📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Big Orange Stripe
- 🌍 Origin: A beautiful heirloom known in the Russian community as “Bolshoy Oranzhevyi Polosatyi”.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate, regular leaf, mid-season. It grows into a massive, vigorous plant easily reaching 6 ft (1.8 m) and taller. Growers usually prune it to 1 or 2 leaders.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Stunningly beautiful bicolor beefsteaks. They are orange/yellow with bold red and pink stripes. Weights generally range from 5 to 12 oz (150 to 350 g), though cold weather can stunt fruit size. Fun Fact: When green, the fruits and plant look nearly identical to Chocolate Stripes.
- 👅 Flavor & Yield: It has that classic, sweet, fruity bicolor flavor. The flesh is dense and meaty. Note that in cold, sunless summers, the flavor can lean towards tart, and some growers find it a bit mild/bland. Yields are highly variable—ranging from downright low to solidly average (around 10+ fruits per plant).
Got my seeds from Radyno. These are the last fruits of the season; the early ones were definitely bigger. Averaged around 7 oz (200 g). The plant hit about 6 ft (1.8 m) tall, regular leaf. Mid-season variety. Absolutely loved the flavor—it has that true bicolor taste! Yield was just average for me, but I’m definitely growing it again.
Inna, how many leaders did you prune it to? I ran out of space for it this year, but if the flavor is that good, it’s going on my grow list for next season…
Tasty and gorgeous, but I literally got 2 tomatoes in the summer and 2 tiny ones in the fall. The yield was just painfully low for me. 😂
Grew seeds from O-lya-lya this year. Olya, huge hugs and kisses for this one! It easily made my top 5 most beautiful tomatoes. Just stunning! And the flavor is top-notch—sweet, dense, and meaty. Yield was average, but definitely not low. Pruned to 2 stems and got about 10 tomatoes ranging from 5 to 11 oz (150 to 300 g). Will absolutely grow it again; this variety is a showstopper on the dinner table!
Yeah Lora, it’s an absolutely stunning tomato! 👍 We really have to thank Valya for sharing this miracle with me! 🙏
O-lya-lya, got my seeds from you! 🙏 Pruned to 2 stems, yield was average—got a bit over 10 fruits. Picked on Aug 12 and Aug 30. Juicy and beautiful. Mine weren’t really sweet though, definitely leaned more on the tart/acidic side. To be fair, summer completely skipped us this year, weather was terrible 🤷♀️
It’s a pretty decent variety overall—tasty and gorgeous. My sizes were a bit disappointing, but I blame the freezing cold summer of 2014 for that.
Big Orange Stripe is an indet, grows into a massive plant. Good yield and incredibly beautiful tomatoes. Mine weighed in at 10.5–12 oz (300–350 g). Early on, while the fruits were still green, the plant and tomatoes looked exactly like Chocolate Stripes (which was growing right next to it). I actually thought I messed up and planted two Chocolate Stripes by mistake! But once they started coloring up, it was clearly Big Orange Stripe. Taste-wise, it’s like most bicolors—sweet but a little on the bland/mild side.
