Oh la la Aztec Black is a beautiful tomato!
Aztec Black has beautiful large cherry tomatoes in shades of dusky purple/black/pink that weigh 10 g to 20 g (0.5 oz to 1 oz). The tomatoes have a very good, sweet flavour and a wonderful crunch. If you like Black Cherry tomato, try Aztec Black. We think it is even more flavourful and hardy.
This is a high yielding variety. The plants are large (5-6 ft) but compact and sturdy. The plants produce early and keep producing all summer. Aztec Black also has a crazy strong root system, one of the deepest and thickest root systems we have ever seen in a tomato. This is a low maintenance variety that is very easy to grow.
Finally, Aztec Black tomatoes also have a long shelf-life, tomatoes we picked in mid-September were still sweet and crunchy in November.
A bit about Aztec Black’s history:
Aztec Black was first offered in the Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook in 2005 by Eduardo Valenzuela of West Sacramento, California (Del Rio Botanicals Farm). He noted that Aztec Black originally came from the Aztec people in Mexico. Unfortunately, that was the only information submitted to the SSE, so we don’t know if this was a variety found in a market or growing in the home gardens of an Aztec community.
We were curious if there were other records of purple/black/brown tomatoes from Mexico.
Indeed, there are. A fascinating research paper titled, “Sixteenth-century tomatoes in Europe: who saw them, what they looked like, and where they came from”, lists tomatoes from Mesoamerica that are brown, saffron, pink, white, striped and other colours. And even closer to the mark, a 2012 survey of tomatoes in Mexican seed banks lists at least one purple/black variety named ‘Jitomate semipúrpura’ from Tehuacán, Puebla.
This diversity makes sense considering Mesoamerica (along with the Andes) is the ‘primary center of tomato diversity’.
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How to Plant: Start seeds indoors 6-8 weeks before the last frost. Plant seed 5mm (¼ inch) deep. Keep moist. When true leaves appear, transplant to a larger container if needed. Transplant outside after the danger of frost has passed/later spring.
