Banana Legs (Bananovye Nogi) Tomato Review

Tomato Banana Legs (Bananovye Nogi).

It’s an early-season det (in my greenhouse it got up to 31 inches / 80 cm).

The plant is super spindly with thin branches and lacy, wispy foliage (I planted two stems to a hole and they did great together). The fruits are icicles, 1.5-3 inches (4-8 cm) long, bright lemon color with green stripes. As they ripen, the stripes fade out. Very few seeds.

Since they’re pretty low acid, fresh eating was just kinda “meh” for me, but they are awesome for canning: dense, meaty, and tasty, though the skin is a bit thick.

Today I popped open a jar canned in their own juice, Banana Legs are 😋

Edited April 6, 2019 by Pomidoroved

Larisa, I totally agree. Really happy with this one. Mine were 1.7-2.8 oz (50-80g). It actually grew way better outdoors in the ground! 👍 Seeds from Redko.

Why “legs”? In Russian, we’d rather call them “Banana drumsticks” or “Banana thighs”. 😋

Those foreigners are weird 🤷‍♀️

Well… Leg means the lower part (calf).

UPD: Ah, you beat me to it 🙂

Even if the translation feels weird to us, adding the word “Banana” really smooths out the “Legs” part.

Our dear Yaroslavna shared these with me 🙂 🙂 🙂 🌺

Grew Banana Legs last year. Seeds from Natasha (Yaroslavna). 🙂 Loved this one! I started out pruning it to two stems, but then read you’re not supposed to prune them heavily. I stopped pinching suckers and the yield immediately exploded. Figured out this variety just needs moderate pruning—leaving 2, 3, or 4 stems is fine. But you can’t just let it go totally rogue, because it instantly gets overgrown with foliage and the tomatoes shrink in size. Here is a pic from when I stopped pruning.

What a beauty! How are they for canning?

Last summer was decent, the tomatoes got enough sun, so they were tasty fresh and totally fine pickled 😋

Mine grew outdoors like a sprawling bush. Didn’t even stake ’em, just threw some wooden boards under the fruits 👍. Liked ’em in jars too. 😋

Did NOT like them canned. 🍅 🍅 Nobody in the house wants to eat them. Skin is like leather and the flesh is super dense. Overall, it’s a beautiful heavy yielder, but it ended up being a total spitter for us, both fresh and pickled.

2014 year | 2011 year

Edited December 16, 2014 by Yaroslavna

A worthy variety! Seeds from Natalia Pavlovna. By the way, they keep really well, and they’re absolutely perfect for sun-drying and canning.

trofi:
Did NOT like them canned. Nobody in the house wants to eat them… ended up being a total spitter for us.

Same here. Crazy heavy yielder. But no one ate them fresh or canned. Maybe they needed more sun. Our summer was total garbage… Grew outdoors in the dirt, no stakes, no suckering. Going to try ’em in the greenhouse for 2015, hoping the flavor improves.

trofi:
Did NOT like them canned. 🍅 🍅 Nobody in the house wants to eat them…

Lena, wow, I’m shocked 😲

Mine were awesome for canning, my family already requested them for 2015. Grown outdoors, didn’t prune, about 33 inches tall (85 cm). Insane yield, nice sweet-tomato flavor. Kept to 2 stems, staked, weight 2-2.5 oz (60-70 g)… it’s a solid variety…

Man, really? 😲 My family and I actually loved them canned! 😋 👍 Yeah, the skin is thick, but that just makes ’em super easy to peel, just like an actual banana 😄.

Been planting it for two years, thanks Yaroslavna for the seeds! 🌺 Outdoors I barely touch the suckers, bush height is around 24-27 inches (60-70 cm), and it is crazy productive! Mid-season. Fruits are moderately firm, perfect for jars 👍 When fully ripe, the fresh ones are tasty too 😋

Definitely planting this one, it’ll do great outdoors 🙂

Last year, seeing photos of these, I literally got obsessed, I wanted the seeds so bad. Thanks to the forum, I scored 3 seeds and got 2 plants out of it. The seedlings were super wimpy. Planted one near the greenhouse door, the second deeper inside.

The one by the door was absolutely loaded, set almost every blossom on the truss, no diseases at all. The greenies looked awesome, like they had pearlescent green stripes. The one deeper in got shaded out by the tall indets planted along the walls, so the yield was awful. So yeah, it definitely needs space and good light.

