Sal leaned on the chain-link last week, ate a Sungold off my palm, and asked which of my bucket tomatoes he should grow next year in a pot by his back door. I started answering and realized I had two summers of notes on cherry tomatoes and had never once put them in order. So, for Sal and for my own notebook, here they are, ranked.
Some background first. Every year, four cherry tomatoes live in 5-gallon buckets at the sunny end of our front porch, which faces southwest and bakes from late morning until sunset. Each bucket has drainage holes Nate drilled in the bottom, a mix of Pro-Mix and compost, a scoop of fertilizer and a tall stake tied to the railing. Over 2025 and 2026 that's been five varieties: Sungold, Juliet and Matt's Wild Cherry both years, Black Cherry last summer and Supersweet 100 this one. This year's picking only started around July 22, so the newcomer gets a provisional grade.
Worth the water
Water is the real cost of a bucket tomato. Last July I was hand-watering 34 pots with the galvanized can, and the buckets were the thirstiest things on the porch, close to a full can each on hot days and sometimes twice. That summer's water bill came to $214. So "worth it" for me means flavor per gallon, not just pints per plant.
The ranking
1. Sungold. Still the best-tasting tomato I grow, sweet and almost tropical, the orange of the inside of an apricot. One plant gives us a handful most days from late July into September. Its flaw is real: it splits. The porch roof keeps most rain off the buckets, but a muggy week does it anyway, and so do I, if I let a bucket go dry and then flood it to make up. Last summer I'd guess a quarter of the Sungolds cracked before I got to them. I grow it anyway, and before a storm I pick every one with color.
2. Juliet. The workhorse. Small, glossy, egg-shaped red fruit with thicker skin, and in two summers I can count the split ones on one hand. They'll hang on the vine for days after ripening without going soft, which matters on weekends away. The flavor is good rather than great, but they roast beautifully, and a few of last year's Juliets ended up in the freezer as roasted sauce. If I could only grow one cherry in a bucket, it might be this one.
3. Matt's Wild Cherry. Mateo's favorite, because he can eat them by the fistful and nobody can count. The fruit is tiny, about the size of a blueberry, with big flavor, and there are hundreds of them. The plant has never had a disease problem in either year, and it never stops. The downsides: it sprawls past any stake, drops ripe fruit on the porch floor and takes forever to pick. It earns its bucket by being nearly indestructible.
4. Black Cherry. The best flavor after Sungold, deep and almost smoky, and the prettiest, a dusky purple-brown like a bruised plum. But in a bucket it grew huge and floppy, it split almost as often as Sungold, and it ripened in slow fits. I left it out this year to make room for something new, and I miss eating it more than I miss growing it.
5. Supersweet 100 (provisional). So far: long strings of small red fruit, very sweet, on a healthy, fairly tidy plant. It split a little after the humid weekend we just had, and it's too early to say more. Ask me again in September.
Next summer's buckets
Sungold, Juliet and Matt's Wild Cherry keep their places. The fourth bucket is a contest between Black Cherry and Supersweet 100, and it'll come down to how the newcomer finishes. The drip line we added in April only reaches the raised beds, so the porch buckets are still watered by hand, one can at a time. That's why I keep leaning toward varieties that forgive a missed evening.
What I told Sal: Juliet, because it doesn't split and he has figs to worry about. He said he'd think about it, and helped himself to another Sungold.
