ESA (Early Ssubakus Aliana) Tomato – Seeds

Early Ssubakus Aliana is a yellow salad tomato that shows great potential for warm climates based on it’s performance on our Central Florida farm. This variety was a standout from our 2026 trial/growout that included over 30 varieties. I made an offhand remark before the trial that I hoped this variety wouldn’t do well because I didn’t want to repeatedly say and write “Early Ssubakus Aliana”. Despite my wishes, this variety performed exceedingly well and we think it will do very well for many gardeners in Florida and other hot places. We will mostly refer to this tomato as ESA which we think people will have an easier time pronouncing.

Despite having “early” in the name, we did not find this variety to be especially early compared to some other cherries in our trial. The majority of the production was mid-season and production continued to some degree into the first couple weeks of June. This was one of the last varieties in our trial to produce good quality fruit as the Florida summer pressed in. Even as the older parts of the canopy became covered in blight, healthy new growth continued to come on and produce fruit. Varieties that showed stronger blight resistance did not produce more tomatoes than ESA despite that fact. The true virtue of this variety is that it produces heavily through the season, then keeps cranking out clean fruit as some varieties begin to decline or have blemished/ruined fruit. We recommend pairing this with “Matt’s Hornet” to have a very long window of tomato harvest. ESA is a rampant indeterminate. This variety needs a strong, tall trellis or to be allowed to sprawl around a larger area. Trellising is highly recommended for maintaining optimal vine health.

ESA tomato was enormously productive at Cody Cove Farm. We harvested full bins of fruit over and over from this variety. Among our intern crew, the flavor received consistently positive reviews. Our fruits were beautiful and blemish free, even under punishing heat. The fruit has good storage qualities. Some sources classify ESA as a paste tomato, which may explain the good shelf life. We noticed in our trial that most of the paste tomatoes hold up well both on the plants and in storage, presumably due to the high percentage of solids in the fruit. To us, it tastes like a very nice cherry/salad tomato.

This tomato originates from a botanical garden in Beijing, China, collected in 1931 by the USDA. The USDA GRIN accession number is PI 92855. This fact highlights the critical importance of continued funding of this government gene bank. Nearly 100 years after the collection event, we are still benefitting from the maintenance of this Chinese tomato variety made available to the public through the USDA.

Please note that our writings reflect only the experiences of one season and we may learn new things in the future that change our thoughts on this tomato. Regarding seed purity, please note that our tomato varieties are grown in close proximity to each other as we do not have the growing space to isolate them from each other. Tomatoes are inbreeding, typically pollinating themselves and staying true to type. However, in some regions of the country certain insects may occasionally move a little pollen around and generate crosses with other nearby tomatoes. It is generally understood that this happens in very minuscule amounts with tomato, which is why we feel comfortable offering this seed. The worst case scenario is that you get a plant of ESA crossed with other rare, heat tolerant tomatoes from our farm. Please consider mailing us back seeds from the hybrid if this happens!