Cherokee Purple Tomato

Where Cherokee Purple comes from

Nobody knows exactly where it started, and that's half the charm. The story that came with the seeds: a family in eastern Tennessee had grown this tomato for about a hundred years, and said it traced back to the Cherokee.

In 1990 a tomato obsessive named Craig LeHoullier got a handful of seeds in the mail from a man in Sevierville, Tennessee — Dolly Parton's hometown, up in the Smoky Mountains — grew them out, and named the dusky fruit Cherokee Purple. Southern Exposure Seed Exchange started selling it in 1993, and it went from a shoebox of saved seed to the heirloom everybody knows.

It's an old tomato with a real paper trail — the University of Arkansas extension figures it "probably began in the Tennessee River Valley in the 19th century."

What it tastes like — and what it's for

This is the reason to grow it. The flavor is the thing people mean when they say old tomatoes tasted better: sweet and rich with a smoky, almost savory edge, and so juicy that Texas A&M's master gardeners compare a ripe one to a peach.

It's a slicer. Thick slabs on a sandwich, a plate with salt and olive oil, that kind of thing — not a sauce tomato. It won't ship and you'll never see it in a grocery store, which is exactly the point of growing your own.

Growing Cherokee Purple

Grow it like any tomato — full sun, steady water, feed it — with two things to know.

One, it's indeterminate, so it's a vine, not a bush. It'll run 4 to 6 feet and keep making new tomatoes right up to frost, so give it a tall cage or a stake at planting, not later. Two, the fruit is big — commonly 8 to 14 ounces, and it can top a pound — so that support isn't optional; a loaded branch will snap without it.

Space plants a couple of feet apart, and don't rush it into cold ground — Cherokee Purple sulks below about 43°F and takes damage. Set your zone on the tomato page and the calendar pins your start-and-plant-out dates.

It's an heirloom, so there's no formal disease-resistance package — and the experts don't even agree on it: Arkansas calls it a "relatively disease resistant line" that's tough in mid-South heat and humidity, while NC State found it "has little disease resistance." Bottom line: grow it with normal tomato habits — airflow, mulch, water at the soil not the leaves — and don't lean on a resistance label.

When is it ripe? (why the top stays green)

Here's the one that gets everybody. A ripe Cherokee Purple does not turn fully red. The shoulders around the stem stay green — sometimes almost olive — even when the rest has gone a deep, dusky purple-brown.

If you wait for it to go all-red, you'll wait forever and end up picking it overripe and mushy. Go by color and feel instead: when the body has turned that dusky rose-purple and it gives slightly to a gentle squeeze, it's ready. The green shoulder is the variety, not a problem to fix.

What goes wrong — and the fixes

Two quirks worth knowing before they surprise you.

Cracking. It's a soft, juicy tomato, which is wonderful to eat and prone to splitting after a heavy rain or a watering swing. The fix is boring and it works: keep the soil evenly moist. Mulch, and water deep and regular instead of feast-or-famine.

Ugly early fruit. The first tomatoes of the season often come out lumpy or scarred on the bottom — that's cat-facing, and the Arkansas extension notes it's common in early-season fruit. It's cosmetic. Cut around it, and the later fruit cleans up as the weather warms.

Cherokee Purple vs Brandywine

If you're stuck choosing between the two famous flavor heirlooms: Brandywine is the pink one everyone name-drops, but it's fussier and lower-yielding. Cherokee Purple gives you most of that legendary flavor with a lot less drama — it sets more fruit, shrugs off Southern heat better, and comes in a little earlier.

If this is your first heirloom, start with Cherokee Purple. Grow the Brandywine the year you're ready to fuss.