5 Reliable, Tasty, & Prolific Tomatoes for a Tropical Climate

In my quest to find the most reliable, tasty, and prolific tomatoes for a tropical climate, I have grown quite a few and tested them out. I am always looking for varieties that perform well up here and may potentially grow through our collection of ‘summers’: the hot dry, the hot humid, and the monsoon. It’s a big ask but I’m confident I’ll find a handful that will grow outside of their optimal time.

2023 was a summer of extremes. November and December proved to be exceptionally hot and December brought us the unwelcome visitor of Cyclone Jasper two weeks before Christmas. I had planted some tomatoes in September and kept them in their pots down the north side of our house, which, in summer, only receives sun in the early morning and late afternoon. Admittedly, I made some mistakes with those plants and learned my first lesson in attempting to grow tomatoes in tropical climates all year round: I planted them in pots too small for their types, and despite watering frequently, they began to succumb to the heat.

Summer of Extremes in a Tropical Climate

However. A few sturdy plants survived the superheated November and early December. And then got whacked by the cyclone. Those that survived the heat and the big blow then got swamped with the rain that Jasper dumped on us – half a metre in 24 hours where we are located, and then weeks of rain followed. Late January brought us days of 42 degrees, which not only tried to fry my tomatoes but us as well. The hot dry, the hot humid, and the monsoon. All within two months.

The varieties that survived the summer of extremes had a much easier time of it as the weather began to cool down and typical monsoon weather set in. They were still in their tiny little pots – cherries were planted in 5L pots and beefsteak in 10L pots. This planting became the inspiration for a project to grow tomatoes in a tropical climate year-round. I completely changed my method of growing tomatoes this year. Plant in tall buckets to encourage deep roots, with a minimum of 20L of rich potting mix and heavy mulch. Not those sad little 5L pots. I would now plant a micro variety in one of those.

So what tomatoes do I keep coming back to, and which will be the subjects of my trial for year-round varieties? I do try to grow different varieties every year, but there are a couple I just keep coming back to.

Four Reliable, Tasty and Prolific Heirlooms…

Reliable and Prolific: Tommy Toe

I have been growing tomatoes in general for 6-7 years. The one variety I have kept in the garden for the entire time is Tommy Toe, an indeterminate cherry. It just keeps pumping out the fruits and accepts whatever the environment has to throw at it. One plant grew for two years straight until the garden bed I had it growing in eventually collapsed. I just kept wrapping it around and around its trellis. When it passed, the vines were over 7 metres long when stretched out. This is the tomato that first made me think that year-round tomatoes in tropical climates is possible. I did it without even trying.

Tommy Toe has a good basic ‘tomato’ flavour. It is fairly well-balanced, neither too acidic nor too sweet, fairly juicy, not too meaty, not too seedy. Generally, a good all-rounder. Enjoy in a salad or toss into the frying pan and blister to have with bacon and eggs. The fruits are between 3 and 4cm in diameter.

Stinkbugs settle on it, but I noticed mealy bugs really picked this variety over others.

Reliable and Tasty: Black Cherry

Black Cherry is a staple in my collection for its impressive flavour and willingness to grow in the heat. It’s another indeterminate cherry, and as its name suggests, it is a black/purple variety. This is the tomato that started me eating fresh tomatoes—the one that started it all, really. I’ve only really started eating them fresh in the last four years.

This variety slows down in summer but still keeps up production. It is a moderate producer but consistent, with trusses of 3-7 fruits. The flavour is the real winner here. It’s rich and strong—not too sweet but not acidic. It has another well-balanced flavour profile, but the depth of flavour is intense. I love eating it fresh in a salad with balsamic vinegar and a nice strong cheese.

Black Cherry fruits are about 2-3.5cm in size. If watering isn’t consistent, I notice some splitting here and there.

Stinkbugs sometimes gravitate to this variety if their other preferred varieties don’t have fruit.

Reliable and Sturdy: Roma

I buy a considerable amount of Roma seed and grow it constantly. Not to grow for salads, but for its disease resilience and its use as a rootstock for grafted plants. I’ve let spares grow wild in a patch in my garden, and it pumps out healthy foliage and fruits. I think this one might just be suitable for growing year-round, and I will be trying it out this year.

As a cooking tomato, it works well for chutney. It might be sacrilege, but I prefer to buy 10kgs of romas from local farmers to make my massive chutney batches with. If I grew it all myself, I would need all the garden space to get enough yield. It’s not particularly seedy or juicy. If the watering isn’t consistent, it can become mealy. A definite cooking tomato. It goes in a frying pan with bacon and eggs if I’m not reserving them for chutney. It is the only determinate on this list.

Bugwise, it’s average. Nothing really cares too much about it except caterpillars munching on the occasional one.

… and 1 F1 Hybrid

Sweet 100 F1 might become a somewhat reluctant staple. It’s got decent taste and an absolutely fantastic yield that just doesn’t stop pumping out trusses of fruit. I’ve never seen anything quite so prolific. I had 20 trusses of 6-14 fruits on it at one point. The fruits are small. About 1, maybe pushing 1.5cm in size. Managed well, I feel this will be a steady producer in summer when other varieties might suffer from the heat. It’s indeterminate, and vine growth is as prolific as the truss growth.

A packet of these F1 hybrids contains 50 seeds, which means a packet will last several years, unlike Sungold packets, which contain only 5 seeds.

