Growers’ Notes and Photos (USDA Zones 2-5 Experience)
Heavy cropper, tall grower reaching 6.5 ft (2 m) in the greenhouse, mid-season maturity. Fruits are large, heart-shaped, pink, very delicious, juicy-meaty, and sweet.
On the first few trusses it set ordinary pointed hearts, but from the 4th truss on up, it started putting out shapes that 100% lived up to the variety name! Might have had something to do with the chilly weather early on, the real summer heat didn’t arrive until August.
What other variety does this Monkey… rear end compare to? I really don’t want to want it, that name is just too much! 🙈 Are there any twin varieties out there? Because everyone keeps raving about how delicious it is! 😆
On Elena-jjj said:
What other variety does this Monkey… rear end compare to?
It compares to pretty much all large pink oxhearts! 😆 The vine is a bit more robust and has no upward limit on height. But for eating quality this season, I honestly preferred Wolford Wonder. It was genuinely sweet without being bland.
Thanks Nina! Now I can cross it off my wishlist with a clear conscience, one less seed packet to hunt down! 😆 Wolford Wonder did fantastic for me this year too.
Here is how my Monkey Ass turned out this year. The fruits were uniformly large across the board. It set fruit like a champion even when it was still way too cold for other varieties. Flavor wasn’t an absolute showstopper for me, but then again, look at what a rough weather year we had.
Didn’t take photos because I honestly wouldn’t know what to photograph. It looked sickly in the seedling flat, but hung on. Went into the greenhouse in early May, and since only two starts survived, one went to my neighbor Lyudmila.
Well, we ended up with two completely different rears! 😆 Which one was true-to-type? Both were pink hearts, but the sizes were night and day (hers were much bigger). Both pumped out tons of fruit, but the tomatoes just looked different. Couldn’t have mixed up the tags because I guard my indets like a drill sergeant. Seeds came from Popenko, and I’ve never caught him with a mix-up in years. Hilarious name, but I probably won’t grow it again.
On Lana_Sadovnitsa said:
…we ended up with two completely different rears! Which one was true-to-type?
Preach! 👏 You can never judge a variety off a single plant. But how do you trial 300 varieties when you only have 100 planting spots, stay on top of the newest releases, balance sanity with desire, pull a massive harvest, and justify the seed budget to your family? Once again, the yearly struggle of cramming the impossible into tiny greenhouse beds! 😆
Oh, I feel your pain so much! 🙏 The yearly addiction: drop one, add fifty more! My family thinks I’ve completely lost my mind with tomatoes, telling me we don’t need this many and nobody’s going to the farmers market to sell them. And yet here I am, scrolling through seed catalogs again…
As for Monkey Ass, maybe it still throws variations. If anyone’s planning to grow it, give it a shot, the yields are undeniably heavy and the fruits are large and meaty. Just run-of-the-mill flavor in my greenhouse conditions.
This is an old family heirloom that has been grown for generations.
It is definitely not an unstable new release or an F1 cross.
P.S. Folks, let’s keep the catalog thread focused on growing notes!
To be honest, I was expecting a little more. But overall it’s a solid oxheart. Has every oxheart trait in the book: juicy, meaty, and very good flavor.
On SvetaR said:
To be honest, I was expecting a little more. But overall it’s a solid oxheart…
Svetlana, what was missing for you? It’s juicy, meaty, and delicious. 😋
I had 2 vines that grew completely in sync. Yielded consistently from bottom to top with uniform, large fruits. Early ones were tapered cones, looking very much like Wolford Wonder. Higher up around the 3rd cluster, that signature cleft formed, and that’s the exact fruit I saved my seeds from! Unlike many other hearts, this one had zero yellow shoulders. Was going to grow it again, but got sidetracked by new varieties. Found a green photo taken at the height where it started throwing that signature shape.
Meaty and delicious. All my fruit came out as smooth hearts, didn’t get any hint of the cheeky cleft shape.
Very entertaining variety. Each vine had several whoppers up to 21 oz (600 g) with deeply indented stem ends that definitely look like a monkey’s rear! 😆 The rest of the fruits were standard pointed hearts.
Ran it in the greenhouse trained to 2 stems. Heavy cropper, super meaty, long harvest window, and I really enjoyed the flavor despite the outrageous name. Seeds from Popenko.
Planning to plant this variety this season, growing outdoors in the open dirt (no greenhouse). When is the best time to start seeds indoors, early or mid-March?
On Irina said:
…justify the seed budget to your family?
There is simply no justifying it! Homegrown tomatoes genuinely end up costing their weight in gold. When I timidly whisper, “but it feeds my soul,” my family looks at me like I need professional help. 🙈
The name doesn’t bother me at all, honestly makes me chuckle.
My three Monkey Ass plants are by far the tallest, biggest, and most sprawling plants in the greenhouse. Foliage looks nothing like typical weeping oxheart leaves: wide, horizontal, and very broad. Stems are thick as broomsticks. Doesn’t look like vegetative excess nitrogen either. Flowering and setting fruit steadily!
