Quick Summary of African Vining
- 🌍 Origin: A renowned heirloom variety highly valued by our community for its exceptional eating qualities.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate, mid-season, growing up to 2 meters (6.5 ft) tall. It features classic “wispy” or weeping foliage. Because the plant is slender, growers recommend planting it in the sunniest spots of the greenhouse and ensuring it receives adequate feeding (especially potassium) to prevent hard green shoulders. In hot southern climates, it may require light shading due to its sparse leaf cover.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Beautiful pink oxhearts, sometimes with blunt or slightly flattened bottoms. They range from 120g to over 400g (4.2–14 oz). The flesh is incredibly dense, meaty, and juicy, with very few seeds.
- 👅 Flavor: Widely considered a “gold standard” for pink tomatoes. The flavor is intensely sweet but perfectly balanced with just enough tartness to make it complex. It frequently outperforms other popular sweet hearts (like Wolford Wonder) in taste tests.
- ⏳ Yield & Behavior: Yields can vary drastically depending on the weather and growing skills. Some growers report average yields or dropped blossoms, while others experience an avalanche of fruit once the plant adapts. It also ripens perfectly off the vine without losing its sweetness.
A mid-season indeterminate slicing variety. The fruits are medium to large pink hearts—meaty, with few seeds, appetizing and beautiful when sliced, very tasty, with sweetness. Grew in the greenhouse. The yield was slightly above average.
Continuation.
For the second year, this variety is among my favorites for taste—a solid A+ (5 out of 5).
Lena, please tell me, what source did you get the seeds from?
Len, what was the yield like this year?
Tamara, the seeds were from Tatyana Kushnareva.
Alena, the yield was already above average. Do not shade the bush, plant it right next to the polycarbonate walls in the greenhouse, because it has a fragile, slender structure + it needs enhanced feeding.
I also grew one bush outdoors in the open ground—the yield was very low, meaning this is strictly a greenhouse variety for our climate.
Thank you! One more question. Is it meaty, or more on the watery side?
Tamara, not watery at all, but not dry either. It’s meaty.
Thanks! Looking at the photos, it’s just handsome.
Yesterday I was looking at Wolford Wonder—it seemed to me that they are similar. But is this one tastier?
Elena, they are similar in cross-section and shape. But the taste is different. Wolford Wonder lacks a bit of tartness, which is why (in my conditions), during this year’s cold and rainy summer, its flavor “wandered”—the tomatoes were sometimes bland, sometimes sweet. African Vining has a very balanced flavor; there is both sweetness and tartness, with the sweetness prevailing.
African Vining variety—indeterminate, grew on two stems. Very productive, but for me, this was the only variety where the shoulders didn’t ripen (hard green shoulders). This naturally affected the taste; I had to cut off and throw away a third of the tomato, and the remaining flesh was dense with some white marbling inside. Overall, I’m disappointed… Maybe it was my oversight, maybe some mistake on my part, but I won’t repeat this variety.
Seeds from V. Redko.
I grew African Vining this year. The variety is incredibly delicious, but for me, it wasn’t very productive. I will repeat it in the future.
For me, this variety was one of the tastiest 😋 Red-pink hearts, flattened at the bottom, and very beautiful! It’s a pity I don’t have photos. Yield was average.
IrinaA, maybe you got a crossed seed (wrong variety)? I just can’t believe it could be inedible.
This year I planted 2 bushes. One in the greenhouse, the other outdoors. Outdoors, it didn’t drop blossoms, but the tomatoes on the upper trusses didn’t reach maturity, and in the second half of August, green shoulders appeared. In the greenhouse, it failed to set fruit on the 2nd and 3rd trusses, but the upper ones were loaded and had no hard shoulders. So the yield was average in both cases. But when I tasted this tomato, I immediately decided that it is the gold standard of taste for all other varieties. Very delicious!
I think, Irina, you shouldn’t give up on this tomato. This year wasn’t a good one to judge varieties by. My seeds were also from V. Redko.
Thank you, Lenochka, for the seeds of such a wonderful tomato! My photos aren’t as beautiful, but the tomatoes were delicious. In the heat, there were small hard shoulders and a few white veins. I didn’t feed it Potassium-Phosphorus. I’ll keep that in mind for next year.
A dense tomato with excellent taste. It’s a pity there are too few seeds in it. I will plant it again.
