Growers’ Notes and Photos (USDA Zones 4-6 Experience)
Seed packet description: Belongs to the slow-ripening storage group. Indeterminate, vigorous vine, hits 5 ft (1.5 m) tall. Fruits are large, meaty, and firm, averaging 8.8 oz (250 g), with some reaching 14 oz (400 g). Meant for fresh eating, long-term storage, and canning. Taste is rated highly for fresh eating and pickling. Keeps fresh until February or March. Resistant to TMV, fusarium, and leaf mold.
Photo credit: Lana_s_Kavkaza
How do you even know when it’s time to pick this one? It spends a whole month ripening off the vine anyway.
Folks are saying it tastes absolutely awful. Bought the seeds before I read the reviews. Fell for the packet description. Guess I’ll plant just one vine, verify it sucks, and move on. 😢
On 12/28/2014, azure said:
How do you even know when it’s time to pick this one? It spends a whole month ripening off the vine anyway.
Sveta, pretty sure it still hits the breaker stage on the vine, it just takes way longer to ripen up on the counter later.
On 12/28/2014, Alevtina said:
Folks are saying it tastes absolutely awful. Bought the seeds before I read the reviews. Fell for the packet description. Guess I’ll plant just one vine, verify it sucks, and move on. 😢
I got a feeling it’ll still taste way better than grocery store plastic tomatoes in December. Might be wrong, gonna test it out too.
On 12/28/2014, elena1984 said:
Sveta, pretty sure it still hits the breaker stage on the vine, it just takes way longer to ripen up on the counter later.
Just gotta make sure I don’t miss the picking window.
Planted one vine back in the 2014 season. Heavy yielder and practically bulletproof against disease. Beautiful plant. Knew it was a late one so I started seeds mid-Feb, started ripening on the vine in August. The leftovers I picked in September lasted till November before they started rotting. Taste was mediocre for a summer tomato, but once everything else ran out it was actually pretty decent, definitely better than store-bought. Mine never broke 3.5 oz (100 g), didn’t get any big ones.
On 1/15/2015, Tatyana said:
The leftovers I picked in September lasted till November before they started rotting. Taste was mediocre for a summer tomato, but once everything else ran out it was actually pretty decent, definitely better than store-bought.
Got this variety from Gusev too.
Maybe I should sow it in April, pick it in the fall, and just let it ripen until December? Store tomatoes right now are a nightmare, super expensive and totally bland. My son still inhales them in salads, but my husband and I just can’t stomach them after eating our own top-tier homegrown stuff.
My Long Keeper was from Biotekhnika. Adding to the packet description: at the mature green stage it turns a milky white color, won’t fully ripen on the plant, and will just drop off the vine once it hits mature green. Gets that creamy-pink color at full ripeness, about 30-40 days after picking. Mine actually turned that creamy-pink before I even picked them, meaning they ripened on the vine. Maybe sowing later and picking them while they’re still whitish really is the trick for good storage.
Got my seeds from Biotekhnika too.
Tatyana, when did you start your seeds?
Mid-February.
Bumping this thread to drop a quick review. If you want homegrown tomatoes for New Year’s, plant this and you’ll be a happy camper 😉
Tomatoes with delayed ripening genes are rarely all that tasty or nutritious, this one carries the alc gene.
Planted it outside in the dirt just for laughs. A bunch of them actually ripened on the vine. Taste is perfectly fine for an outdoor tomato. Not a beefsteak by any means, but definitely not flavorless. Not overly acidic either. Picked the rest into crates to ripen indoors. We’ll see how they hold up later.
Can anybody tell me if Long Keeper and Reverend Morrow’s Long Keeper are the exact same variety or two different ones?
Full Summary: Plant, Yield, Taste and Storage
- 🌿 Plant: Indeterminate vine, reaching about 5 ft (1.5 m). It is highly disease-resistant. The fruits are very firm, turning from pale green to a creamy orange-pink as they ripen. While commercial packets claim large fruits up to 14 oz (400 g), most growers report getting much smaller, 3.5 oz (100 g) round slicers.
- 📈 Yield: Excellent. It sets heavily and can be grown outdoors even in northern zones, provided you don’t expect it to ripen fully on the vine before frost.
- 👅 Taste: Utilitarian. Eaten in the middle of summer next to a juicy heirloom beefsteak, it will taste tough and mediocre. However, eaten in December after ripening slowly in a cardboard box, growers agree it easily beats expensive, flavorless grocery store winter tomatoes.
- 📦 Storage: World-class. Harvested at the mature green or breaker stage in late autumn, these tomatoes can easily last in cool indoor storage through New Year’s and even into early spring.