Earliest ripening variety among all my greenhouse tomatoes. Picked the first ripe one on June 30, the second one colored right behind it, and a third is already blushing. Dense, meaty flesh, though the taste felt a touch mild to me. Family rated it a 5/5, loved everything except the name, they’re begging me to rename it to something family-friendly! 😆
Oh, this Monkey Ass! Growing three plants and they are absolute monsters. Climbed over 10 ft (3 m) tall and are currently crawling right across the greenhouse ceiling. Pruned them to 2 stems.
Despite an epidemic of blossom drop and blossom end rot across all my other varieties this year, Monkey Ass stayed very productive. Juicy, meaty, doesn’t split. Fruit are huge with zero green shoulders. Terrific variety with a hilarious name! Big thanks to Natalya (Yaroslavna) for the seeds!
Mind if I chip in? Had seeds for Monkey Ass, but was hesitant to dedicate garden space to it, so I gave starts to a friend. We had plenty of laughs over the name! A few days ago she invited me over for a taste test.
Big, beautiful fruits, not purely heart-shaped, but clearly showing that oxheart heritage. When we cut them open, the texture was stunning: so dense and grainy like the center of a prime watermelon. On flavor: good, but leaning mild. In fact, adding salt or balsamic vinegar seemed to overpower the taste completely. Good tomato, but nothing revolutionary, especially compared right alongside Amethyst Jewel, which had so many bold, sweet, complex undertones.
I’ve noticed over the years that tomatoes with that grainy, watermelon-like meat tend to taste milder than those with a smooth, gel-like or marmalade texture. That graininess comes from starch buildup in the cells, which doesn’t carry as much flavor as gelatinous sugars.
Interesting variety. Stalled for quite a while after transplanting. Set clusters early, but refused to size up. Once the vine hit its stride and reached the greenhouse ceiling, it started rapidly swelling fruit across multiple clusters all at once. Both vines acted the exact same way.
Ended up fully ripening on the vine by September here in the north, and finished as one of my highest yielding varieties. Tall vines with stout stems and broad foliage. Large hearts with very pleasant, sweet-forward flavor.
Grew a single plant. Turned out quite early compared to other varieties. Everything ripened right on the vine and the flavor was great! Most fruit were somewhat misshapen, but one was an unmistakable monkey butt!
Planted two vines just for laughs because of the name, and didn’t regret it for a second. Made some classic rookie mistakes: planted them on the bed margin practically in the shade of other tomatoes and right next to a honeysuckle bush. Yet even there, the results were impressive. Churned out plenty of fruit, was the very first to ripen, and fruits were smooth with that distinct cleft at the base. 😆
My second mistake was assuming it was a determinate. It quickly shot past my 6.5 ft (2 m) stake and started sagging under its own weight until a neighboring plant collapsed over it. That shut down production late in the season, right as late blight rolled into the garden.
Definitely growing it again, without the mistakes next time. I am not a die-hard fresh tomato eater, so to me most fresh slicers taste about the same. But it made incredible juice and ripened indoors off the vine without shriveling. Locked in for my 2019 plan! 👍
Just like I posted back in August, I loved this variety. Following up after end-of-season wrap up: absolute winner! Didn’t drop a single blossom. Very productive.
Here’s how it started, and here it is in October. Proved itself completely resilient in our harsh Urals climate. 🙂
Here is how Monkey Ass grew in my greenhouse:
Monkey Ass really blew me away! Colossal yields and gigantic fruits. Sowing it again next spring just to show off to dinner guests!
A couple more photos of Monkey Ass:
Full Summary: Vine Vigor, Fruit Morphology, and Flavor Profile
- 🌿 Plant Architecture: Unchecked indeterminate monster vine that routinely exceeds 10 ft (3 m), creeping across greenhouse ceilings. Unlike typical weeping oxhearts, it develops stout, thick stems and broad horizontal leaves that withstand heat and resist blossom drop.
- 🍑 Fruit Morphology: Early lower clusters produce conventional, smooth pink oxhearts. As the plant climbs past the 3rd or 4th truss, many fruits express the characteristic deep vertical crease and indented blossom end that gives the variety its name. Fruits easily reach 14-21 oz (400-600 g).
- 👅 Texture & Flavor: Dense, sugary, low-acid meat with very few seeds. Features an open, grainy watermelon texture rather than a slippery gel locule structure. Outstanding for sweet juice, rich sauce, and fresh slicing, though seasoning should be kept light so as not to overpower its delicate flavor.
- 🛡️ Cold Hardiness: Exceptional performance in harsh short-season regions. Continues setting and ripening fruit from late June through October in the Urals and Siberia without yellow shoulders or cracking.
- 🌎 Who Reviewed It: Extensively trialed across USDA Zones 2 through 5 (Urals, Siberia, Moscow Region, Lipetsk, Vologda, and Kursk).
The variety name Monkey Ass often causes giggles or confusion, but the morphology has a clear genetic and physiological basis. In heirloom oxhearts with multilocular genetics, natural fasciation and variable pollination temperatures on upper trusses frequently cause the blossom end to develop two distinct, rounded lobes with a deep central furrow. Regarding table quality: multiple reviewers observed a “watermelon-like” graininess. In heirloom tomato genetics, this is caused by low levels of locular pectin and high cell-wall starch conversion, producing a dry, dense, melt-in-your-mouth bite that is completely free of runny green gel.
