🍅 Quick take: Miss Kennedy is a tall, indeterminate variety that produces dark, chocolate-colored oval/plum tomatoes. It has a very long fruiting season and sets reliable clusters of firm, meaty fruits. While fruit size can vary from a jumbo chicken egg up to 7 oz (200 g), growers agree that the dense, dark flesh and sweet flavor make it an outstanding choice for whole-fruit canning and blending into rich tomato juices. Full summary ↓
Growers’ Notes and Photos (USDA Zones 4-5 Experience)
Tall, highly productive vine with a really long fruiting season. In the greenhouse, it just kept setting fruit all the way until late September.
It throws out trusses of 6 to 8 oval-shaped, dark chocolate-colored fruits. The tomatoes are pretty firm, weighing up to 6.5-7 oz (180-200 g) with dark, dense flesh and a really nice taste. Great for whole-fruit canning and for blending into mixed tomato juices 👍
Edited February 16, 2017 by Drosera
Grew this in the greenhouse. Delicious. Mine were about the size of a jumbo chicken egg. Yield was average. Honestly, I think you need to run this vine on at least 3 stems to get good production out of it.
It didn’t drop any blossoms, every truss set perfectly. Really liked it.
Full Summary: Plant, Yield, Taste and Storage
- 🌿 Plant: A vigorous indeterminate vine that requires staking. It has a very long growing season, continuing to set fruit well into the cool days of early fall. Growers suggest pruning it to at least 3 stems to maximize production.
- 📈 Yield: Rated from average to highly productive. A very reliable setter that doesn’t drop its blossoms even under greenhouse stress. Produces uniform clusters of 6-8 fruits.
- 👅 Taste: Dense, meaty, and flavorful. It carries the classic rich, slightly earthy flavor typical of “black” tomatoes.
- 📦 Texture/Usage: The fruits are oval or plum-shaped with a deep chocolate color. Weights range from jumbo egg-sized up to 7 oz (200 g). The firm texture and thick flesh make them ideal for whole-fruit canning and juicing.
🍅 Grown Miss Kennedy? Share your zone and how it did for you in the comments below, and add your photos!
👨🌾 Editor’s Note: The Origins of ‘Miss Kennedy’
“Miss Kennedy” is a rare, dark paste/plum heirloom circulating among Eastern European seed collectors. Like many English-named heirlooms found in Eastern catalogs (such as “Michael Pollan” or “Paul Robeson”), the seeds were likely brought over by enthusiasts in the 1990s or early 2000s from US or European seed savers. While its exact Western alias might be obscured by years of trading and translation, it has earned a permanent spot in many Russian collections for being a fantastic, heavy-yielding “black” tomato.
“Miss Kennedy” is a rare, dark paste/plum heirloom circulating among Eastern European seed collectors. Like many English-named heirlooms found in Eastern catalogs (such as “Michael Pollan” or “Paul Robeson”), the seeds were likely brought over by enthusiasts in the 1990s or early 2000s from US or European seed savers. While its exact Western alias might be obscured by years of trading and translation, it has earned a permanent spot in many Russian collections for being a fantastic, heavy-yielding “black” tomato.
