 😣, and it was growing outdoors. I’ll definitely repeat it, but in the greenhouse next time.

Yulia, yes, mine were from you! I had three plants. The third one threw very interesting tomatoes, these large meaty plum shapes, we nicknamed them “Bobyshki” (pouches/ruffles). They were early and productive. At first, I thought they were going to be a truffle shape, but they just kept growing and growing. I’ll be growing out all the variants next year.

Myaus said:
Yulia, yes, mine were from you! I had three plants. The third one threw very interesting tomatoes, these large meaty plum shapes…

Olga, wow, that is crazy! Vova Putin was growing on one side of my DaCosta… I can’t even remember what was on the other side… but I have no idea where plum/pouch shapes could have come from 🤔 And there were no Potato Leaf varieties growing anywhere near it 😄 Thanks for the report!

m_Kallista said:
…And there were no Potato Leaf varieties growing anywhere near it 😄 Thanks for the report!

Yulia, I had 1 seed from your batch come up as a Potato Leaf, but it died outdoors. The second plant grew into these sweet, raspberry-pink truffles with very thin skin. They weren’t huge, but they were so sweet that my family devoured every single one, I couldn’t even save any seeds! 🙂

Murka said:
…The second plant grew into these sweet, raspberry-pink truffles with very thin skin. They weren’t huge, but they were so sweet…

Masha, thanks for letting me know! Otherwise, I would have never known about this crazy genetic soap opera with my seeds. Now I’m itching to sow my own saved DaCosta seeds—I have about 5 left, I’ll plant them side-by-side with Irina’s original seeds just to compare. Very interesting!

Yulia, I was also too shy to ask. One plant from your seeds gave me brown tomatoes with green shoulders, and another plant gave me red ones that almost seemed to have a neon glow. Both variants were oblate and super delicious, but the neon ones were all catfaced and misshapen. I saved seeds from both.

Here are the ones I’m calling brown:

And in the center of the table – the red (catfaced) ones:

What color was your original? Wish I had a photo of them side by side, but they were distinctly different.

Olga, brown?! That is insane… but darn it, that means it’s absolutely not my DaCosta. So this plant threw a complete surprise off-type cross. I’m 99% sure I couldn’t have mixed up the seeds, meaning it’s not just a mislabeled packet… unless my kids were messing around while the seeds were drying on the counter… but they don’t usually do that. And I’m extremely meticulous about labeling everything during fermentation and drying. Waiting to hear from Alla now 😄

Here is the bush that produced my surprise-DaCosta:

And the tomato itself:

Yulia, hi. I replied to you in a PM after checking my garden log for this year. But then I went digging in my seed stash. I DO have DaCosta from you, but the ones I actually planted this year were from Elsa30.

It’s just so hard to find room to plant everything people gift and mail you! But your seeds are safe, their time will come eventually. 🌸

Alla, got it! That means my memory isn’t totally failing me yet 😄 I completely understand, I have so many unplanted seeds too – it’s our shared disease, don’t even worry about it 😉 I will definitely plant my own saved DaCosta—I need to see what happened, if it was cross-pollination or something else. The spot where those tomatoes grew was absolutely swarming with bumblebees… but now we have a different yard, it’ll be much more sheltered, not out in an open field like before 😄

I planted DaCosta’s Portuguese this year. Seeds from Svetlana Trifonova. The tomatoes turned out shaped like truffles. Not very big, but productive, with thin pink skin. Sweet and meaty. The bush grew outdoors. I saved seeds, going to try growing them in the greenhouse next year.

zjuli said:
The tomatoes turned out shaped like truffles. Not very big…

That is definitely not DaCosta.

I really love DaCosta’s Portuguese. But there is one downside, or rather, a nuance: it has a catastrophically low seed count. And I forget about it every single year. 🤦‍♀️

This year, an 11 oz (320g) tomato had exactly three seeds inside. And I had already picked and eaten all the others off the bush. I know it’s my own fault. 😡

I’m writing this here so others don’t forget to play it safe – always save multiple tomatoes for seed, not just one.

A total disappointment of a tomato 😞 A massive, tall bush, loaded with tomatoes from top to bottom. But the taste… at the beginning of ripening, it was completely sour, you could literally put it in tea instead of a lemon. Later on, it gained some sweetness, leaving only a very slight tang. But the flavor profile was still just… washed out and bland. Didn’t impress me at all.

Yulia, maybe it lacked Potassium? I agree, DaCosta’s flavor isn’t explosive compared to some other heirlooms. But you can’t call it tasteless. Though taste is subjective. It is less sweet than, say, Batyanya or Vater Rhein. But it has just a hint of acid, it’s a solid, meaty tomato. For me, it’s in my “workhorse” category-productive, and very early, my earliest large beefsteak. The first ones went into salads, the rest into juice/ketchup.

