Growers’ Notes and Photos
I’ll be honest right off the bat, I really don’t care for the name. But it is what it is.
The seeds were from the Nash Sad company and they expired way back in 2000. Only a single seed popped, and it was super late, but the plant eventually bounced back and managed to set a few fruits.
The packet was just a plain white envelope, but it did have a description printed on it. I’m guessing it got such a bloodthirsty name because the company heavily promoted it for making tomato juice, specifically for mixing up Bloody Mary cocktails.
It’s an indeterminate, moderate vigor vine. Mid-season. Yields weren’t anything to write home about, but I’m sure a healthy, properly started plant would produce a lot more. The tomatoes are round, red, and smooth. Good, traditional tomato flavor, though definitely not on the sweet side.
All in all, setting the name aside, I really liked this variety.
Full Summary: Plant, Yield, Taste and Vigor
- 🌿 Plant: Indeterminate vine with moderate vigor. Produces standard, smooth, round red tomatoes.
- 📈 Yield: Average. However, the grower noted that her low yield was likely due to starting with 15-year-old expired seeds that germinated very late in the season. A healthy plant started on time would likely yield much higher.
- 👅 Taste & Usage: A classic, old-school tomato flavor with a good acidic bite. It lacks the sugary sweetness of dessert tomatoes, making it absolutely perfect for savory processing—specifically for pressing into rich tomato juice.
- 🛡️ Vigor & Resilience: Proved to be quite a survivor. A single seed germinated from a highly expired batch, started off very weak and late, but managed to bounce back and deliver a successful harvest.
The grower mentions that the seeds came in a plain white packet. In Russia during the 1990s and early 2000s, commercial seed companiesoften sold budget lines of seeds in unprinted, cheap white paper envelopes with only basic black text stamped on them to keep costs down. Getting 15+ year old seeds from one of these old paper packets to germinate and produce fruit is a true testament to the resilience of tomato seeds!
