📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Galina
- 🌍 Origin: Commercial/heirloom variety. Note: Do not confuse this with the famous “Galina’s Yellow” cherry tomato from Siberia! This is a completely different, large-fruited red/pink oxheart.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall), growing very vigorously up to 8 ft (2.5 m) in a greenhouse. Because the vines are so strong, it can easily handle being pruned to 2 or 3 main stems.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Reddish-pink fruits with a fascinating shape-shifting habit. Early trusses often produce elongated plum-like hearts, while upper trusses produce massive, wide, double-hearts or oblate shapes. Weight varies from 5 to 17.5 oz (150-500 g).
- 👅 Flavor: Sweet, meaty, and delicious old-school flavor.
- ⚠️ Growing Quirks: It sets such heavy trusses (up to 12 fruits per cluster) that the stems can physically snap or kink under the weight. You should support the trusses early or thin the fruit count!
There are a lot of Galinas on the forum – this tomato is for you.
Galina – variety (mine is from V. Redko), indeterminate, tall, grew to a height of 8 ft (250 cm), pruned to two stems (I think it could even handle three). The first two trusses were very elongated hearts, almost plums, but from the third truss up it threw wide, almost double-fused hearts, red-pink, sweet, tasty fruits, weighing 6.3-17.5 oz (180-500 g).
The first ones ripened in the greenhouse in early July, and I picked the last green ones yesterday. Very heavy yielder. It is an absolute must-plant for me in 2014.
Girls, pay attention – this is an heirloom/OP variety, not a hybrid. I grew the hybrid version once before – they have nothing in common…
Looks very tempting. 😋
Photo from early July 2013
This worthy variety sets a lot of fruits (up to 12) on a very thin truss stem. To prevent kinked/snapped trusses (which you can see starting to happen in the photo above), you need to tie them up for support earlier than other varieties! And thin out the fruits…
My Galina isn’t ripening yet, but I already like it – productive, fruits are beautiful (though not so much heart-shaped as oval-round), and not small. I think the seeds were from Marisha (but my head is pretty empty, I might have mixed up who they were from).
Plus I planted it in a less-than-ideal spot, I’ll have to give it a good spot next season.
Galochka, they must be mine, I definitely sent them to you 😳
Galochka, the fruit shape on Galina changes, on some trusses it’s a heart that almost looks like a strawberry, then they get rounder, and higher up I had ones that looked like double-wide hearts or like two or three strawberries fused together.
I liked the variety. Productive, tasty. Grew outdoors in open ground. Pruned to two stems, but could have easily done three. Marisha sent me the seeds. 🌺🌺🌺 Here is how my namesake turned out 🙂
My seeds were from Galochka-64. The first trusses had more oblate-shaped fruits, and further up they were heart-shaped, color – red. It took a hit from a shrew, so the fruits were smaller than stated, but there were a lot of them. It finished its season early.
My seeds were from Galochka-Esme – I will continue to plant them in her memory… I didn’t keep a close eye on the bush and it shot up to 6 or 7 stems.. 😕 started pruning it to 4 stems way too late – lots of fruits, but they ended up weighing 5.3-7 oz (150-200 g).
Shape-wise they look more round, but some were very pronounced hearts. Color is a rich, saturated red… the fruits in the photo are from the upper trusses.
And here is Galina again…
A quick word of warning for American and Western European seed collectors! If you are trading for seeds of this variety, make sure you know exactly what you are getting.
In the US, the most famous tomato with this name is Galina’s (or Galina’s Yellow), a legendary, ultra-early yellow cherry tomato from Siberia introduced by Bill McDorman. But the variety discussed in this forum thread is simply called Galina—and it is a massive, indeterminate, red/pink oxheart beefsteak! Always double-check with your seed source so you don’t end up planting a giant beefsteak when you were expecting a tiny yellow cherry!