By the way, the first three I set aside for seeds had absolutely NO seeds inside. But starting from the 3rd truss, they had plenty, I saved a huge surplus.

Olga, I don’t know what it lacked 🤷‍♀️ It was growing right next to Babushkino and Zarevo, two delicious tomatoes. On the other side were Butylochnye (Bottle-shaped) and Shchedraya Slivka Tarasenko. Both tasted vastly better than DaCosta. This year I only had two major disappointments – DaCosta and African Vining. And practically everyone raves about both of them. But for me, they turned out, to put it mildly, tasteless. And that’s putting it very mildly. 😞

For me this year, under the stress of extreme temperature swings (going from prolonged cold snaps straight into abnormal heat waves), DaCosta performed poorly. The fruits were fasciated (catfaced and ugly), and tasteless. They took forever to color up and had hard white cores inside. I think this is a variety for a milder climate. It’s a shame to drop it, but I need to prioritize varieties that handle temperature swings better.

Yulya said:
I don’t know what it lacked 🤷‍♀️ It was growing right next to Babushkino and Zarevo, two delicious tomatoes.

See, I dropped Babushkino. The taste was just average for me. The fruits crack, and the moment the temperature rises, it drops all its blossoms.

But I absolutely love DaCosta’s taste. Unobtrusive but perfectly balanced, and the flesh is like butter. You wouldn’t believe it, but my family ate our entire DaCosta harvest just on sandwiches. We’d take a piece of freshly baked wheat bread, throw a thick slab of DaCosta on top, and eat it just like that. Delicious. My granddaughter even started calling it the “butter tomato” 😂

But my son hated it. He said it wasn’t firm enough and lacked acidity. I grow those old-school, acidic Soviet-style slicers just for him.

Karamel said:
See, I dropped Babushkino. The taste was just average for me. The fruits crack, and the moment the temperature rises, it drops all its blossoms.

It’s like we’re talking about two completely different varieties. My Babushkino is a highly productive, incredibly tasty workhorse. It didn’t crack at all, and it pumped out fruit all the way to the greenhouse ceiling without breaking a sweat.

DaCosta started off as sour as a lemon, then lost the acid but never gained any sweetness. Although the yield was good. My other tasteless varieties this year were African Vining and Lyubimyi Malyshik. Everything else had varying degrees of acid and sweetness, but they were all delicious.

😄 Well, maybe I’ll try growing DaCosta one more time from a different seed source. But definitely not next year.

Here is my DaCosta’s Portuguese. I searched for 2 years to find the “true” strain. Size, color, taste, meatiness – everything is top-notch. Such a beauty! The only catch is, I only get that beautiful bright color and that amazing taste if it fully vine-ripens, colors up completely, and hangs for just a bit longer. And it has to be warm and sunny. The late-season fruits that were ripening in the cold September weather were completely different and underwhelming…

Rozalinda said:
Here is my DaCosta…

Wow, look at all those seeds!!! (I’m so jealous! 😉) I got 3 seeds out of an entire plant (not just one fruit). My flesh has absolutely no “holes” (locules). It’s completely solid and uniform. It actually looks a bit weird. But that’s exactly what makes it slice like a block of butter. 😉

I basically have zero seeds. And I already promised some to my friend, my neighbor, and my daughter-in-law. They all loved the taste and yield. I decided I’m going to start a seed super early in February and then take cuttings to propagate it. What else can I do? 🤷‍♀️

I always read these stories about totally seedless tomatoes… 😳 I wish I could grow one like that just once! 😞 Maybe my DaCosta is the wrong strain, since it actually HAS seeds? 🤔 Though, given the sheer size of the fruit, it’s still a relatively small amount of seeds…

Here is my DaCosta’s Portuguese. Grew in the greenhouse, excellent yield, large and very tasty tomatoes, buttery flesh. Not a lot of seeds, but I managed to save enough 🙂

Rozalinda said:
Maybe my DaCosta is the wrong strain, since it actually HAS seeds? 🤔

Why would it be the wrong strain? Judging by the photo and description, it’s absolutely true to type. It’s just growing conditions. Maybe my DaCosta experiences more stress (I completely stop watering my tomatoes starting in late May/early June), which is why it doesn’t produce seeds. 😉

I’ll stick up for DaCosta too—it’s one of the tastiest tomatoes out there. And its yield is fantastic.

