Russian 117 Tomato Review & Photos

Indeterminate slicing variety. Turned out mid-season for me, even though catalog write-ups lean toward late.
The tomatoes are large to huge, flattened, fused double hearts. Dense, meaty, firm flesh, yet dripping with juice. As for flavor, it varied slightly through the season, but honestly had only two settings: very good and truly exceptional 😋
The vine grew in the sunniest spot in the greenhouse and reached 7.2 ft (2.2 m). Average foliage density. Yield was top-notch, it set every single flower on the truss without missing a beat. Outstanding variety!

👍 👍 👍 👍

Follow-up pics. If the scale reading is tough to see, that fruit tipped the scale at 17 oz (484 g).

What an absolute stunner 👍 I’ve got this exact variety slated for my garden beds this spring 🙂

Took my breath away! Adding this straight to my must-grow list.

Here is the stunner I harvested. Russian 117. Juicy, super delicious, leaned more pinkish-red, and grew on potato leaf foliage.

Gorgeous! 👍 Vitaliy, once your plant with regular foliage ripens up, post a photo of that one too, please!

This variety completely blew me away with its production and rich flavor 📬 😋😋😋😋
Grew under greenhouse cover. Big shoutout to Lena for the seeds! 😘😘😘😘😘

Sowed three seeds (props to ElenaN 🙏). Two came up regular leaf and one sprouted potato leaf, so I planted out one of each.
The potato leaf plant got stuck in the worst, most cramped spot in the house. Both turned out delicious, but the potato leaf plant actually gave slightly larger tomatoes and better overall yield. I am miles away from hitting Mila’s monster record weights, but my garden never produces real giants anyway.

Here is my Russian 117. Huge thanks to ElenaN for the seeds 🙏! Incredibly delicious tomato! Grew inside the greenhouse, foliage was regular leaf.
Edited October 9, 2015 by Drosera

My Russian 117:

Lena, judging from the photo, yours looks an awful lot like Orange Russian 117 rather than straight Russian 117.

Plena wrote:
Lena, judging from the photo, yours looks an awful lot like Orange Russian 117 rather than straight Russian 117.

Elena, I think it’s just lighting/camera glare. Orange Russian 117 is a true bicolor, while this is solid red with light reflection bouncing off the skin.

Good catch, totally slipped my mind that Orange Russian is a bicolor 😳

One of my late autumn pullers, red Russian 117 on regular foliage.
Pulled 14.3 lbs (6.5 kg) of ripe fruit off this single vine, plus another 4.4 lbs (2 kg) of green ones before frost. This pictured specimen was the absolute heaviest. Pretty sure with dedicated pruning and dialing in fertilizer early on, you could coax even bigger giants out of it.

Incredible variety! Massive production 💥, delicious and gorgeous 👍
Ran it in the greenhouse trained to two leaders, indeterminate vine. Fruits are large, broad, fleshy red hearts, almost flat-round 😋

Grew this one again in 2015. Starting seedlings from my saved seed, I noticed both regular foliage and potato leaf starts popped up in the trays.
Last season in the greenhouse, yield was heavier and fruit size ran bigger. This season I ran the plant outdoors in the open dirt, fruits were slightly smaller, but denser and even richer in flavor. Original seeds were sourced from Tatiana Kouchnareva.

Out of three sprouts, two have potato leaf foliage, so I kept those two. No clue why I picked the potato leaf ones, but greenhouse space is tight and I only have room for two 🙂
Which one is supposed to be the ‘true’ type?

Serg wrote:
Which one is supposed to be the ‘true’ type?

Sergey, true type has regular foliage ✉️✉️✉️✉️

Mila wrote:
Sergey, true type has regular foliage ✉️✉️✉️✉️

😢 😢 😢

Uh oh, all three of mine popped up with potato leaf… 🙁

Olya Pskovishna wrote:
Uh oh, all three of mine popped up with potato leaf… 🙁

Olga! At least I had a shot at salvation! 🙁

Mine also came up potato leaf. Where does it say that regular leaf is the only correct one?

IrinaA wrote:
Where does it say that regular leaf is the only correct one?

Look at Elena’s seedling flat photo, clearly potato leaf there too.

There you go! That means potato leaf is totally legitimate! 🙂

Last season I had both types sprout from the same packet. Planted both, shoved the potato leaf plant into the darkest corner of the greenhouse. It ended up maturing a bit later (probably due to the shady spot), but the fruit was larger and noticeably sweeter 🤷 That was my experience anyway.

All of mine came up standard regular leaf.

IrinaA wrote:
Where does it say that regular leaf is the only correct one?

Check the historical profile at Tatiana’s TOMATObase:
https://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Russian_117
Leaf type: regular leaf.
What y’all are growing is basically an unreleased new spin-off: Russian 117 Potato Leaf 😃

Potato leaf it is then! 😃 Tossing healthy starts would be a sin. Just wish seed catalogs broke down leaf variation ahead of time.

All mine came up potato leaf 😉
Recently ran across a catalog note that literally read: ‘…foliage regular, potato type.’ Guess depending on who writes it, potato leaf is considered regular somewhere!

