I'm having the same issues with some of my Red Dirt tomatoes. Let's just say, some of my Juliet's are not like any Juliet I've grown in the last 8-10 years. Must be a new strain...

That said, I've had the same issues, starting my own from seed.

The large red cherries I grew last year were about dime sized.

I can not wait to see if my black cherry is right. It is a volunteer I transplanted from close to where I grew BC last year. Paula I bet folks will tell you there are to many tomato varieties to tell you exactly which one it is but maybe pics and descriptions of the plant itself could help narrow it down. You know like regular leaf or potato leaf. Dwarf or big plant. determinate or not, etc etc etc...

And I like Juliets. I don't get why some folks hate them. Any food that grows reliably around here is a keeper in my book!

Paula, My best guess, based on the blunt shape of the blossom ends, is that it is Black Plum. When I have grown Purple Russian, it was not a heavy producer (one or two ripe fruit at any given time, and certainly not enough to ever get a canning batch of them) and the blossom ends often had a distinct nipple, though not in every case. One way to distinguish between Black Plum and Purple Russian is that the foliage of the Purple Russian is that wispy kind of regular leaf foliage often associated with oxhearts. If you've ever grown Opalka or Amish Paste, they have the same kind of wispy foliage. Black Plum has normal RL foliage that is not wispy.

I'll link the Black Plum page from Tatiana's Tomato Base below so you can see the similarity in the fruit. You can look at her alphabetical list on her data base and find a gazillion black tomatoes, so as Scott noted, there's many varieties it could be. A lot of them, though, are so obscure that I doubt a retailer in OK would be growing them on purpose. Of course, if the retailer purchased seed that was supposed to be Black Cherry (as opposed to having a labeling mixup with a couple of varieties) and got crossed seed or incorrect seed, it wouldn't be that they had chosen to grow whatever variety you got.

Hopefully the flavor will be good enough to make up for the fact that it isn't Black Cherry. And, if it is Black Plum, that variety has a unique flavor that is slightly different from any other black tomato I've ever grown. They were the favorite tomato of our former mail carrier (now retired) so I used to leave a bag of them in the mailbox for her every now and ten in the summer. You might now get great flavor from them right now because of all the rainfall. My tomatoes are really watered down and more bland than usual, and their texture is sort of mealy, but I expect those issues will go away when it stops raining. Ha! It is raining hard as I type this, so I guess we'll be waiting a few more weeks for tomatoes that aren't mushy and watered down. They're still better than grocery store tomatoes though.

OKoutdoorsman, Hmmm. New strain? That kinda makes me wonder if they tried to save money by saving seed from last year's Juliet and, since it is a hybrid, their seedlings did not necessarily come true from seed. That would be my best guess for why Juliet appears to be NotJuliet or AlmostJuliet or MoreOrLessJuliet or, in a kinder name for the faux Juliet, Juliet II.

Scott, I hope you get BC fruit from your volunteer. I won't say that I hate Juliet because it is great for dehydrating to give us big "tomato raisins" (or, if you prefer, sun-dried tomatoes although mine are dried in the convection oven) for winter, but there are many others I'd rather eat fresh.

And I do agree that you've got to love any tomato variety that will produce all summer long here without skipping a beat no matter what the weather is doing, and Juliet certainly does that. There are some varieties I plant because of their ability to set well in summertime heat even though they are not at all our favorites. Any tomato can be our favorite tomato of the day if it is producing in July and August when everything else slows down or shuts down.

Finally, if any of you never have visited Tatiana's Tomato Base before, it is not my fault if you spend hours and hours perusing the listings there and making a list of dozens of new-to-you varieties that you want to grow next year.

Dawn

Black Plum Tomato Page from Tatiana's Tomato Base

These have regular tomatoe leaves and so far, these two plants have been the most rapid growing in the garden. The Cherokee Purple are just now catching up. Dawn - I looked at the plums - but these have more of a shoulder. Therefore, Bon - you nailed it! I checked Baker's Creek's pictures and description and Bwahlah! Turns out this might be a good thing too. The reviews say they're really heat tolerant and good, consistent producers.

After not being able to eat tomatoes for the last several years, ANY tomatoe is a good tomatoe! Thanks Guys!

Baker Creek black mauri tomatoe

They grew all year, last year, stopping only about once in the heat of July, I think, picking back up in August. I neglected them, too.

They were too powerful for chili. So I made them into goulash. OMG We ate so much we were sick. I only wish they were bigger.

And you know, I kept avoiding this post because the last thing I thot I could do was identify a tomato. Whadaya know.

Great! Another dependable variety to try next year. Looks like another garden expansion project coming up.

That's what happens, Scott, when you belong to this forum....you find about 5.001 reasons to just keep on expanding the garden endlessly.

Y'all, one of the comments on Black Mauri on Tatiana's Tomatobase page for it was from a person who said he or she gets 11 lbs. of fruit per plant each year. That's a lot of little brownish-black grape tomatoes. It has several alternate names, as do many heirloom tomatoes that have been around a while.

Chernyi Mavr/Black Moor @ Tatiana's Tomato Base

So I'm thinking I need to save seed? Seedmama gave me the instructions, but I don't think I have the right cleanser. Guess I'd better start reading up on how to do it again!

The single one I have was from last year's seed. The little buggers produce quite a few seed per fruit.