Tomato Plant Profile: The 'Black Krim' Heirloom Tomato - TRG 2011

Tips, Tricks

1. I have 8 Black krim and 8 Cherokee purple plants this year..they are excellent tomatoes,all though some of them can look really strange
2. Re: the Black Cherry.... better keep it 5-ft or more from anything else... it will take over . Great production with pretty good taste but you wont be able to eat it all. I wont grow it again. Cage it as it will grow 8 ft or more. In all directions.
   J.
3. How many pounds of tomatoes did the plants yield on average in the containers? Did you add fertilizer? 
4. I am on a black/purple trend this year, I have two Black Krims, one Indigo Rose, started seeds for Black Cherry tomatoes and have one Purple Bell bell pepper plant, all in containers. First year trying to grow any of them in Zone 8, North Central Texas.
   
5. What does mean heirloom?
6. Krim translates as Crimea. Crimea is "Krim" in Ukrainian, Polish and Russian. It's actually a peninsula (almost an island but not quite) that juts into the Black Sea and it is now part of Ukraine. 
7. Thanks! Hopefully they'll be turning soon then!
8. They take longer than you think and then all turn at once. Mine took probably nearly 80 days to turn.
9. Any idea how long before they start turning color? I've had some huge fruit for awhile now, and the shoulders are starting to turn a darker green, but Not a speck of red or maroon at all! (And thanks for putting this up! Great info!)
10. Thanks so much for responding!
11. Having two in the pot does make them compete. The cherries are smaller and get to size. The Kim's will be smaller so I'd pick them. 
12. I have my black krim sharing a large pot with a husky cherry red tomato. The cherries are doing really well but the krim don't seem to be getting any bigger than about half the size of yours. They seem pretty ripe. Should I pick them now? Will the next fruit produce bigger or is it because they are sharing a pot with another tomato plant?
13. Yep plant leaves curl for various reasons. It isn't something to worry about if you are sticking with a good watering and feeding routing. Container tomatoes curl, in my opinion, more then earth planted tomatoes. In any cause it is just there response to environmental factors. Not much we can do. But it won't hurt the plant.
14. the leaves on my black krim tomato plants are curling this year. And I noticed your plant seems to be doing the same thing. is this because of high temperatures?
15. We're touching into 90+ temps right now. Fortunately tomorrow it'll back down to 90 tops, then a little less thereafter. I layered on some mulch over the top of the soil, to help avoid soil splash during rain and help retain soil warmth overnight. The Black Krim plant is finally "launching" itself into more aggressive growth and I'm letting it branch out. It'll be interesting to see how tall it gets, being a potted plant. Longer support struts are next! ;-)
16. Excellent. You enjoy it. High heat does get it but it is worth growing. Good luck.
17. We've been pretty mild up here (northern NJ), so I don't think it was heat in my case. I'm just wondering if it might be the stage, where sometimes a plant may end up aborting flowers because it needs to produce more foliage. I lucked out with one early tomato and that's it. A yellow boy growing adjacent has 2 nice ones just passing ping pong ball size, and two more just started about the size of blueberries right now.
18. I was given ripened fruit from this variety last year by a co-worker. I successfully saved the seeds in a fermentation method. And this year it is the biggest tomato plant variety I have going!
19. Sometimes the heat messes up tomato setting with the flowers if it happens to be around 90 there. The Krim got beat up by the heat when it hit 90+. But before that it was doing great with great tasting tomatoes.
20. I'm crazy about Kumato tomatoes, but I haven't found places where I can buy seedlings. The Black Krim looked to be somewhat similar, so I bought a seedling of that variety. Mine managed to start producing a fruit very early on, about 3/4 the size of a tennis ball now. Blossoms appear but dry up. In one case a fruit started but then aborted about the time I got the idea to spray apple juice. Not sure if that was a coincidence or a mistake!