I’ll wait and see what Elena says, but there’s no way I’m tossing these starts 😉

Folks! The official, historical foliage type for Russian 117 is regular leaf.
I originally ordered my seeds from Tanya Kouchnareva. In year one, foliage matched the description 100%. In year two, planting out seeds saved from my own fruit, seedlings segregated into regular leaf and potato leaf. Feedback from last season showed growers who bought seeds from Valentina Redko ran into the exact same story.
My take: the line is segregating. Sow extra seeds and select for standard foliage if you want true to type. In 2015, my potato leaf vine set fruit later than the regular leaf plant. The tomatoes on the potato leaf vine were pinkish-red rather than scarlet red. Flavor was pretty much identical.

I’ve noticed across the board that potato leaf varieties tend to run later. When planning my garden beds, I stick mostly to regular leaf varieties. I only bother with potato leaf if the color or fruit shape can’t be found on a regular vine. Flavor might be superior, but in our harsh short-season climate they just don’t yield enough before frost.

Serg wrote:
Potato leaf it is then! 😃 Tossing healthy starts would be a sin. Just wish seed catalogs broke down leaf variation ahead of time.

Sergey, don’t you dare toss them 😜
Last year I had German Giant show up with both potato leaf (true type) and regular leaf. Managed to plant the regular leaf start inside the greenhouse and the true potato leaf outside. That rogue regular leaf plant was an absolute beast of a producer 👍👍👍👍 Named it my ‘ultimate happy accident’ 😋😋😋😋😋😋 You’re gonna do just fine with those starts 👍👍👍👍

ElenaN wrote:
My take: the line is segregating. Sow extra seeds and select for standard foliage if you want true to type.

Lena, an established, older heirloom shouldn’t just destabilize on its own. It’s far more likely an accidental bee pollination with an adjacent potato leaf variety slipped into the pedigree somewhere. What people are growing now isn’t 100% original Russian 117.

Drosera wrote:
It’s far more likely an accidental bee pollination with an adjacent potato leaf variety slipped into the pedigree somewhere.

Svetlana, that could very well be true. That means the outcross happened back in Canada, because both Valentina Redko and I bought seeds from Tanya the exact same season and ended up with the identical segregation.

Out of 9 seeds sowed, every single one came up potato leaf. Across the board.
Also confused by the descriptions: folks write red, pink… but my packet is labeled Orange Russian 117 😜 So which one is supposed to be correct?

Orange Russian 117 is an entirely separate variety, it’s a yellow-red bicolor oxheart.

I also sourced my seeds from Tatiana. Didn’t get a single potato leaf plant in my flats. Plant was a powerhouse producer!

Serg wrote:
Out of three sprouts, two have potato leaf foliage, so I kept those two… Which one is supposed to be the ‘true’ type?

Hey Sergey! Last season I ended up with one of each. Put the ‘proper’ regular leaf plant inside the high tunnel and it flopped, produced sour, tiny ping-pong balls. Meanwhile, the rogue potato leaf went outside into the open garden beds and cranked out massive, gorgeous, true-to-form oxhearts. The line definitely split, so try it out yourself. This year my lone Russian 117 sprouted potato leaf again.

Plena wrote:
Both turned out delicious, but the potato leaf plant actually gave slightly larger tomatoes and better overall yield.

Elena, I sowed seed saved from your stock this spring and got a potato leaf plant 😉 Keeping it and planting it straight into the high tunnel 🙂

Just checked my seedling markers. My bad! Orange Russian 117 belongs in a whole different discussion, and that plant has standard serrated regular foliage.

Orange Russian 117 is definitely standard regular leaf 🙂

elena1984 wrote:
Elena, I sowed seed saved from your stock this spring and got a potato leaf plant 😉 Keeping it and planting it straight into the high tunnel 🙂

Lena, my seeds were harvested from a regular leaf vine originally sourced from ElenaN 🙏 Kept saving from the true-to-type regular vine, and ran the potato leaf as a side trial. It was a really good trial though!

Yep, remember that! That just confirms the line was segregating. Even from regular foliage, potato leaf keeps throwing offshoots. Loved the fruit on the potato leaf plant, so keeping it around even if it’s considered an off-type.

elena1984 wrote:
The line definitely split, so try it out yourself. This year my lone Russian 117 sprouted potato leaf again.

Thanks Elena! Read your garden journal notes on it. Keeping the starts, growing them out, and I’ll post photos and updates 🙏🙏🙏

Loved this variety. Heavy cropper, super rich flavor, and sweet. Stretched to roughly 6 ft (1.8 m) inside the hoop house.

Hit 6 ft (1.8 m) in the greenhouse. Trained to two stems, every tomato grew large. Absolutely fell in love with it, growing it for the third season straight.

Grew two plants this season: one potato leaf inside the greenhouse, one regular leaf out in the garden beds. Both were massive producers, but sadly both suffered from persistent green/yellow shoulders 🙁
Top-dressed wood ash twice and fertilized with potassium sulfate, but no luck. It breaks my heart because the tomato is incredible, but it just doesn’t cooperate with my soil 😢

Folks are sharing seeds from heterozygous plants (regular/potato leaf) 😕
Last year I grew two plants with regular foliage from seed ElenaN sent 🙏 Collected seeds, planted three this spring, and all three came up potato leaf.
Classic 3:1 Mendelian ratio where regular is dominant and potato leaf is recessive, though with micro sample sizes like 3 seeds you won’t see the exact statistical split.

Exact same story for me: out of three sowed, two sprouted potato leaf and one regular. Seeds came from Redko. No seed mix-up possible, all three germinated in the same starter cell.

Started five seeds, all five germinated, and every single one is potato leaf. Sourced from Zolushka. By the way, the seedlings are robust and easily the stockiest starts among everything sown that same day.