In the South, it requires shading, as it doesn’t have much foliage (wispy).
Elena_A said:
This year I planted 2 bushes. One in the greenhouse, the other outdoors…
Elena, how tall was the vine outdoors and in the greenhouse? And how many stems did you leave outdoors? Could the yield be increased by the number of stems? From what I understand, the bush is wimpy and slender.
Tell me, how is this tomato when it comes to shelf life (storage)?
Elena 62 said:
Elena, how tall was the vine outdoors and in the greenhouse? And how many stems did you leave outdoors? …
Elena, I pruned suckers only up to the 1st truss, and then there were absolutely no suckers to form a second or third stem.
My bush wasn’t particularly wimpy or thin, but it grew as a single stem and only branched out a little bit at the very top. It was about 2 meters (6.5 ft) tall in the greenhouse.
I grew African Vining for the third year, and for the third year it confirmed its excellent and sweet taste. It grew in the greenhouse, first on two stems, then I added another, so it ended up growing on three stems. The bush was up to 2 meters (6.5 ft) tall, and the yield was very good.
Len, one can only admire your tomatoes, and the yield is just amazing 👍 🙌
ElenaN said:
I grew African Vining for the third year… grew in the greenhouse, first on two stems, then I added another…
I want to leave two suckers at the bottom next time, under the first truss, because I generally don’t grow anything on a single stem. My main harvest formed on the upper trellis wire, already in August. Now I know what to expect from it. I grew it for the first time and didn’t expect such surprises, like having nothing to grow a second stem from.
Nadine said:
I want to leave two suckers at the bottom next time…
Nadya, what color are the tomatoes on your African Vining? In your photo, they look red and lack that “sparkle”. They should be pink with sparkling skin. Or maybe the photo just turned out that way?
If you leave suckers but pinch off their flower trusses, there will correspondingly be more leaf mass, better photosynthesis, and the yield should increase.
Variety Analysis:
- Bush structure (strength, presence of suckers, etc.): 4
- First ripe fruit picked: 2.9
- Beauty of the fruit (on a 5-point scale): 5
- Taste/sweetness: 4+
- Average number of fruits in a truss: 3-5
- Yield (on a 5-point scale): 5
- Average fruit weight: 281g (9.9 oz)
- Bush height outdoors: 1.8m (6 ft)
Final grade of the variety (on a 5-point scale): 5-
I really liked the variety: for its taste, yield, and shelf life (storage). Grew in the greenhouse.
ElenaN said:
Nadya, what color are the tomatoes on your African Vining? In your photo, they look red…
Lenochka, my tomatoes are pink, I just can’t capture the right color, they all come out looking red on camera. 😠
Planted it for the first time. It behaved very strangely—bloomed and bloomed, all to no avail. Other varieties were already hanging heavy, but here, silence. True, I sprayed it with succinic acid. And suddenly it just exploded! It set a bunch of fruit all at once, on all the trusses, top and bottom. They are growing right before my eyes, already overtaking the fruits that had set earlier on other plants. How about that! So I have very high hopes for it!!! 😘
The yield at the moment is very poor. I treated it with Tomaton (fruit set spray) and boric acid.
I picked the first ripe tomato – 120g (4.2 oz). The taste is bright, typically tomatoey, sweet-and-sour with a predominance of acid. Nothing outstanding.
But let’s wait and see what the others will be like. Seeds are from the forum.
Harvested the crop from one bush, got 2kg 650g (5.8 lbs). This is outdoors, with a late planting and a strange summer…
Shevyachok said:
Harvested the crop from one bush, got 2kg 650g…
Something about the tomatoes in your photo doesn’t look like African Vining 🤐. Its fruits are pink, heart-shaped, but I see green-red, oblate, and small fruits in yours 🤐.
What grew, grew. The hearts are uncharacteristic, but still, if you look in profile, some are heart-shaped. Today I cut open a ripe one, and the cross-section is exactly like everyone else’s African Vining—solid meat, and delicious!
As for the shape… my bees must have been busy, definitely a cross-pollination… I will absolutely repeat this variety.
The most remarkable thing was its behavior—on July 12 it had a ton of flowers and not a single fruit set, and then they all set at once and gained mass very quickly!! I didn’t know that could happen!
This variety didn’t work out for me. The taste was absolutely plain and there was no yield. Second year of nothing. I don’t know if I’ll plant it next season.
