Tomatoes & friends
Sungold cherry
Widely rated the best tasting; among the first to ripen.
- Indoors
- 6 to 8 wk (Jan to early Feb)
- Outside
- Late Mar, again Jul 1-25
- Where
- Raised bed or in ground, tall stake
- Sun
- Full sun; six hours minimum
- Water
- Deep weekly soak; swings crack ripe fruit
- Harvest
- May to Jun, then Oct to Nov
Care
- Water
- Deeply and about weekly, an inch that wets the soil 6 inches down, in the early morning; skip any week that brings half an inch of rain, and step up toward 2 inches in August heat. Keep it steady: ripe cherries crack after a water swing, so pick ahead of storms.
- Sow
- In cells in January to early February: 2 seeds a quarter inch deep per cell, keep the stronger. Plant deep at set-out beside a tall stake, burying the stem to the first true leaves; the vine clears six feet. Start a second bench in May for the July fall planting.
- Start inside
- Room temperature germinates tomato fine here, sprouts in 7 to 10 days, so the mat is a speed tool, not a necessity. Under the lights 14 to 16 hours. Out in the latter half of March once frost passes and soil hits 55F; the fall bench goes out July 1 to 25.
- Feed
- Compost worked into the bed at planting, then a side-dress when the first fruit set and again at harvest, nitrogen modest or the six-foot vine runs to leaf. Hold all feeding through the July-August heat, and start again with the fall bed.
- Ready
- Pick at full orange and glossy; it comes off the truss with a light tug. Split-prone when dead ripe, so a day early beats a rain-split day late. Cherries ripen fastest of the tomato classes here: spring fruit lands in May, the fall crop picks to frost.
- Trouble
- Split fruit: rain on ripe cherries, so pick hard ahead of storms and shrug off what the rain claims. Flowers that drop through the mid-June to early-September gap: normal, and set restarts with the cool nights. Pale lower leaves: hungry, tighten the feed.
In a bag?
- Yes
- Up to a 10–15 gal bag.
- Water
- Daily all summer, twice a day in a heat wave, water until it drains from the holes; give the bag afternoon shade or 30 to 50 percent shade cloth through the gap.
- Feed
- Dilute liquid feed on the watering calendar, leached weekly with plain water; hold the feed when days top 90F.
- Sow
- One plant per bag, sized toward the top of the range for the six-foot vine. A July-planted bag tomato belongs to the fall window, with the same shade and water rules.
Sungold is the orange cherry that wins taste tests so routinely the result is barely news, and here it is also the fastest tomato in the bed. On the Killeen double crop it pays out twice: once before the gap, once after.
Growing
It runs on the Killeen tomato schedule: a January to early-February bench, set out in the latter half of March beside its stake, loaded before the mid-June gap closes. Cherries are the fastest class, so the first orange fruit lands in May and the snacking runs until the gap shuts it down. For the fall, the May bench transplants July 1 to 25 and the vine picks again from October to the mid-November frost. Splitting is the flaw: pick hard ahead of storms and be philosophical about what the rain claims.
Varieties
No Texas list names it: the state sheet's small-fruited list is Red Cherry, Cherry Grande, Juliet, Small Fry and Baxter's Early Bush. Sungold is itself the variety, an F1, so saved seed will not come true; buy fresh packets and skip the open-pollinated imitations, which are pleasant and not the same thing.
In the kitchen
Most of the harvest never reaches the kitchen door, which is the point of a snack crop. Survivors go on toast with salt, or into a hot pan just long enough to burst; a bowl of them on the counter is the fall garden's dessert.