📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Gigant Svitera (Giant Sweater)
- 🌍 Origin: Claimed to be from the USA, but circulated in Russia under the translated name “Gigant Svitera”. It is highly likely a renamed or mistranslated classic American paste tomato.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall). Very vigorous and powerful grower that can easily reach the roof of a high tunnel and keep growing along the ceiling.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Exists in two shapes in the Russian seed market: one is an elongated plum with a nipple, the other is a long pepper-shape. Fruits typically weigh 2.8-6 oz (80-170 g). The flesh is extremely dense with very few seeds.
- 👅 Usage: Solid meat! This is the ultimate paste and canning tomato, perfect for making thick sauces or pickling whole.
- ⏳ Maturity: Late season. It is often the very last variety to start ripening in the greenhouse. Susceptible to Blossom End Rot (BER) in fluctuating conditions.
Giant Sweater (USA) – seeds from Redko. Her description: Tall plant, fruits are elongated plums with a little point/nipple on the end, 6-8 per truss, dense, weighing 2.8-4.2 oz (80-120 g). Harmonious tomato flavor. The fruits have very few seeds, it’s just solid meat. Great for canning.
The tomato is very tasty, growing in the greenhouse. It turned out to be a heavy yielder for me, it set fruit on every single truss.
Galya-64 said:
For me, Giant Sweater was the lowest-yielding variety – I didn’t get a single fruit on it, never even got to try it.
Svetikk said on August 13, 2013:
Lena, how was Giant Sweater in terms of yield and taste, and where did you grow it? Galya-64 didn’t get a single fruit off it.
Lisenok said:
The yield certainly wasn’t what I hoped for, but the little tomatoes are very beautiful and tasty, I’ll give it a second chance next year.
Lidia said:
Please tell me, I want to figure out my taste preferences, how did you like the Giant Sweater tomato?
Ninulia said:
Lida, I haven’t tried it yet – just set some aside for seeds. But it turned out to be extremely vigorous for me, it reached the top of the greenhouse and probably grew another 3 ft (1 m) higher along the roof. And it’s a late-season ripener; it was the absolute last one to start ripening in the greenhouse.
Giant Sweater (USA) – tall plant. The fruits are elongated plums, 6-8 per truss, dense, weighing 3.5-4.2 oz (100-120 g). Few seeds in the fruits, just solid meat. I planted Giant Sweater in 2013 on March 27. It suffered from BER (blossom end rot). Fruits weighed up to 6 oz (170 g).
This is what mine looked like.
And now it seems we have 2 versions of Giant Sweater circulating around the world. One produces plum-shaped fruits, the other is pepper-shaped.
Dukhov’s version is pepper-shaped, and the one linked here is pepper-shaped too.
I grew it in 2013, which means people were growing it before me in 2012. For those of you who grew it before me, what shape were your fruits?
I grew it in 2020. Mine was pepper-shaped.
If you’re wondering why you’ve never heard of a US heirloom called “Giant Sweater”—you aren’t alone! In the Russian and Eastern European seed markets, English names are often poorly translated or transliterated based on how they sound.
“Sweater” in Russian is spelled and pronounced “Sviter”. It’s highly likely that this variety was originally introduced from the US as a family heirloom named something like Switzer’s Giant or Sweitzer’s, and the name morphed into “Sweater”. Over time, it appears seeds got crossed or mixed up in the Russian market, resulting in two distinct shapes: a classic elongated paste plum, and a long pepper-shape that, as Katrinka noted.
