BLACK KRIM
In fashion everything old eventually becomes new again. This is why women have been wearing platform shoes on and off for centuries. Fashions and fads come and go in the world of horticulture too, and with the rise of electronic communications, the fashion cycle has speeded up. Right now, vegetable gardening is hot and heirloom varieties are hotter than hot. I have to grow hot plants to remain a cool horticulturist, so last year I grew heirloom Brandywine tomatoes. All three of them were delicious.
The low yield was not entirely due to the choice of variety. Last year was a terrible year for tomatoes in general. Many plants fell victim to blossom-end rot, an insidious disease that kills off tomatoes. The plants that didn’t die of disease had lower, less tasty yields due to the absence of sun and abundance of rain at critical times in the growth cycle. Many people found that their long-awaited garden fruits were watery-tasting. Most ate them anyway, because even a watery summer tomato is better than winter tomatoes, which taste as if they were extruded by some far-off tomato machine rather than grown in either earth or water. My three garden-grown Brandywines were not watery and tasted great, but I decided to try another variety this year.
It was serendipitous when a plant company offered me three ‘Black Krim’ tomato plants. A check of the tomato literature indicated that ‘Black Krim’ is a well-regarded variety among amateur growers. Reviewers praised its flavor and the size of the fruits. I potted up the little plants and looked forward to picking the ripe tomatoes in numbers that would put last year’s single-digit harvest to shame.
Like all heirlooms, ‘Black Krim’ comes with a story. Most sources identify them as being “native” to the southern Ukraine, now an independent country, but for much of the twentieth century, a part of the Soviet Union. Some sources also describe the plants as hailing from the Isle of Krim in the Black Sea. Allegedly soldiers first tasted them during the Crimean War and carried the seeds to other parts of Russia after the war ended. The former Soviet Union is apparently a black tomato bastion, with many varieties cultivated in different geographic areas. A glance through heirloom tomato catalogs yields varieties with names like ‘Black From Tula’, ‘Black Sea Man’ and ‘Purple Russian’.
The only problem with the story is that tomatoes are New World fruits, native to South America. They got to Europe in the eighteenth century and were more widely appreciated there than in the United States, where they were long thought to be poisonous. I suspect that the Ukrainians, like the Italians, loved the fruits and began growing them for themselves, hence the development of the black tomatoes.
How did ‘Black Krim’ and its Russian relatives find their way back to the New World? The seeds may have arrived at any time since this country’s founding, perhaps in the pockets of early Russian immigrants who brought a taste of home with them on their trans-Atlantic journey. However, they may also have arrived after the end of Communist rule in Russia in 1991, when the floodgates of immigration opened wide. The opening of those floodgates coincided neatly with the rise of the heirloom vegetable movement, providing fertile ground–literally and figuratively–for the black Russian heirloom tomato. No matter when the plants arrived, they have become horticultural superstars in the last ten years.
‘Black Krim’ is a large tomato that is red with purplish-black “shoulders”. When sliced, the seeds inside are the same dark color. Its intense tomato taste has been characterized as slightly salty, making it especially useful for salads and eating raw.
I dream of great summer tomato sandwiches made with nothing more complicated than homemade wheat bread, fresh tomato slices and mayonnaise. When I read the descriptions of ‘Black Krim’, I could almost taste those sandwiches.
I hope I will get the chance. Right now, ‘Black Krim’ has had three blossoms, but none of them were pollinated. The plant is a healthy 2 feet tall, so growth is not the problem. Today in desperation I moved it to one of the sunniest spots on the whole property– my elevated back porch–in the hopes that the bees will find it and do their essential work. I am betting they will, since about 150 of my daughter’s flowering plants surround the tomato pot.
However, I am taking no chances. I am going to the garden center and swallowing my pride so I will eventually be able to swallow some tomatoes. I will buy some regular, non-heirloom tomato plants before it is too late. I’ll put them right by ‘Black Krim’ and with luck all my tomatoes will yield famously before frost finally blackens the plants in the fall.
My neighbor is already picking tiny, perfect cherry tomatoes from her plants. I peer jealously out my kitchen window, but I know that eventually I will be doing the same thing. After all, the ancestors of my ‘Black Krims survived the Crimean War. Surely they can make it in the suburbs.