Green Tiger

Thursday, 10 September 2009 12:48

Green Tiger is a proper open-pollinated variety. It was apparently introduced by Bernard Sparkes, a farmer in West Lancashire Green Tiger plants have broad leaves of a very dark green, and the leaves have rounded edges. It's quite an elegant plant compared to yer average tomato. Growth is indeterminate, but not exactly rampant. It took all of the season to reach the roof of the greenhouse. Flowers are small and star-shaped with a slight dark blush on the petals. They grow in short trusses with chunky peduncles bent at rightangles. The calyx is a dark green star, broad and chunky. Young fruits are a bright emerald green, shiny and spherical. The stripes don't start to develop until they're close to reaching full size. The earliest fruits are about the size of a golf ball, but later ones are more cherry tomato sized. As they near ripeness the green stripes darken, and the rest of the fruit takes on an orangey-brown hue, eventually ripening to a deep dark burgundy red with a more bright and intense red at the top of the fruit (hidden under the calyx, so you only see it after picking). The green stripes stay green, and are kind of mottled. It's an unusually dark green, like a very dark olive. The surface of the skin is very shiny and attractive. Like most commercial varieties, it has quite a thick skin and stays very firm even at full ripeness. This is what commercial growers want, to enable it to withstand packing and handling. The advantage it has to gardeners is that the fruits are fairly resistant to splitting. Go to table of tomato varietes