I know this is a few months late-but I decided to save some seed from a store bought Campari tomato. Had space for 5 plants, and wanted to try a couple of varieties, so I only have one Campari plant. It's beautiful-tall, limited foliage, tomatoes form uniformly. Tons of fruit-just waiting for it to ripen up. Included a pic.

Nice! After you harvest and eat the fruit, I hope you'll come back here and tell us what you think---whether the flavor is what you were hoping for and whether you'll grow this variety again. Good luck with it.

Dawn

Report- The fruit are smaller than the parent, also more dense. The grocery store Campari was "juicy". Taste-much more of an acidic bite-very tart. On the back end there's a splash of tomato sweetness, but the "tomato" part falls flat. Overall a lesser quality tomato in my opinion than the parent, but still tasty with a little salt and cracked pepper! The plant has tons of fruit, so I would consider growing again, perhaps keep a seed from this as well and grow out to compare changes over generations. Would make a great salad tomato.

Nice! I'm doing a Brandy Boy from saved seed...just to see what I get. They are potato-leaved, so maybe the Brandywine is strong. I've heard of people having success...by success, I mean just being happy with what they get.

I grew Campari from saved seeds years ago. Mine were much closer in size to Campari than yours appears to be. The flavor of mine was very close. Think I grew it out to at least F3. Then got to growing out the Texas Star cross that I liked better and still grow it. With me the Campari seemed fairly stable. I know of others that have experienced the same and then some get the wide range expected when growing out a hybrid. I attribute that to the fact it is a type and not one variety. Some growers have even speculated that some of the varieties might be stable. I just know I took pics of the original of mine and everytime I grew it out the fruit were very similar in size and flavor. Again luck of the draw. I shared seeds with a few who had the same results before I decided to move on and got rid of all of the seeds.

I had read ahead of time about the same issues, had hoped I would be lucky. The source for my seed was grown in Mexico, we have available those grown in Canada at another grocery store, and I was thinking of growing those out to see if I get different results. Hoping my Paul Robesons live up to the hype, if they ever show signs of ripening!

My source was seeds from Campari's that were grown in AZ and sold in this area. Sounds like Paul Robeson is doing well for you. It doesn't like this area or at least the years I tried it during the drought it didn't. Don't think I ever picked a single fruit.

I was very disappointed in the performance of my Paul Robesons this year. Back to the tried and true.

I saved seeds from Compari, and I still have them, but I wasn't able to plant them this spring. I wonder if growing out this Brandy Boy, as an F-2, will compare. I have read that lots of folks have really good success. I am trying it from seed saved last summer, for my fall tomatoes. The plants are gorgeous, with potato leaves. I'm excited to see what I get.

I'm sorry to hear that! This is my first year growing them. They have to be the thickest, heaviest plants I've grown. Two seem to be producing well, the third is ok. I believe that to be due to location though. I'm hoping the taste is what it claims to be!

Paul Robeson never has done that well for me. Even if it manages to stay alive long enough to produce fruit (it usually dies before ripening anything, but this year it did produce fruit), the fruit are nothing special. Because it is said to taste so good, I've grown it multiple times and had it die early every year. This year the two Paul Robesons went down early, but did live long enough to produce fruit. When I tasted them, I shrugged and said "so what" because they weren't anything special. I have grown tons of black tomato varieties with much better flavor. Paul Robeson and its so-called "legendary" flavor wouldn't even make my top 25 list of favorite black tomatoes. I won't plant it again. I suspect that people who rave about its flavor are new to growing black tomatoes, which do tend to have a very unique and special type of flavor, and have no idea that there's many other black varieties with much better flavor. In my garden it has been prone to both southern blight and bacterial wilt.....and if I plant 100 tomato plants and 2 of those are Paul Roberson, the only 2 out of 100 plants to die will be those Paul Robesons. I've completely got growing Paul Robeson out of my system now.

Just tasted the first Robeson. Not impressed, my other dark varieties tasted so much better.

So, it wasn't just me that found it to be, um, not very impressive. I'm sorry you found it disappointing too---at least now you know, as do I. It challenged me because it kept dying before it could produce fruit. I should have taken that as a clue that it wasn't worth growing, but I was stubborn and was going to make it grow until I got a chance to taste multiple fruits.....all that, and for nothing. (grin) Time to move on, and I have.