We’ve been growing Stupice for years. It’s not the best tomato ever, but it’s reliable and a fast producer outdoors and in the greenhouse. This year, we grew a variety called Siberian Pink Honey and it’s really wow’d us. We’ve also had a lovely variety called Berkley Tie Die that we’ve been growing for a few years now and it’s a great slicer. Tends to come in around 80 days, but we get very decent maturity and excellent “heirloom slicer” quality. Hope that helps!

What are your top two choices for a slicing tomato? I go back and forth between wanting to focus on cherries and also making space for a slicer when I realistically can only have 4-5 plants.

Fantastic! We absolutely love Sakura, it’s the only cherry type we grow anymore! Glad you’ve also found joy in growing them.

As for saving seeds, Sakura are an F1 variety. That basically means it is a cross breed from two other types of cherry tomatoes. If you save seeds and it was pollinated by Sakura pollen (which is highly likely), you’ll get an F2. That’s inherently genetically unstable and will produce various mutations. (Structure, taste, color, plant size, etc.) It’ll take about 5 to 8 generations to stabilize the genetics (i.e. F4 to F7) and it’s highly likely that in that process you’ll lose much of what makes Sakura great! Hope that helps.