I found blacks do better in warmer years.

However if those darker colored fruit are exposed to the sun in a hot year they go south fast.

Warm days and cooler summer nights help any tomato achieve better flavor. Lower night time temps mean lower respiration rates means more potential sugars for the fruits.

Maybe it has more to do with dry...last year was not so much cool as it just never got hot, i think here we only got into the 90's a few times, and quite dry most of the summer. The black sea man, purple cherokee were the best ever, yummy-yum, though not real productive.

The year before wasn't very hot either, but we had some long wet spells, i had the best tomatoes in late summer and fall when it was unseasonably warm.

Haven't found anything on here about B.Bear, and not much about B.Zebra

*****
There's quite a bit about Black Zebra at some seed sites, basically a natural cross between Green Zebra and an unknown black that was genetically stabilized for about 10 years by Jeff Dawson.

Black Bear is listed by just one person in the 2008 SSE YEarbook and Google shows just one commercial source, Tradewinds, so they must have gotten it from Neil last Spring from the SSE Yearbook since Neil was the first to list it.

I'm pretty sure they must have described it as Neil did, which is RL, indet a pink/black type, seed from Germany, and if pink black that would mean similar to Cherokee Purple and Black from Tula.

Carolyn

As mule said, I've also found that darks taste better in warmer years. So, they (as a general class, anyway) tend to taste pretty good here in hot and sunny Texas most years. I've also found that excessive rainfall has the potential to "dilute" the flavor quite a bit, but then that is usually true with all of the colors.

I grew Black Bear in '08 and thought it was a terrific tomato, one of my better tasting darks as compared with the several other dark vars I also grew. Mid season, high-avg productivity for me, plants were on the compact side for an indet. Got anywhere from 8-16 oz beefsteaks, with many somewhere in the middle of that size range.

Here is a link that might be useful: Black Bear photo

Lynnie, is that you? I haven't checked in on this forum in ages. I changed my GW name at some point (and I may very well go back to Ms. Ann Thorpe). I think when I said the black tomatoes did better for me in cool conditions, I think I meant that when I was just growing tomatoes in my backyard, which is very near Lake Michigan (days and nights about the same chilly temperature seemingly until high summer), the black tomatoes seemed for some reason more willing to give me more fruit than the other colors I tried. Now that I grow my tomatoes in a community plot a couple miles west, I get more daytime heat and richer soil--and everything is more productive and better-tasting.

I haven't grown Black Bear, but it sounds good. I'm not nuts about the taste of Black Zebra, but one of the years I grew it, it was insanely productive. And it is pretty. So pretty, it's a shame it usually goes into sauce.

Heelloooo! Not diving in the water anymore? Me either, i couldn't get through the certification, my blood pressure meds were making my airway way too sensitive. Yep, it's me, after all the name changes, people still know me by my "Nine-Inch-Nails", somehow I figured out you were evel-ish... ;~)

I'm such a little kid, i want all the pretty colors in everything i grow...but yes, there's always sauce and juice! Or actually never enough of either.

Black bear sounds good, B.Z. maybe for fun..I 'm investing in raised beds this year to concentrate my ammendments and cut down on hand weeding...sounds like a good recipe for the new administration, eh??

lynnie babes ;~)

I meant to say that, My email is always listed. Drop me a line!