Solanum lycopersicum
Saint-Pierre Tomato: long a staple of French priest's gardens and family kitchen gardens, it owes its popularity to a rare balance — considerable yields without sacrificing flavor, and skin sturdy enough not to split at the first August rains.
Characteristics:
-
Remarkable yield: up to 6 kg per plant under good conditions.
-
Resistant to splitting: its sturdy skin tolerates irregular watering better than many other varieties.
-
Firm, flavorful flesh: ideal for stuffing, salads, or cooking.
-
Heritage, open-pollinated variety: you can resow your own seeds every year.
Sowing advice:
-
Exposure: full sun and warmth.
-
Soil: deep, rich, loose, and well drained. Such a productive variety is hungry: a generous addition of well-rotted compost genuinely benefits it.
-
Method: sow from February to April under cover, in fine, special seed-starting compost, at a minimum of 20 °C — below that temperature, the seeds will not germinate. Cover with 5 mm of compost. A late sowing in April–May significantly shortens the harvest season. Transplant into pots at the two-true-leaf stage. See how to sow seeds.
Planting advice:
- Transplant after the last frosts, spacing plants 70 cm apart — it needs room to reach its full yield potential. Bury the stem up to the first leaves: tomatoes produce roots along the buried section, resulting in a more vigorous plant.
- This is an indeterminate variety: install a very sturdy stake at planting time, as the fruit load is substantial.
Care advice:
-
Always water at the base, never over the foliage, preferably in the morning: water on the leaves provides an entry point for blight. Apply a thick mulch.
- Water regularly and evenly. Its productivity makes it demanding in terms of water and nutrients.
- Remove suckers — shoots that emerge from the leaf axils — to direct the plant's energy toward the fruit.
- Rotate crops every three to four years.
Harvesting advice:
- Harvest when fully red, when the fruit yields slightly under your finger. Store at room temperature, never in the refrigerator.
Beneficial companions:
Benefits for biodiversity:
- Its flowers are pollinated by vibration: only bumblebees can fully exploit them. Welcoming bumblebees directly improves your harvest.
- As a heritage, open-pollinated variety, growing it helps preserve cultivated diversity. See our heritage tomatoes to sow.
Uses:
- Stuffed — its firm flesh is perfectly suited to this —, in salads, sauces, or preserves. Its yield makes it the ideal variety for large harvests destined for processing.
Saving your own seeds:
Take the pulp from a beautiful, fully ripe fruit and let it ferment for two to three days in a little water — this step breaks down the gelatinous coating that inhibits germination — then rinse: the healthy seeds will sink to the bottom. Dry them flat. See how to store your seeds.
Our commitment to Quality: at SemiSauvage - Permaculture, we grow and select our seeds with respect for all living things as our guiding principle. Based near the Auvergne Volcanoes, we choose reproducible, non-hybrid varieties, test them for germination rates, and carefully sort and package them without any chemical treatment. Our belief: to give gardeners back the ability to resow, year after year, seeds that truly belong to them.
Up to six kilos per plant: the tomato of family kitchen gardens.
