📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Basajaun
- 🌍 Origin: A highly prized family heirloom from the Basque Country (Biscay province, Spain). Introduced to the wider heirloom community by Secret Seed Cartel.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall), though some greenhouse growers report it staying around 5 feet (1.5m). It is a sturdy but slow-growing plant that absolutely requires heavy-duty staking and truss support to handle the massive fruit weight.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Giant, deep red beefsteaks. These are true monsters—fruits frequently range from 1.5 lbs to nearly 3 lbs (700g to 1.2kg+). Very meaty with very few seeds and highly resistant to cracking.
- 👅 Flavor: Classic, rich, and sweet tomato flavor with a thick, dense texture.
- ⏳ Yield & Maturity: Late-season. Yields get mixed reviews depending on the climate. It can struggle and drop blossoms in extreme heat, but in cooler climates or controlled greenhouse conditions, it can produce huge flushes of giant tomatoes by late summer.
Information from the vendor site (secretseedcartel.com):
Got these seeds from my gardening friend Ion Kuso Ureta. He lives in the port town of Algorta in the Biscay province, Basque Country, Spain. This is his personal family heirloom. They grow huge! Big bright red monsters. No cracking or catfacing, so they grow perfect tomatoes. Although it’s a late variety, they are worth the wait, and late summer will bring a large harvest. Thick and meaty, you can really taste the Basque countryside in every bite. Sweet with a mild flavor. I can see why Ion keeps passing this family tomato down from generation to generation. Some of them are so large they may require extra support.
My largest tomato in 2021 was 1280 grams (2.8 lbs). It grew on the north side of the greenhouse and reached about 5 feet (1.5 meters) in height. It set 7 more tomatoes, and not a single one was under 1.5 lbs (700 grams).
I grew it too. Because of our wild extreme heat, it was a low yielder for me, but the tomato itself is delicious. Thick, rich flavor.
The largest fruit of my 2022 season. Sturdy, a bit of a slow-starter, but productive (no runts, all large), deep red (the photo doesn’t quite capture the true color), good solid tomato flavor, lots of meat, and very few seeds. Sown on March 7th, grown in a polycarbonate greenhouse. It requires heavy-duty staking for the main stem. It holds its trusses fairly well, but it’s better to provide extra support considering the massive size of the fruit.
Pictured: First truss / 5th-6th truss (counter-ripened indoors).
Basajaun was my biggest disappointment of the 2025 season.
At the very beginning, it pumped out a bunch of small tomatoes, around 3.5-5 oz (100-150g). And only towards the very end of the season did it finally produce these big beauties. I can’t say it was underfed, because it was planted right next to Mamino Malinovoe Serdtse (do we have a thread for that variety?..) and that one pumped out big, beautiful, and tasty fruits right from the very first truss. And I fed them all exactly the same…
Average yield, ripened well off the vine. Still, I really expected more from this variety…