As for the taste, it was a letdown: kinda dry, bland, super firm. Everything went into the canning jars. Good keeper though.

Maturity-wise, it was pretty late for me. Set fruit early enough, but took forever to color up.

Sadly, I didn’t save seeds. My mom accidentally canned the exact tomatoes I had set aside for seed saving! 🙂

Semechka:
Definitely planting this one, it’ll do great outdoors 🙂

Svetlana, outdoors the yield was literally double for me.

I’m trying to figure out, should I plant 1 or 2 roots per hole?

Liked it for the yield and gorgeous fruits. Got 2 bushes growing outside and they’re super prolific. Taste definitely isn’t for slicing, but they go straight into the pickling jars.

Gorgeous and a huge yielder! Thanks to Zhannochka for the seeds! 🌺

Edited November 26, 2015 by Drosera

A workhorse that never lets you down. Even if they aren’t the best fresh eating maters, they are killer for pickling 😋

trofi:
Did NOT like them canned. 🍅 🍅 Nobody in the house wants to eat them… ended up being a total spitter for us…

Couldn’t have said it better myself! 😄 Absolutely hated it (didn’t even think they were “pretty” 🍅). Plus I had BER issues with it.

Zhavoronok:
A workhorse that never lets you down… killer for pickling

The green stripes are barely visible on yours. What was the fruit weight?

I dug Banana Legs. Great yield out in the dirt and super low maintenance. Every single one went into the canner.

Grew it in the greenhouse. Productive, pickling icicles. For some reason, this year it was totally bland and tough. I plant it every year. The bush is incredibly spindly 😩 but mostly a good looking plant. As seedlings, they are just pathetic little twigs, but they pull through eventually. Blows my mind—how does such a fragile plant hold up that kind of load?

Repeated it in the greenhouse this year—just as productive as outdoors, but grew taller… I didn’t pinch any suckers.

Why are yours so short? 24-31 inches (60-80 cm), that’s crazy! Total dwarfs 🙂

In my garden, they are slightly over 5 feet (1.5m), and in the greenhouse, they’re vines hitting the roof.

Tatiana Kouchnareva’s database links to a seed source, Reimer Seeds, and they list the height up to 60 inches. In Tatiana’s famous “Urozhainy Ogorod” video, they are also tall, reaching the greenhouse ceiling.

Why such a huge height difference? Is this normal variation or are we talking segregation? Although, it’s a 1984 variety, it should be fully stable…

😲 Never in my life have they hit the greenhouse roof 😄 No matter where I grow this variety… it stays super short 🤷‍♀️

Does anyone have links to legit foreign sources showing the actual plant height?

This is driving me nuts 😳

Olga, I’m probably not wrong if I say Banana Legs showed up on this forum thanks to Natalia Pavlovna (Yaroslavna). There’s a thread in the Varieties section where she talks about how she scored these Swedish seeds.

Svet-la-na44:
Olga, I’m probably not wrong if I say Banana Legs showed up on this forum thanks to Natalia Pavlovna…

Svetlana, thanks! 🌺

Yeah, I remember it well. When I joined the forum back in 2012, right before New Years, I decided to play Santa for the whole forum 🙂 Sent out 3-5 seeds to anyone who asked…

So, as we later found out from chatting with Tatiana Kouchnareva, this variety was bred by Tom Wagner (USA), and in Tatiana’s database, Banana Legs is clearly listed as = Growth habit – DET =.

Tatiana adds a note saying = plants may be treated as indeterminate because they are quite vigorous =.

For me, even in the greenhouse, they never got past 24-27 inches (60-70 cm).