I grew it in 2018. Both in the greenhouse and outdoors, and it was tasty and productive in both places. And that’s considering I neglected the outdoor ones and gave them minimal care, while the greenhouse ones suffered through 6 weeks of insane, brutal heat. I attached a photo of 3 tomatoes from a single outdoor truss—and there were actually 5 on there! They either didn’t fit in the frame or were picked earlier.

I can’t give you the exact yield per bush, but it was plenty (just average those 3 tomatoes out and multiply by 16-20 fruits total across 4-5 trusses). My bushes were partially laying on the ground because the heavy clusters were dragging the whole vine down to one side. In the greenhouse, I had one hit over 1.3 lbs (600g), but the average is closer to 10-12 oz (300-350g).

The taste is very, very good – a balanced tomato profile with pronounced sweetness, but it has its own unique notes. A classic slicer, also great processed into juice. The outdoor ones ripened very uniformly, those 3 tomatoes in my photo were from the same cluster and were picked at the same time.

I gutted the massive beauty sitting on my palm in the photo for seeds. It had a perfectly normal amount of seeds – not a ton, but not empty either. Since people here were complaining about seedless fruits, I didn’t experience that. But I also didn’t spray the blossoms with any fruit-setting hormones, Boron, or anything else.

Rozalinda said:
The only catch is, I only get that beautiful bright color and that amazing taste if it fully vine-ripens, colors up completely, and hangs for just a bit longer. And it has to be warm and sunny.

This statement is probably true for us as well, but I can’t verify it. The thing is, in our region, tomatoes almost always ripen fully on the vine, we don’t ripen them on the counter indoors. At all. Basically, in early August we top the bushes, pinch off all suckers, and whatever is left on the vine ripens in the sun. We basically never pick underripe or breaker-stage fruits.

By the way, the fact that vine-ripened tomatoes taste better isn’t just true for DaCosta, it’s true for all tomatoes. It’s just that some varieties can ripen indoors without losing much flavor, while others can’t.

A juicy, sweet tomato with a slight tang. Great for salads, leaves a lot of sweet juice in the bowl, the texture is soft but doesn’t turn to mush. Delicious, all around.

The fruits weigh around 1.1-1.3 lbs (500-600 grams).

Quick question about the variety. This year I grew a DaCosta that looked like hearts. Do you think this is the real one? I really loved the tomato. Just doubts gnawing at me… it was so tasty! Maybe there are several strains? Has anyone grown one shaped like this?

Valentina said:
Maybe there are several strains? Has anyone grown one shaped like this?

Why assume it’s a different strain? Some variance in shape is totally acceptable, the color is pink, what’s really different about it? The plant habit matches – it’s not a towering giant outdoors or inside, has sturdy stems, and the fruit weight depends on your personal feeding, soil, and climate. And on how well the strain has adapted to your yard.

This year my DaCosta wasn’t as successful – the fruits were large but much more catfaced/ugly than last year. And overall less productive. I suspect outdoors it shouldn’t be pruned so heavily; better to grow it almost like a determinate, leaving 7-9 stems with one truss each.

Understood, thank you.

DaCosta – I’ve been planting it for several years in a row, I really like the variety. Large magenta tomatoes, meaty, with a rich true tomato flavor. My rating is a 4+ (a perfect 5 for me is something like Vater Rhein or Black Oxheart). If you provide enough Potassium, it colors up perfectly evenly (no green shoulders), doesn’t crack, and has no hard white cores inside. It just begs to be sliced into a salad 😋

The bush has a generative habit – it doesn’t waste energy pushing out crazy amounts of foliage, it’s focused on fruiting. My largest tomatoes usually come from this one and Vova Putin. Even the top trusses produce jumbos. In my first year growing it, it threw green shoulders, but that was entirely my fault – I didn’t feed it enough Potassium. And yes, the seed count in the fruits is generally very low.

I plant DaCosta every single year, very tasty tomatoes 😋 My yield varies from year to year, but the taste is always 👍

Beautiful, large, delicious tomatoes!!!! Thank you @tati9117 !!!!!

Valentina said:
I’ll show it again. Is this definitely not DaCosta? Or has anyone else had fruits like this…? Yes, it’s pink, meaty, resilient… but the fruits are heart-shaped for some reason. If anyone is an expert, show me one with fruits like this.

I’m definitely no expert, but here is my DaCosta’s Portuguese from this year.

Myaus said:
Can anyone tell me what leaf type DaCosta is supposed to have? I have two seedlings with Regular Leaf and one with Potato Leaf.

Out of my three plants this year, one also came up with a Potato Leaf (PL). I’m also growing it for the first time.