Benguet’s Wild Cherry Tomato – Seeds

This variety of tomato originates in the Philippines and was introduced in the US by Bunny Hop Seeds via the Heritage Seed Market. Benguet’s tomato was a standout performer in our Spring 2026 tomato trial for many reasons. Though this tomato comes from the cool Filipino highlands, it proved to be very heat tolerant on our Florida farm. It is hard to pick favorites when there are so many things to consider in a tomato variety, but this one is a strong contender. This variety marries together strong growth, high production and great flavor.

Production on Benguet’s tomato is very high and runs for a long time. Fruit production began fairly early and in our trial it was one of the last out of 33 varieties to continue yielding into the beginning of the Florida summer rainy season. This long season of fruit harvest ran for about 8 weeks. The flavor of this cherry tomato is fantastic, with a nice bright quality. The fruit is picturesque, being beautifully glossy and blemish free. The inner flesh has a unique and attractive dark hue.

Interestingly, we observed early blight on the lower foliage before almost any other variety in our 2026 trial. The bizarre thing was that the early blight didn’t move up much further into the canopy of the plants and this variety turned out to be one of the most disease resistant in our trial. We took this as an important reminder not to jump to early judgments when trying new plant varieties. Benguet is a rampant indeterminate tomato that will require a good trellis structure or plenty of room.

This variety apparently grows feral in the Benguet region of the Philippines. This area is known as the “salad bowl of the Philippines” because it is renowned for vegetable production. We spent a few weeks in the Philippines and our biggest climatic impressions were “hot” and “wet”. Since then, we have considered the Philippines an interesting place to source Florida crop varieties. The high humidity that prevails in much of that country puts pressure on crops to adapt to high disease tolerance that we sorely need in humid Florida.

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 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 Benguet’s Wild Cherry crossed with other rare, heat tolerant tomatoes from our farm. Please consider mailing us back seeds from the hybrid if this happens!

A special note about germination – This tomato variety is displaying strange germination traits. We saved seeds of over 30 kinds of tomatoes using the same fermentation process. All of those varieties are germinating at over 80 percent, with some at nearly 100 percent. In our germination testing chamber zero Benguet’s Wild Cherry seeds germinated. We considered that perhaps this variety needs soil to germinate (Everglades behaves this way) and seeded a batch into seedling mix. This batch germinated at about 40 percent and they emerged somewhat erratically. We will be working to find a better seed saving protocol to bring up germination rates but it may simply be the case that this variety is just like this. We are including 80 seeds per pack to accommodate for this issue. We encourage customers to sow seeds thickly.