Edited October 12, 2017 by Yaroslavna

Ladies, sorry, but I gotta pick your brains a bit more on this 😳

Yaroslavna:
Tatiana adds a note saying = plants may be treated as indeterminate because they are quite vigorous =

After reading that on Tatiana’s site, I started digging. Actually, I started wondering earlier when Svetlana in another thread was venting about buying Banana Legs and getting an “uncontrollable indet”. I checked some English sites, saw Tatiana’s note about it acting like an indet, and figured it was fine. But then I come here and literally everyone is growing det Banana Legs. I’m completely lost. Let’s break it down:

1. If Tatiana says they can act like indets, they gotta be tall. You wouldn’t write that about a 2-foot dwarf, right?
2. Tatiana links to Reimer Seeds, and they list the height at 4-5 feet (1.2-1.5m). She wouldn’t link a bad source.
3. Other English sites usually say 4-5 feet minimum, and Dave’s Garden (pretty trusted site) actually says 4-6 feet! 🙂
4. On Russian forums, almost everyone has shorties.
5. In the only foreign full-plant photo I could dig up, the bushes are short, like 30 inches (80 cm). 😄
6. Looking at Natalia Pavlovna’s pic: if the biggest fruits are at least 3 inches, the stem visible in the shot has to be at least 30 inches, and it’s clearly growing taller out of frame, right? Or are the tomatoes just smaller? 🤷‍♀️
7. Some foreign sites claim it can grow as both det and indet. I don’t buy that. If my seeds are genetically tall, they aren’t gonna magically turn into dwarfs just cause I move them. Wimpy, sure, but not short. Like Valentina said above: her seeds grow short no matter what. Are we dealing with two completely different strains? 😛 Thoughts?

Don’t overthink it… just pop the forum’s Banana Legs in the dirt… and let ’em grow right next to your tall ones ??

Thanks Valentina, that’s exactly the plan 👍

Looked at pics of what this is supposed to look like and realized I definitely got crossed seeds. Whatever I’m growing ain’t Legs.

In my greenhouse, this one was a heavy yielder and mid-early. Bush height was around 3.3 ft (1m). Stripes were obvious on the greenies but kinda vanished when ripe. Great flavor—sweet (sometimes with a little zip), juicy, and meaty. Ripen great on the counter and keep for up to 2 months.

In our climate it was an absolute beauty. Grew it in-ground. Height 27-31 inches (70-80cm). Pruned up to the first truss, then let it go completely rogue. Yield was just insane. Fresh eating is a C-. BUT, canned with carrot greens, it’s pure magic.

Grew this gorgeous workhorse again. Greenhouse grown, no suckering, bush height around 27 inches (70cm). Fruit weight up to 1.7 oz (50g).

Edited September 16, 2019 by Svetikk

Does anyone know how “Bananovye Nogi” got added to the official Russian State Register and patented by Vasily Ivanovich Blokin-Mechtalin in 2018? The registry lists it as an indeterminate. What strain is that, and how does it relate to Tom Wagner’s original ‘Banana Legs’?

The height differences we’re seeing might just be because different collector circles ended up with entirely different lines.

I plant Banana Legs every year. Super happy with the results.

Edited October 27, 2019 by ilja

Yeah, it pumps out tomatoes. Didn’t see any other redeeming qualities though.

Grew these this past season and actually liked them. The seedlings were super wimpy at first, got hit by frost, and took forever to bounce back. So it started setting late and didn’t hit its full potential. But that one truss that managed to pump out 25 fruits REALLY blew my mind. Formed super late (mid-October) so they wouldn’t have ripened on the vine, I just let ’em ripen indoors on the counter. Ripened great, lasted all the way to New Years. Kinda dry for my taste, but I’m cutting ’em some slack since they didn’t ripen in the sun… Definitely growing it again next year. Wanna see what they actually taste like fresh and in a jar.

Edited February 6, 2020 by LanYa

Grew Banana Legs in 2018. Didn’t see a single redeeming quality—total disappointment. Yield was low, color wasn’t even that nice golden yellow.

Turned out to be a late ripener, plant was spindly.

And the taste! I have never eaten a grosser tomato than Banana Legs. Total spitter.

Edited February 7, 2020 by Sergey-EKB

Sergey-EKB:
And the taste! I have never eaten a grosser tomato than Banana Legs…

After all the hype on YouTube and forums, I was so bummed out by the result too. Well, maybe strictly for the pickling jar.

But it’s literally a paste tomato. Why would you expect it to taste like a slicer? Made killer sun-dried tomatoes with mine too.

Crazy prolific in the dirt outside, perfect for marinating.

Grew in-ground. Bushes were 24-27 inches (60-70cm) tall and absolutely loaded. Mine weren’t dry at all, thin skins, nice mild flavor with no acidity.