📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Pineapple Pig
- 🌍 Origin: A stunning striped bicolor variety bred by the legendary American breeder Brad Gates (Wild Boar Farms).
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate. A massive, powerful vine that sets very heavy fruits. Requires strong support, as the trusses can break under the weight. Being a “southern” (California) variety, it can struggle to reach its full potential in regions with short/cool summers.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Oblate (flattened-round) beefsteaks. Base color is creamy-yellow to light yellow with golden and sometimes faint green striping. Very large, weighing up to 400g (14 oz).
- 👅 Flavor & Ripening Trick: The flavor is highly dependent on picking it at the exact right moment. If picked too early, it can be sour as a lemon. If allowed to fully ripen (or ripen indoors until slightly soft), the flavor becomes pleasantly sweet and very well-balanced.
- 💡 Pro Tip: In cooler climates with less sun, the fruits may appear paler (almost creamy-white) and take a very long time to ripen off the vine.
Seeds were from Popenko’s catalog.
His description of the variety: “New! A variety from Brad Gates. The fruits are oblate, creamy-colored with golden stripes, good taste, weighing up to 400 g (14 oz).”
I grew it in the greenhouse, pruned to 1 main stem. As of July 14th, it had set 8 tomatoes. The lower fruits were smaller, and the upper ones were larger.
Edited January 17, 2015 by Drosera
Lyuda, how did it taste?
Galina, I just knew someone was going to ask that 😂. I try not to write about taste. I might dislike it, but someone else might love it. You just have to try it for yourself 😉.
Lyuda, is it a bicolor?
And it’s easy to say “try it for yourself”. But where am I supposed to find the garden space to try them all? 😂
Ovechka said:
I try not to write about taste. I might dislike it, but someone else might love it. You just have to try it for yourself 😉.
That’s no fun! 🙄 Maybe I trust your taste! 😉 Let’s try again: Lyudochka, in your personal opinion, how was it? Did you like it? 😂
No, I did not like it 😂. I don’t think it was a true bicolor inside either (I can’t remember exactly, I don’t think I took a picture of it sliced open 😐).
Ovechka said:
…I don’t think I sliced it open 😐
Did you just swallow it whole?! 😮 😂😂😂 Well, no wonder you didn’t like it! Try shoving half a kilo of tomato into your mouth all at once! 😂😂😂
Nope, Galya, I just sent it straight into the juicer because I couldn’t physically eat any more tomatoes at that point 😂.
My “Pig” was highly productive. The bush was incredibly vigorous, and the trusses had to be tied up because they couldn’t support the weight of the massive fruits.
I had a hard time determining its exact stage of ripeness. I picked the first one a little too early, and it was sour as a lemon. I waited and finally caught the exact moment of full ripeness, and only then was the taste pleasantly sweet—you could say very well-balanced. We ate some fresh, and the rest went into making yellow tomato juice. Everyone in my family had a mixed reaction to the flavor: some liked it, some not so much, and some just didn’t “get” it. But visually, it’s a very attractive, handsome tomato!
Mine was light yellow with faint stripes, and inside it was also yellow and very juicy.
Mine was indeed creamy (almost white) with golden stripes. The taste wasn’t disgusting, but it wasn’t super either. I also had very few fruits on the bush, and the higher up they grew, the larger they were. My seeds were from Lyuda.
Tomatanya said:
Mine was indeed creamy (almost white) with golden stripes…
Judging by the color in your photo, it looks like yours wasn’t fully ripe yet. When they are fully ripe, the green stripes practically disappear. They were exceptionally tasty when I let them sit indoors for a bit until they became slightly soft.
I found another photo. The bright yellow ones on the left side are them. For me, they were very productive, although a bit late for my climate (but I planted them out quite late, in the first weeks of June). Our season ends around October 22nd, so a lot of them had to be picked green to ripen indoors. I wouldn’t call them white at all. As mine ripened, the light yellow background developed darker golden-yellow stripes instead of green ones.
I’m not sure… I picked mine green, and it ripened indoors for a very long time—at least 2 weeks. It never got any brighter in color, and it never got soft either; it remained a very firm tomato. As you can see in my photo, it clearly has yellow stripes on a white background. Maybe it’s just our climate—we don’t get much sun.
That is possible. I planted mine in the very front row, in the sunniest spot. It is a southern variety (California), so in places with short summers, it really needs to be acclimated. Mine didn’t produce as many trusses as it potentially could have, but I was growing it in 2 stems. The upper trusses also took a very long time to ripen indoors.
I’m almost embarrassed to ask, but why do you have CD discs hanging in your greenhouse?
They scare away the birds, especially in the mornings!
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