Black Bear

Thick flesh with a smooth texture and lots of juice. A purple beefsteak variety. Quite delicious! // 8-14 oz pink-black fruit, excellent flavor, high yield./// high yield of 8-16 oz pink-black beefsteaks, outstanding flavor. First introduced in SSE 2008 Yearbook by Neil Lockhart of Oblong, Illinois (IL LO N), who obtained seeds from Reinhard Kraft, Neukirchen, Germany . Reinhard Kraft said that he received seeds from Belarus (Tatiana’s note: probably from Andrey Baranovski of Minsk, Belarus), and it came with a racially discriminatory name. As it appeared to be a great tomato, Mr. Kraft chose a nice neutral name for it – ‘Black Bear’ – and shared seeds under this new name. Andrey Baranovski of Minsk, Belarus said that he indeed shared Negrityonok seeds with Reinhard Kraft, and this is what Reinhard’s seed source for Black Bear was. However, Negrityonok is a much smaller tomato, and it is obvious that just environmental growing conditions could not be responsible for such a huge difference in fruit sizes.