📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): The “Big Boy” Mystery
- 🧬 Hybrid vs. Heirloom Controversy: In the US, “Burpee’s Big Boy” is a famous commercial F1 hybrid introduced in 1949. However, in Eastern Europe and Russia, seed collectors have been trading saved seeds of a variety called “Big Boy” for years. It is highly debated whether this is a successfully de-hybridized (stabilized) version of the original, or simply a case of a seed vendor stealing a famous name and slapping it on a random red oxheart/beefsteak variety.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate. Can range from 1.2m (4 ft) outdoors to 1.8m (6 ft) or more in a greenhouse.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Large, meaty red tomatoes. Interestingly, while the true F1 hybrid is a round beefsteak, many Russian growers report getting blunt red oxhearts. They are very fleshy with few seeds.
- 👅 Flavor & Flaws: Reviews are heavily mixed. Some praise it as sweet and delicious. Others report severe issues: mealy (mushy) texture, hard white cores, and extreme susceptibility to yellow shoulders (hard unripe tops caused by potassium deficiency/heat stress).
Sweet, tasty, large, practically seedless, and a very heavy yielder. The plant got so heavy I actually had to untie it from the support and lay it down on the ground! ))) 👍 Seeds were from Valentina Redko.
What was the actual height of the plant, and did you grow it outdoors in open ground (what region?) or in a greenhouse?
Here is my Big Boy. It was about 1.6m (5.2 ft) tall, very productive.
Wait, someone just brought me a seed packet of Big Boy, and it has the “F1” label on it! 😲😲😲
Lenochka, my Big Boy seeds came from Verochka (Tomatinka).
Grew Big Boy outdoors in open ground. Reached about 1.2m (4 ft). Heavy yielder, early, and produces meaty red hearts!
Here it is in the background.
Lenochka, you found a photo of the true F1 hybrid before I did. I definitely need to dig up my seed packet and take a picture of it.
I’m honestly so tired of new varieties hijacking the names of famous varieties and popular hybrids…
Girls, I’ve been growing this tomato for two years now, and the traits haven’t changed or reverted at all. It’s been circulating in collectors’ catalogs for a long time. Maybe it was successfully de-hybridized (stabilized) by someone? 😊
Lenochka, more likely, a seed vendor just slapped the name of a famous hybrid onto a random large-fruited heirloom variety.
My plant reached 1.5 – 1.6m (5 ft) inside the greenhouse. My climate is very similar to St. Petersburg (I live in Sweden).
It didn’t impress me at all 😉
Early. I picked the first fruits on July 6th. Grew in the greenhouse, reached 1.6-1.8m (5.2-6 ft) tall. High yielding. The first few tomatoes tasted good. But by August, they stopped ripening fully—they would only ripen halfway down. I found out too late that my soil had a severe potassium deficiency…
“Bolshoy Malchik” (Big Boy translated to Russian). Mine looked like this.
So wait, is it a variety or a Hybrid? I’m waiting for a group seed order to arrive, and this tomato is in it. The seller listed it as a hybrid. (Linking to Burpee’s Big Boy Hybrid page).
It’s an absolute nightmare, everyone is growing something completely different under this name 😂. Mine was from Voronina’s seeds.
Vigorous indeterminate, pruned to 3 stems, topped it at 1.7m (5.5 ft). Yielded 4.6 kg (10 lbs) per bush from 16 fruits, the largest was 500g (1.1 lbs).
My impressions are very negative. The fruits were soft, mealy/mushy (like cream of wheat), acidic, and had a hard white core inside that ruined them. Picking them at the breaker stage (blushing) didn’t work at all—they ripen terribly off the vine. Very prone to cracking, and during the heatwave, I couldn’t avoid the dreaded “yellow shoulders.” Potassium feedings didn’t help (though maybe I applied them too late).
(Note: the crossed-out part in the photo is a different variety I was shooting for comparison).
Seeds from Redko. Early, high yield. It grew all the way to the roof of my greenhouse, and kept fruiting right up until October. The last fruits I picked from the very top of the plant were still quite large. Sweet flavor.
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