📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Large Barred Boar
- 🌍 Origin: An exotic release from Brad Gates at Wild Boar Farms (California, USA). It has become highly popular among Russian and Eastern European heirloom collectors.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate, mid-season variety. Typically grows to about 5 feet (1.5 m) tall. It prefers a very sunny, well-ventilated spot in the greenhouse, though many grow it successfully outdoors.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Large, stunning beefsteaks weighing 7-14 oz (200-400 g). The skin is a beautiful burgundy/mahogany brown with metallic green stripes. The shoulders can be slightly ribbed.
- 👅 Flavor: Known for an amazing, complex, sweet “dark tomato” flavor profile.
- 💡 Grower’s Note: On the forum, this variety is heavily debated and compared side-by-side with Chocolate Stripes. Growers note that Chocolate Stripes tends to produce taller, more vigorous vines with larger fruits, while Large Barred Boar can sometimes be stockier but very prolific.
Large Barred Boar
Grows up to 5 ft (1.5 m). Mid-season variety for the greenhouse. Large striped tomatoes, burgundy-brown with green stripes, the taste is amazing! Weight 7-14 oz (200-400 grams). Tomato exotic from California, USA by Brad Gates. This variety prefers a sunny spot in the greenhouse.
Photo by Azure
Photo by Elena Danko
This year I planted both Large Barred Boar and Chocolate Stripes (seeds sent by the girls here). Honestly, I didn’t notice much difference between them. And aside from their looks, they didn’t really impress me. I do plan to try them again next year, though.
I also grew both Chocolate Stripes and Large Barred Boar this year.
– You can definitely see the visual difference here.
But what about here? Who is the third one? 😉
Maybe Copia?
ol-lipi wrote:
Maybe Copia?
Nope — I didn’t grow that one.
AlexanderS wrote:
I also grew both Chocolate Stripes and Large Barred Boar this year…
Looking at the photo, I see Chocolate Stripes and Beauty King (or Queen), but the Boar isn’t there 😳
Drosera wrote:
Looking at the photo, I see Chocolate Stripes and Beauty King (or Queen), but the Boar isn’t there 😳
Sorry 😳, but Beauty King isn’t there — I’ve grown it before, it’s quite recognizable. But the Boar *is* there.
I’m suspecting something went wrong with my Boar (crossed seeds/off-type) 😕
AlexanderS wrote:
I’m suspecting something went wrong with my Boar…
It magically turned into a King! 😛
The Boar is supposed to be brown with stripes 🤫
Sveta, my Boar’s stripes don’t turn brown immediately either, only when it gets overripe 😉
Sasha, is the third one in the photo Silvery Fir Tree?
Tanya, your Boar has the proper green stripes on a red-brown background, not red stripes on an orange background.
Drosera wrote:
The Boar is supposed to be brown with stripes 🤫
Yeah, yeah — I already checked… but my Beauty King was pretty early.
tanja wrote:
Sasha, is the third one in the photo Silvery Fir Tree?
Nope, Tanya — I didn’t grow that one either 🙄 🌺
Drosera wrote:
Tanya, your Boar has the proper green stripes on a red-brown background, not red stripes on an orange background.
And ironically, I got my seeds from Tanya! 🌺 😉
Ah, I think I know the reason! Sasha has written about this before — for some reason, the color of “black” tomatoes in his garden always turns out more red, and we never really figured out why.
tanja wrote:
Ah, I think I know the reason! Sasha has written about this before — for some reason, the color of “black” tomatoes in his garden always turns out more red…
Exactly — when I find the time, I’m going to start a separate thread just for that issue…
tanja wrote:
…the color of “black” tomatoes in his garden always turns out more red…
But the color here isn’t red, it’s yellow-orange.
Drosera wrote:
But the color here isn’t red, it’s yellow-orange.
I won’t post an example of a true yellow-orange tomato here since it’s off-topic — but it definitely doesn’t look like this 😉
It’s more of a brownish-yellow…
Basically — the plant got decapitated (lost its main stem), I re-sowed it way late in the season, and as a result, it just didn’t have time to show its true potential + my ongoing issues with dark tomatoes — and this was the result 😄
I will absolutely be growing it again 😉
Here is a cross-section on August 6th.
It looks similar to Chocolate Stripes (CS), but there are differences: CS has a much more vigorous plant and larger fruits, and its coloring has flashes of silver.
This is how mine turned out:
I really loved Large Barred Boar. Grew it in the greenhouse, set fruit perfectly. The fruits are delicious and beautiful.
My Large Barred Boar didn’t disappoint either. I grew plants both in the greenhouse and outdoors in open ground. The outdoor ones produced genuinely huge fruits:
The ones in the greenhouse were extremely prolific, though the fruit size was slightly smaller:
I absolutely loved this variety — for its taste, its high yield, and just its overall beauty! 👍
I grew it in the greenhouse. Excellent variety — tasty, beautiful, and a heavy yielder. It differs from Chocolate Stripes both in plant habit and fruit shape.
I grew Large Barred Boar (LBB) and Chocolate Stripes (CS) this year. They were very different.
CS has a much taller and more vigorous bush, and the fruits are larger and tastier. LBB was very prolific (CS had a terrible yield for me this year, though it was much better last year), it’s tasty, but if you taste CS and LBB side-by-side, LBB is clearly lacking something in its flavor profile 🤷♀️ My vote goes to Chocolate Stripes.
On one plant, all the fruits had bizarre, funky shapes.
Mine wasn’t particularly large (the one in the photo isn’t even one of the biggest ones)… it just kept setting and setting fruit, though not incredibly abundantly… I ended up pulling the plant while it still had green fruits and blossoms on it.
Large Barred Boar was the discovery of the season for me this year. I loved it. Seeds were from Vera (Tomatinka). It grew in a well-ventilated and very sunny spot.
Lelikovna wrote:
I grew Large Barred Boar (LBB) and Chocolate Stripes (CS) this year. They were very different.
I also grew both Chocolate Stripes and LBB.
Chocolate Stripes is definitely taller. And LBB seems to have more ribbed shoulders. Chocolate Stripes is a smoother, more uniform fruit.. 🤔
My Chocolate Stripes didn’t have a high yield.
Edited September 21, 2018 by Drosera
I had some weirdness going on with mine. It was really stocky, short, and immediately threw out a ton of suckers; it wouldn’t grow up or out.
I snipped the top off and rooted it. And it’s growing the exact same way. What gives? 🤨
It’s growing outdoors. What went wrong?
The forum won’t let me attach photos.
My Large Barred Boar is putting out a great yield even in this summer’s weather. Oddly enough, it started pulling a little “beak” (pointed blossom end)… I’ll have to take a picture. Excellent variety.
Beautiful, robust plant. Height is no more than 5.5 ft (1.7 m). Growing in open ground. The fruits are oblate (broadly rounded). As it ripened, the skin turned matte. It only set one truss for me, but the fruits are massive. Good for variety’s sake, I guess. But it won’t be on my permanent grow list.
Edited August 14, 2025 by Marusha
Staying true to my favorites.
