SART ROLAISE TOMATO SEEDS

Solanum lycopersicum

An anthocyanin tomato that actually tastes good! These huge slicers have dark purple shoulders and marbled yellow and pink interior flesh that is super sweet and juicy. Very reminiscent of Old German, Gold Medal, Virginia Sweets and the like. The only anthocyanin “improved" tomato that we can actually eat thus far. As with the aforementioned varieties, flavor is best in a hot summer, and the flesh becomes mealy in cool weather, but even so these beauties are worth trying if you are determined to grow a “blue" tomato* worth eating.

Indeterminate attractive plants that are not particularly productive for us. Fairly late, around 80 days for the first ripe fruit. Fruits are ripe when the bottoms blush pink. Initially I thought they were ripe when yellow and soft, as they are typically described as being “white" with blue shoulders, but the critters tipped me off to their peak flavor by waiting to eat them until after the blossom end turned pink. When ripe enough for seeding the whole fruit is practically orange. Maybe we were gifted an off type or maybe our growing conditions affected the appearance, who knows. And who cares! This is a great tomato.

According to the internet Sart Rolaise was selected by Roland Boulanger in Belgium from a cross of White Wonder and Baby Blue, which seems positively miraculous. The name is listed elsewhere as “Roloise", but the seeds came to us as “Sart Rolaise", which reminds of the beautiful white Charolaise cattle. But of course our tomatoes did not stay white. Regardless of the provenance or name, this is a tomato worth growing.

Grown by Farmacie Isolde.

Packet contains at least 20 seeds.

*The transgenic ‘Purple Tomato' played no part in the breeding of Sart Rolaise, nor most of the “blue" tomatoes on the market, which were achieved using traditional breeding and selection. However, gardeners should know that the toothpaste is out of the tube with regard to transgenic tomatoes. As with many flowering species, it is a challenge to prevent cross-pollination between varieties in the context of a garden or open field. Thanks to a certain seed company whose hypocrisy and dishonesty knows no bounds, there are likely many thousands of unsuspecting growers in the United States with transgenic tomatoes in their gardens. Though tomato flowers are self-pollinating, the bumble bees love them and do occasionally transfer genes from one tomato to another. We would never grow or sell anything that we knew to be transgenic, but even certified organic crops of corn, beets, etc. are rife with contamination. There is nothing to remedy this new reality. Avoiding blue tomatoes for reasons other than that they usually taste bad is not advised.