Stinkbugs will settle on this variety but seem to prefer other varieties. They generally approach this one when the others aren’t fruiting. It works well in salads, cooks up a treat with bacon and eggs, and is a good straight-from-the-vine snacker.

Beefsteaks vs Cherries

You’ll note that most of these varieties I consider to be staple tomatoes for tropical climates are cherries. This is deliberate, as experiments within the last 3-4 years show that cherries continue to produce during the extremely hot dry season and don’t suffer as badly during the hot humid. They aren’t smashed to pieces under the downpour of the monsoon like my poor Cherokee Purple. They flower and set fruit fairly quickly, and as long as I try to keep the watering consistent, they don’t typically split.

This is the first year that I have grown varieties by the Dwarf Tomato Project, and I’ll be interested to see how they perform in our extreme weather. I couldn’t find much about their disease resistance, so they may suffer in the monsoon when diseases set in.

I haven’t grown too many of those yet as this year I started my indeterminate seedlings in March, and then the Mr’s very large health problem occupied April-August, which is prime growing time. Given the dwarf tomatoes’ average days to maturity is only 75 days, I was going to start staggering these from April onwards.

Into the hot dry of the tropical climate and beyond

The middle of October 2024 brought several days of temperatures above 30 Celsius. I saw the grass drying out and noticed the Pineapple tomatoes beginning to split. The early morning drip watering got my tomatoes through the day’s heat, but I also had to supplement watering in the late afternoon after a day of searing sun.

This hot, dry heat continued into November, with my home weather station reporting temperatures of above 30 Celsius every day of the month. I destroyed some of my varieties that showed signs of extreme disease, or slowed production, or had developed undesirable traits. Big rainbow, pineapple, mortgage lifter and tigerella all went to the great compost heap in the sky. Their soil was recycled into the large ‘slightly-above-the-ground’ garden bed, and the buckets and cages were sterilised with a good scrub of bleach and old-fashioned ‘sit in the sun and bake’ method, waiting for new varieties to be planted back in them.

I have noticed that weeks of nearly 34-degree days led to some leaf curl and singed leaves. I monitored them and watched them bounce back. One great surprise last year is that Cherokee Purple, a beefsteak that showed signs of disease and stress, bounced back with fresh and lush new growth. I wasn’t far from ripping it out and resetting that bucket. The only thing that stopped me was the lush carpet of purple alyssum in the bucket that I planted as its companion plant this season. With December’s rain, the Purple Cherokee took off again. Only to be utterly destroyed in February by even heavier rain.

Start of the hot humid, our typical tropical climate in December

In December, we had a week of solid rain. The start of the wet season, where hot dry becomes hot humid. The mower comes out of hibernation from the shed, and the tomatoes learned to deal with 100mm of rain in one day, plus subsequent days of Yet More Rain. I don’t like it when we have a sharp transition from hot to wet – this is the time when the fruit splits. I try to mitigate this by ramping up watering leading up to the rain event, but this method can only go so far. 100mm of rain being dumped into a pot is hard to replicate with considerate watering.

Fruit did split, and the varieties affected were Money Maker, Sungold, Sweet 100, and Yellow Tommy Toe, all of which had actively growing fruit. I’m a little iffy on whether Sweet 100 actually split or if birds attacked it because we couldn’t get out there for a few days. I know birds definitely had a go at Money Maker.

Indigo Rose and Black Cherry did not split. Sunrise Bumblebee turned its roots up and gave me extreme leaf curl, with the fruit nearly rotting on the vine. I wasn’t sure if that was from heat plus rain followed by heat again, or if the plant had some disease. It seems to be bouncing back, but I’m very suspicious of this plant, and it’s next on the chopping block. Cherokee Purple did not have fruit on it, but had bounced into active lush growth. Costoluto Florentino also didn’t have fruit on it, but hadn’t put out any new growth.

The early wet season has days of extreme heat, above 34 degrees, and it continues into January every year. Vegetative growth slowed, and fewer flowers were produced. Sungold, Yellow Tommy Toe, Sweet 100, Black Cherry, and Indigo Rose had green fruit on them. Every plant has stinkbugs on it, and we manually removed those every morning and afternoon to knock the population down.

December and January gave us tomatoes and cucumbers for our salads, something that hasn’t happened in previous years. I am getting closer to the goal of year-round tomato production.

Monsoon!

Late January to early February gave us the full brunt of the monsoon. Half a metre of rain fell in a single week, and this is when I called it quits on my poor tomatoes from the 2024 batch.

On January 28th, we received 162.8mm of rain, followed by 227.1mm of rain on the 29th of January. In the week spanning Monday the 27th to Sunday the 2nd, we received 579.1mm.

Very little survives that. The sheer force of that rain shredded leaves, bruised fruit, and pulped my tatsoi. Mealy bugs and whiteflies infested the damaged plants struggling in a monsoonal environment.

I believe that with protection from the rain, the tomatoes would continue to grow and produce. This year, my overabundant collection of dahlias is under the south eave, but next summer, I might just move my buckets under there to protect them from violent rain like that.

We grow and we learn. Gardening is a continual learning process for me. It’s April and my new tomatoes are beginning to show their first true leaves. I can all but taste them now. I have planted some of these tried and true varieties this year along with some new ones from my collection.