Heirloom Tomato Varieties & Reviews | Tomat-Pomidor
Honest reviews of global tomato varieties from a 15-year-old growers community.
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🍅 Quick take: Kamenny Tsvetok (Stone Flower) is a rugged, tree-type determinate bush variety bred for outdoor growing. It is known for producing incredibly dense, rock-solid red fruits that store for a very long time. However, grower reviews are heavily polarized. While some praise its yields and utility for canning/storage, others report that it tastes … Read more
📌 Quick Summary: Market Garlic & Fall Planting Secrets 🧄 The Stem Test: If you buy unnamed garlic at a farmers market and want to plant it, look at the center of the bulb. If it has a woody, rigid stalk in the middle, it’s a Hardneck (winter) variety. If it is soft and papery, … Read more
📌 Quick Summary: The Great Calcium vs. Potassium Mix-Up 🍅 The BER Mistake: Blossom End Rot (BER) is caused by a lack of Calcium, not Potassium. Many growers confuse the two! Feeding a plant suffering from BER with Potassium will actually make the rot much worse. 🛑 Nutrient Lockout: Potassium and Calcium are antagonistic elements … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Colibri F1 is a vigorous indeterminate French hybrid from Clause. While technically marketed as a “salad/slicer plum,” growers find its firm texture and uniform 5.5-6 oz (160-170 g) red fruits absolutely perfect for canning whole. It features short internodes and throws massive, often forked clusters, making it a heavy yielder in the … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Kuraga (Dried Apricot) is an indeterminate orange paste tomato. It produces meaty, very sweet 5 oz (150 g) plum-shaped fruits on skinny, wispy vines. While it can be grown outdoors, it performs much better and yields higher when given the shelter of a greenhouse. Full summary ↓ Growers’ Notes and Photos (USDA … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Korol Gigantov (King of Giants) is an indeterminate Siberian heirloom that throws out absolutely massive beefsteaks, regularly hitting 1-1.5 lbs (500-700 g) and occasionally topping 2.2 lbs (1 kg). Unlike most giant heirlooms, it actually stores fairly well without cracking. However, there are multiple crossed seed lines circulating (some with PL foliage … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Krasavets Myasistyi (Meaty Beauty) is a vigorous indeterminate pink tomato from the Russian seed company SeDeK. However, growers in this thread report wildly different results—one got the massive, meaty pink slicers described on the packet, while the other ended up with a multiflora plant producing small barrel-shaped canning tomatoes. Both versions yielded … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Bear Claw (Kogot Medvedya) is an indeterminate pink heirloom that produces massive, lightly ribbed, pear/oxheart-shaped fruits weighing up to 28 oz (800 g). While the flavor is universally praised as sweet, juicy, and meaty, growers have mixed feelings about its productivity, with some struggling with poor fruit set per truss. It is … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Kecskemeti Jubileum is a famous Hungarian determinate variety bred specifically for processing and canning. Staying highly compact at around 3 ft (1 m) tall, it pumps out uniform 4 oz (100-120 g) red fruits with firm skin that won’t turn to mush in a jar. Full summary ↓ Growers’ Notes and Photos … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Strawberry Leopard is a US-bred, early-season semi-determinate variety that’s supposed to produce red tomatoes with distinct yellow “freckles.” While growers agree it is impressively early and produces good-sized slicers, multiple people in this thread report getting plain red fruits with zero freckles, heavily suggesting that a batch of off-type (crossed) seeds is … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Korol Rannikh (King of the Earlies) is an early, determinate to semi-determinate variety famous for producing absolutely massive first fruits (up to 28 oz / 800 g) on surprisingly short bushes. While it pumps out impressive early yields with a classic tart tomato flavor, its biggest drawback is poor disease resistance. Growers … Read more
🍅 Quick take: Krokha (which translates to “Crumb” or “Tiny Tot”) is an ultra-early determinate red cherry tomato from Belarus. Originally bred to be a compact, no-prune 1.5 ft (40-50 cm) bush for outdoor growing, it can reach over 3 ft (1 m) in a greenhouse. It produces sweet, glossy 1 oz (25-40 g) fruits … Read more