📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Antoshka
- 🌍 Origin: A fantastic early-season Russian commercial variety. The name “Antoshka” is a friendly, diminutive form of the name Anton (often associated with a cheerful cartoon character in Russia).
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Determinate (bush/dwarf type). Extremely compact and sturdy, growing only 30-60 cm (12-24 inches) tall. It requires zero pruning or staking, making it the ultimate “plant and forget” variety. Perfect for container gardening, balconies, or hanging over raised beds!
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Bright yellow, perfectly round cocktail/large cherry tomatoes weighing around 50-80 g (1.7-2.8 oz).
- ⏳ Maturity: Extra early. It is often planted specifically to get the very first fresh tomatoes of the summer.
- 👅 Flavor & Use: A very good, classic tomato flavor. While it may not compete with the intense sweetness of late-season heirloom slicers, it is an absolute treat in early June. Excellent for snacking right off the vine or freezing whole for winter.
Seeds were from Hardwick (Pavlovsk, Leningrad Region).
Determinate, grows up to 50 cm (20 inches).
Early season.
Fruits are yellow, weighing around 80 g (2.8 oz).
I planted them outdoors in open ground in planters made of stacked car tires. We had a severe hail storm, and it cut off not only the fruits and leaves from Antoshka, but even the stems…
I moved a couple of the surviving bushes into the greenhouse, but left one right there in its place. They all continued to bear fruit until they were finally killed by the autumn frost.
Very tasty little tomatoes, especially the ones that grew on the bush that was left outside in the “tires” in the open ground.
An early-ripening, heavy-yielding variety. Sown in early March, it starts producing fruit in June, just slightly later than the famous Iyunskiy (June) variety. It grows up to 60 cm (24 inches) tall, has a slender habit, and is absolutely loaded with fruit. The fruits are yellow balls, and they get sweet when fully ripe. I’ve been planting it for 2 years now specifically for an early harvest.
This year I got a tiny little seedling of this at a spring garden meetup from Svetik Lana. I grew it in a bucket—it fruited all summer long, producing a ton of yellow balls! It is a heavy yielder, beautiful, and has a very good taste!
It got a very lucky spot in my garden—the bush had the opportunity to cascade downward from the edge of the bed (it was an old cucumber bed, slightly raised above the ground level). This meant way less work for us, no need for stakes or tying up. The bush grew 8 suckers, and every single one of them stretched outward, competing to be the main stem.
It’s a very low-maintenance variety, early, 100% fruit set, looks beautiful, and the tomatoes are perfect “pop-in-your-mouth” snacks. It fruited for us for 2 solid months, and then in October, it pushed out brand new green foliage and blossoms again! The photo is from October 11, 2018.
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A compact dwarf tree-type bush, just a little bit taller than Iyunskiy (June). But the tomatoes themselves are larger than the Iyunskiy Yellow variety. As for the taste… it has a good, solid tomato flavor. Not super-super sweet. But honestly, what do we really expect from the very first early varieties? We just want them to exist and be ripe! The yield is very good.
Later in the season, when the tastier and sweeter indeterminate late varieties join the harvest party, these early tomatoes tend to get pushed aside and forgotten… But Antoshka is absolutely perfect for freezing whole!
I grew it in 2021. I had one bush planted outdoors in open ground. I didn’t prune it at all. The height was no more than 30 cm (12 inches) tall. The fruits are yellow balls, with a pretty decent taste.
