📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Barbaris F1 (Barberry)
- 🌍 Origin: A commercial Russian cherry hybrid. The name translates to “Barberry”. Warning: There seem to be multiple, highly inconsistent versions of this seed sold by different companies (like Sib-Sad). Some packets produce red, round, tiny 0.4 oz (12 g) cherries, while others produce elongated, pink 1.4 oz (40 g) cherries.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: A massive, incredibly vigorous indeterminate plant. It is a true “Multiflora” type, meaning it throws gigantic, branched blossom clusters. It requires strict pruning/suckering, or it will quickly turn into a tangled jungle. Known for excellent resistance to Late Blight.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Depending on the seed batch, it produces either red or pink cherry/grape tomatoes. The trusses are massive, frequently holding 50 to 100+ tomatoes per cluster. They have great shelf life, don’t crack easily, and hold well on the vine without dropping.
- 👅 Flavor: Highly debated due to seed instability. When it grows true to the original F1 specs, it is very sweet, dense, and meaty. However, many growers report getting sour or tart off-types from newer seed packets.
Description from the packet: “An early-ripening cherry hybrid. The plant grows up to 6.5 ft (2 m) tall and forms three to five massive multiflora trusses with a huge amount (up to 100 pcs) of small cherry fruits weighing 0.35-0.4 oz (10-12 g). The tomatoes are very sweet, firm, and meaty.”
Mine actually managed to grow up to 10 ft (3 m). And it definitely had way more than 3-5 trusses on the plant. The number of fruits per cluster is truly staggering. I tried counting them once, but lost count after 70 and just got tired of it.
The tomatoes are firm, sweet, and have a great shelf life. The flavor is excellent—both at the very beginning of the harvest and at the end of the season when it’s cold, damp, and gloomy out. The first truss is pretty modest in fruit count, but the subsequent ones just get obscenely huge. The fruits don’t crack and they don’t drop off the vine. Even the ones I picked green and counter-ripened didn’t lose their flavor.
My Barbaris F1 last year (grown from the exact same packet) had a fruit count per truss that was nowhere *near* what was advertised 🤔. And the taste was definitely not sweet—it was actually pretty sour, especially compared to the *Nastya-Slastena F1* growing right next to it.
Someone sent me seeds for the variety *Shalun (Mischief)* from Sib-Sad, and told me that this variety was renamed to *Barbaris* and is now sold as a hybrid. Is that true? Based on the descriptions, they sound identical.
??? 🤦♀️
I agree with Svetik [Drosera] 100%. I have no idea how it managed to be so sour…? And on top of that, the shape was completely wrong for me. It was more oval. Like a dome shape starting from the stem end.
My shape actually matched perfectly 🤔. What grew is what grew, so that’s what I showed 🙂
Well, there you go. You dream of a sweet cherry *Barbaris F1*, and it turns out to be as sour as an actual barberry bush in nature (I’ve tasted the wild berries off the bush). Sib-Sad always keeps us guessing!
Zulfiya, I still prefer it over the *Ira* variety. Sweet already explained why in her post. The last sentence in her review—that’s the biggest plus for Barbaris [great shelf life].
Tanya! But there is zero guarantee that mine will grow out exactly like Sweet’s! It could easily end up looking like Drosera’s. That’s what’s so frustrating! If an OP variety fails, lucky forum members can just share reliable saved seed with you, but you can’t do that with a commercial hybrid…
Sveta [Drosera], did you grow yours outdoors in open ground?
There is a specific recommendation on the packet: “for greenhouse cultivation.” I somehow forgot to mention that in my first post.
I grew three plants: two in the greenhouse, and one outdoors just so I wouldn’t have to throw the seedling away. Well, the one outdoors only produced two trusses with maybe 20 tiny tomatoes each, way smaller than the greenhouse ones. And the flavor was completely different.
But to be fair, ALL my outdoor tomatoes behave that way. Like I’ve said before, we get thick river fog all summer and our nights are very cold.
Regarding the flavor: I grew *Nastya-Slastena* in 2012 and 2013. It blooms in huge bouquets, sets fruit well, very productive. In 2012, the taste was excellent—a bit soft, but sweet and very tomato-ey. In 2013, it was basically sour, bitter jelly filled with a massive amount of seeds. Exact same seeds (from SeDek), same agrotechniques, planted in the exact same spot in the greenhouse, but totally different taste. If I hadn’t grown it in 2012 first, I would have been completely disappointed by the 2013 results and never planted it again.
Tanyush, my *Nastya-Slastena* also had a weird bitter taste back in 2012 :(, so I didn’t even bother planting it this year.
Sveta, my Barbaris was growing in the greenhouse, right next to Nastya.
(There is zero point in growing Nastya-Slastena outdoors here anyway. I’ve been growing it every single year since 2011, and it’s always sweet for me).
Tatyana: …Exact same seeds (from SeDek), same agrotechniques, planted in the exact same spot in the greenhouse, but totally different taste…
Honestly (off-topic), over multiple years, my agrotechniques are never exactly the “same”… we inevitably water differently. Not to mention differences in fertilizing/feeding. 🤷♀️
ElenaMaria: Someone sent me seeds for the variety Shalun (Mischief) from Sib-Sad, and told me that this variety was renamed to Barbaris and is now sold as a hybrid. Is that true?
Shalun produces pink fruits, while Barbaris is red. And Shalun is still currently being sold as Shalun. We’d have to grow them side-by-side to compare, but honestly, if they are the exact same thing, that’s even better—because Shalun is an OP (open-pollinated) variety, not a hybrid!
Sweet: Shalun is an OP (open-pollinated) variety, not a hybrid!
Thank you! I heard incredibly high praise for Shalun, and the descriptions for these two varieties are identical. I’ll try to buy Barbaris. Seeds from Sib-Sad are a rarity here in Moscow; my only hope is finding them at the VVC exhibition center.
I planted a totally different *Barbaris F1* packet. My packet said: “An amazing indeterminate early hybrid (105-110 days). Plant height 5-6 ft (1.5-1.8 m), forms 3-5 massive branched trusses with a large quantity (50-70 pcs) of charming, smooth, slightly elongated PINK fruits weighing 1.2-1.4 oz (35-40 g). Tomatoes are very sweet, firm, meaty. Fruits all summer until autumn. For fresh eating, salads, and canning. Striking, tasty, beautiful.” Harvest year 2012, Batch 6207, expires 2017.
Here is how it grew outdoors. Height was around 3.3 ft (1 meter). It only threw 2 trusses, but wow, what trusses… It didn’t get sick at all, despite the terrible weather and a massive Late Blight (FF) epidemic everywhere else. Never watered it, only gave it one organic foliar spray.
Very tasty tomatoes, they only cracked if they got extremely overripe. Excellent for canning.
This year, the plants I grew from the new packets did not match what I grew last year. Honestly, it’s probably not a true F1 anymore, but an F2 or F3 generation? Fruits came out round. The taste was similar, just a bit worse.
I grew this hybrid. Loved it! Productive and tasty. The tomatoes are firm, so they’ll probably be great for canning. I didn’t can any though—they just sat on a plate and we ate them like candy. So they never even had a chance to fully ripen 😂.
Warning: it throws suckers aggressively! You absolutely MUST prune it, otherwise it turns into a dark, tangled jungle. I pruned mine to two stems.
