📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Desert (Dessert)
- 🌍 Origin: A commercial variety famously released by the “Manul” agricultural company. “Desert” translates directly to “Dessert”, hinting at its sweet flavor.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall). An early-season, well-behaved plant that doesn’t aggressively take over the greenhouse. Highly productive.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Officially described as “very small,” but growers classify them more as large cherries or cocktail-sized tomatoes, weighing around 0.7 oz (20 g). They are perfectly round, smooth, and red.
- 👅 Flavor & Use: True to its name, it has a bright, sweet, classic tomato flavor with a great aftertaste. Excellent for fresh eating and canning.
- 🧬 Notable Traits: Produces absolutely gorgeous, geometrically split trusses that hold 15-30 tomatoes each. Highly resistant to Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV).
Actually, this variety is sold by the Manul seed company. Here is the description from their website:
Early-ripening variety: 95-100 days from emergence to ripening. Plants are indeterminate and tall. The first inflorescence forms above the 9th leaf, subsequent ones every 3 leaves. Flowers are simple, without fasciation (no megablooms), and pedicels have a separation layer. Trusses are intermediate type, with 15-30 fruits. Fruits are very small, weighing around 0.7 oz (20 g), round, with a smooth surface, two-chambered; unripe – whitish-green without green shoulders, ripe – red.
The variety is noted for excellent fruit set. The fruits possess exceptionally high flavor qualities when eaten fresh and are also suitable for canning. Intended for growing in film greenhouses and open ground, but strictly requires staking to a support. Resistant to Tobacco Mosaic Virus. Planting density is 3 plants/sq.m. Yield in a film greenhouse is 1.2-1.6 lbs/sq.ft (6-8 kg/sq.m), in open ground on a trellis – 0.8 lbs/sq.ft (4 kg/sq.m). Recommend pruning the plant to a single main stem.
I grew this variety back in 2010 from store-bought seeds (somehow the photos from then didn’t survive). It was a huge success. I don’t understand why the manufacturer calls the fruits “very small”. For a cherry tomato, I would actually say they are quite large. More like cocktail-sized tomatoes.
Then, for two years in a row, I kept buying packets that ended up being monstrous off-types; I had to yank the plants out of the greenhouse in July.
But this year, my seeds came from ElenaO (for which I thank her from the bottom of my heart). It looks like this is indeed the genuine Manul variety. I didn’t prune it to one stem, I let it grow in two – it just naturally split into a Y-shape on its own, so I left it.
I really love the flavor, a bright classic tomato taste with a lingering aftertaste. This year, the ones that weren’t fully ripe had a very slight tartness to them.
Here are the photos from this year. The first truss is located so low to the ground because during the seedling stage, I grew this plant from a rooted cutting* specifically for that purpose (so there would be less bare stem at the bottom).
The truss looks absolutely beautiful. It splits into two, and then the ends split into two again, perfectly symmetrical.
Edited September 7, 2017 by Drosera
I planted 1 bush using very old seeds, just so I wouldn’t lose the genetics. I remembered really liking this one many years ago. And I don’t regret it! The bush is tall, but it’s not pushy (it’s well-behaved). Early season and produces right up until the very end. Grows very well in a polycarbonate greenhouse. The fruits are large cherries. Out of all my red cherries, these are definitely the sweetest and the largest for me. 😋 👍
It’s so true – sometimes the old varieties really are better than the new ones!
*The “Rooted Cutting” Seedling Hack: Svetlana mentions that her first truss is extremely low to the ground because she grew the plant from a cutting. In Russia, many growers start seeds on windowsills in apartments, which often results in very tall, leggy seedlings. Instead of planting a massive bare stem deep into cold spring soil, experienced growers simply chop the top 6 inches off the leggy seedling and root it in a glass of water!
Because the top cutting is already biologically mature (past the 9-leaf stage), once it roots and is planted in the garden, it will immediately throw out a flower truss just inches above the soil line! It’s a brilliant way to maximize vertical space in a greenhouse and force earlier fruiting.
